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- Retvenko smiled with grim pleasure, then felt a wave of sadness overtake him. He was a giant among men, a gifted Squaller, a great soldier, but here he was just an employee, a sad old Ravkan who spoke broken Kerch and drank too much.
- Have I not felt this this summer
- His prayers turned to screams, but both went unanswered.
- and Matthias heard Wylan murmur to Jesper, “Why won’t he just say he wants her back?” “You’ve met Kaz, right?”
- Bajan gave her a lazy grin. “Most prettily under my instruction. I could teach you to make all manner of pleasing sounds.” Inej rolled her eyes. He was just like the boys she’d grown up with, a head full of nonsense and a mouth full of easy charm. “I am bound and facing the prospect of torture or worse. Are you actually flirting with me?”
- “All I know is that men like you don’t deserve the air they breathe.” Bajan looked stung. “I’ve been nothing but kind to you. I’m not some sort of monster.” “No, you’re the man who sits idly by, congratulating yourself on your decency, while the monster eats his fill. At least a monster has teeth and a spine.” “That isn’t fair!”
- *not all men
- You lay a finger on me and Kaz Brekker will cut the baby from your pretty wife’s stomach and hang its body from a balcony at the Exchange.”
- “Vile, ruthless, amoral. Isn’t that why you hired Kaz in the first place? Because he does the things that no one else dares? Go on, Van Eck. Break my legs and see what happens. Dare him.”
- INEJ, MY GIRL, MY LOVE
- “Even better men can be bested.”
- “I wouldn’t throw myself off a bridge for the king of Ravka.”
- Nina, dear, you clearly haven't met Nikolai.
- “Something has happened to Jan’s nose,” Alys said. “I suspect he caught a bad case of the Wraith.”
- The silence between them was dark water. He could not cross it. He couldn’t walk the line between the decency she deserved and the violence this path demanded. If he tried, it might get them both killed. He could only be who he truly was—a boy who had no comfort to offer. So he would give her what he could.
- UGHH KAZ STOP ACTING LIKE YOU GOT A STICK SHOVED UP YOUR ASS
- “I would come for you,” he said, and when he saw the wary look she shot him, he said it again. “I would come for you. And if I couldn’t walk, I’d crawl to you, and no matter how broken we were, we’d fight our way out together—knives drawn, pistols blazing. Because that’s what we do. We never stop fighting.”
- AAHHHHH
- Just … pretend everyone you meet is a kitten you’re trying not to scare.” Matthias looked positively affronted. “Animals love me.” “Fine. Pretend they’re toddlers. Shy toddlers who will wet themselves if you’re not nice.” “Very well, I’ll try.” As they approached the next stall, the old woman tending to it looked up at Matthias with suspicious eyes. Nina nodded encouragingly at him. Matthias smiled broadly and boomed in a singsong voice, “Hello, little friend!” The woman went from wary to baffled. Nina decided to call it an improvement. “And how are you today?” Matthias asked. “Pardon?” the woman said. “Nothing,” Nina said in Ravkan. “He was saying how beautifully the Ravkan women age.” The woman gave a gap-toothed grin and ran her eyes up and down Matthias in an appraising fashion. “Always had a taste for Fjerdans. Ask him if he wants to play Princess and Barbarian,” she said with a cackle.
- GOD
- “They speak quietly. They don’t engage in flirtations with every single man they meet.” “I flirt with the women too.”
- If your family can afford it, they send you to a cemetery or graveyard outside Ketterdam. And if they can’t …” “No mourners,” Nina said grimly. No mourners, no funerals. Another way of saying good luck. But it was something more. A dark wink to the fact that there would be no expensive burials for people like them, no marble markers to remember their names, no wreaths of myrtle and rose.
- “When people see a cripple walking down the street, leaning on his cane, what do they feel?” Wylan looked away. People always did when Kaz talked about his limp, as if he didn’t know what he was or how the world saw him. “They feel pity. Now, what do they think when they see me coming?” Wylan’s mouth quirked up at the corner. “They think they’d better cross the street.” Kaz tossed the ledger back in the safe. “You’re not weak because you can’t read. You’re weak because you’re afraid of people seeing your weakness. You’re letting shame decide who you are.
- Only Kaz stood apart, staring silently out the window to the dark streets below. “Kaz,” said Nina. “You may not be glad we’re alive, but we’re glad you’re alive. Come here!”
- Typical.
- She rested her head on his shoulder. “You’re better than waffles, Matthias Helvar.” A small smile curled the Fjerdan’s lips. “Let’s not say things we don’t mean, my love.”
- Jesper and Kaz swung around, crashed into the mechanism of the clock, righted themselves. It wasn’t a fight, it was a brawl—graceless, a tangle of elbows and fists. “Ghezen and his works, someone stop them!” Wylan said desperately. “Jesper hasn’t shot him,” Nina said. “Kaz isn’t using his cane,” said Inej. “You think they can’t kill each other with their bare hands?”
- are you fucking kidding me.
- The trapdoor sprang open and Colm Fahey’s head emerged. His ruddy cheeks went even redder. “Jesper Llewellyn Fahey, that is enough!” he roared. Jesper and Kaz both startled, and then, to Wylan’s shock, they stepped away from each other, looking guilty. “Just what is going on here?” Colm said. “I thought you were friends.” Jesper ran a hand over the back of his neck, looking like he wanted to vanish through the floorboards. “We … uh … we were having a disagreement.” “I can see that. I have been very patient with all of this, Jesper, but I am at my limit. I want you down here before I count ten or I will tan your hide so you don’t sit for two weeks.” Colm’s head vanished back down the stairs. The silence stretched. Then Nina giggled. “You are in so much trouble.” Jesper scowled. “Matthias, Nina let Cornelis Smeet grope her bottom.” Nina stopped laughing. “I am going to turn your teeth inside out.” “That is physically impossible.” “I just raised the dead. Do you really want to argue with me?” Inej cocked her head to one side. “Jesper Llewellyn Fahey?” “Shut up,” said Jesper. “It’s a family name.” Inej made a solemn bow. “Whatever you say, Llewellyn.”
- GOD this is unbelievable
- With a strength Inej couldn’t fathom, Kaz jammed Gorka’s leg upward. The big man shrieked as his knee popped free of its socket. He toppled sideways, blubbering, “My leg! My leg!” “I recommend a cane,” Kaz said.
- So savage, my god
- Maybe she should feel ashamed, maybe even frightened. But she hadn’t been made for shame.
- Inej almost felt sorry for her. Dunyasha really believed she was the Lantsov heir, and maybe she was. But wasn’t that what every girl dreamed? That she’d wake and find herself a princess? Or blessed with magical powers and a grand destiny? Maybe there were people who lived those lives. Maybe this girl was one of them. But what about the rest of us? What about the nobodies and the nothings, the invisible girls? We learn to hold our heads as if we wear crowns. We learn to wring magic from the ordinary. That was how you survived when you weren’t chosen, when there was no royal blood in your veins. When the world owed you nothing, you demanded something of it anyway.
- She had chosen to live freely as a killer rather than die quietly as a slave
- “And you, Kaz?” Nina asked. “Build something new,” he said with a shrug. “Watch it burn.”
feb 19 2017 ∞
feb 21 2017 +
feb 21 2017 +