By a pleasing coincidence, the first of the migrating geese appeared in the sky a few hours before sunset, and two plump but stupid specimens dropped in on the flood in the yard. They never knew what hit them. By another pleasing coincidence, Asburn had already made spits to roast them on and a k...
“You’ll be fine,” the groom had assured them both. “They know what to do, even if you don’t.” “You’re not a horseman, then,” Musen said as they rolled slowly down Foregate towards the Land Gates. “Me? God, no.” Pleda shifted uncomfortably on the driver’s bench. “My dad kept horses, but I never go...
My sister was crying. She was five years old, I was eight. There was a horrible noise coming from downstairs, shouting, banging. We crept to the top of the stairs (really it was just a glorified ladder) and I peered down. I couldn’t see all that well, because the fire had died down and the lamps ...
The first blow was struck on the deck of a Colleon freighter riding at anchor in Leucas Bay, two hundred miles from Scona, and none of the men involved in the fighting were from either Scona or Shastel. The freighter’s master, whose name is not recorded, was on his way to Shastel in the hope of h...
"I don't like the fact that I don't care about what he's done as much as I should. Anyway, you'd better go. I've got a mountain of work to get through." "Of course." Ziani was at the tent door when he turned back. "You weren't telling the truth," he said. "Wasn't I?" "No. You didn't know Duke Ors...
He did a backwards standing jump, nearly toppled, caught his balance just in time. The messer swished past the tip of his nose. Pointless, he thought, and foolishly stubborn; like a chess player grimly, selfishly playing out the very end of a game when he’s down to his king and the other man’s st...
There was a boy, sitting behind a desk, probably a student or a servant. Not a threat. He looked petrified, and faintly comic. “Where’s the library?” Genseric asked. The boy stared at him; scared, half-witted, maybe both. “The library,” Genseric repeated slowly. “Big room full of books. Well?” Th...
You’ll never guess who I’ve just had the pleasure of entertaining. Your idiot brother showed up here. I’ve only just this minute managed to get rid of him. You’ll be relieved to hear that he’s safe and well, and Providence in its unfathomable wisdom seems to be taking special care of him. Well, m...
He was annoyed with himself. He’d have to watch that before it turned into a bad habit. The enemy had fallen off his horse – quite a pretty little mare, carried its head well, rounded nicely on to the bit; but too much trouble to lead back through the battle, and who was buying women’s horses the...
It was a shame, a great shame, but there’d be another day. He backed into the tent and turned, and then the pain hit him. Nothing he’d ever experienced had hurt that much. He reached round and felt the small of his back for an arrow, but there was nothing there, so it had to be from when Forza hi...
Instead, he opened his bag, took out a book and started to read. It was the sort of book that has pictures in it, and not much text. At Strepsi Ochoe he got out and spent an hour in the inn, a small drab place he knew only too well. Then the military mail arrived, and he went out and introduced h...
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‘We aren’t really businessmen, we’re romantics. We play at commerce because it’s fun, the same way other countries play at war. We aren’t in business to make money; it’s just an excuse for a good time and exciting adventures.’ ‘Now that’s not—’ ‘Ignore her, Ven, she’s just being perverse,’ Athli ...
In front of him a great bank of cabinets, gilded to match the walls and floor, stretched away in either direction until they were swallowed up in the blaze. Glauca didn’t need to look for the number stencilled on the door. He could have found cabinet thirty-seven blindfold. From inside his plain ...
He wondered if he’d offended her, though he couldn’t imagine how. As the coach stumbled over the potholes in the road, he looked sideways at her, considering her as though she was some ornament or work of art he’d bought in a rash moment of enthusiasm. Seen in profile, her...
He sat down on the stone ledge that ran along the cloister wall and folded his hands. “My name’s Carrhasian,” he said. “No,” Forza said gently. “It isn’t.” “Quite right.” A small, annoyed smile. “But for the purposes of this meeting, I am Director Carrhasian. Thank you for coming here, General Be...
I said. “She won’t hear you.” He didn’t look round. “Be quiet,” he said. I rather like the acoustics in the Temple. You can hear the slightest sound, clear as a bell, but no annoying echo. I watched him take a moment to compose his mind and return i...
he said, smiling at me. I could just about see him. “In the circumstances, I was thinking of calling it the Unfinished.” Well, of course. I’d never been in a condemned cell before. It was more or less what I’d imagined it would be like. There was a stone bench under the ti...
Tazencius smiled. ‘You,’ he said. Mostly silence; the only sound was Copis’s muted sobbing somewhere behind him. Everybody else in the room was either dumbstruck with horror or frozen with embarrassment. Welcome home, he thought. ‘You don’t look pleased,’ Tazencius went on, grinning affably. ‘I w...
Stupid, to keep running until he was completely worn out. Now he’d have to sit and rest, and that would lose more time than if he’d walked the last mile. He groped at his pocket to make sure the box was still there, then sat down with his back to the rail, looking back the way he’d come. He remem...
Temrai stepped backwards. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I was just looking.’ The engineer scowled, and spat into the sawdust. ‘Haven’t you got any work to do?’ ‘I finished it. I’m waiting for the next batch of blanks. So I thought I’d just look around.’ The engineer muttered something and went back to w...
To shorten the odds." An explanation of the obvious to a slow-witted person. "I had to escape. I knew I could handle either of the men on his own, but both together might've been a problem. One from two leaves one. A great strength of mine is the ability to see straight to the crux of the problem...
he said, smiling at me. I could just about see him. “In the circumstances, I was thinking of calling it the Unfinished.” Well, of course. I’d never been in a condemned cell before. It was more or less what I’d imagined it would be like. There was a stone bench under the tiny window. Other than th...