Megan Whalen Turner Quotes

Ambiades, I realized, was the kind of person who liked to put people in a hierarchy, and he wanted me to understand that I was at the bottom of his. He was supposed to treat me politely in spite of my subservient position, and I was supposed to be grateful. For my part, I wanted Ambiades to understand that I considered myself a hierarchy of one. I might bow to the superior force of the magus and Pol, but wasn't going to bow to him. Neither of us moved.

Why were these the only dances you knew?"
"Because no one would dance with me. Thieves are never popular."
I know why, thought Attolia, but aloud she asked, "Why are you familiar with the square dances?"
The music quickened.
"My mother taught me. We danced them on the rooftops of the Megaron. According to legend, the Thief and any partner the Thief chooses will be safe."
"You are king now," she pointed out.
"Ah, but they say that if the king dances, the entire court can safely dance with him."
"Spare me," said Attolia, "and my court, from dancing on the roof."
"It probably only works in Eddis.

"Treachery," said the Mede.
"Diplomacy," said Attolia, "in my own name," as the rest of her guard rose up from the grass behind their captain.

"I know exactly when. I was hiding in a takima bush in the Queen's Garden, watching the older son of the Baron Erondites tell Attolia that he loved her. He was trying to propose a marriage and she thought he was talking about a poem he was writing. I was laughing like a very quiet fiend, trying not to make the branches around me shake, and then, between one heartbeat and the next, and to my complete surprise, it wasn't funny anymore." He rubbed his chest, as if a remembered pain. "I wanted to kill him. Once she was gone, I very nearly jumped out of the bush onto his head. Poor Dite."
Poor Eugenides, thought Sounis, to fall in love with a woman he had already made into an enemy.

"Who knows but that you will get up to find that the world has inverted itself yet again?" He looked around the room at the other attendants as if in warning, but spoke to Philologos. "Remember, the love of kings and queens is beyond the compass of us lesser mortals."
If anyone noticed, no one commented that he had called the Thief of Eddis a king.

Don't you trust my palace security?"
"Yes, of course," Sounis said, trying to think of some other reason besides mistrust to sleep with a knife. He heard Eugenides laugh.
"My queen and I sleep with a matched set under our pillows, as well as handguns in pockets on the bedposts. Don't be embarrassed."
:"Gen, what are you doing in my bedroom in the middle of the night?" Sounis asked.
"Going out of my mind," said Eugenides promptly. "At least I am on the verge of going out of my mind.

Eddis nodded. "Gen leaves the reins in Attolia's hands. Which is not what either I or Attolia recommended, but wisely he ignored us both."
"Wisely?"
Smiling, Eddis said, "He hasn't the temperament. He gets angry. She only ever gets angry at him."
Sounis, having seen the Thief of Eddis lose his temper, could see her point.