“Why not?" I demanded. "What am I supposed to remember?” So Zephyrus knew the truth after all. I grabbed his arm, well aware I might offend him and frustrated beyond belief that they shared some secret I did not. “Leave Kallias be. It was my idea to come. He follows my orders.” When Zephyrus didn’t acknowledge me, I added, “The wind sees all. The wind knows all. That’s what Thamyris told me.”

O Albany! O pure comfort! After so many days in a down-at-heels cart on a dusty road through wretched weather (to say nothing of the food), to have now, at last—well, not bathed, precisely (a mishap he planned to repair later), but to at least have made an acquaintance with the sponge; to have at last donned clean clothes, a new wig, a respectable hat—why, he was, himself, shaved and shorn and sprightful, a bit long of face and short of leg, perhaps; his hair, or what showed from under the wig, at best mousy; yet here he was, Mr Augustus Burnham, the very spitting image of the exquisite gentleman (if one might politely overlook the scar that plowed a red furrow across cheek and brow); an actor's rôle to be played, without a doubt, but one that fitted him to the skin, like silken stockings on a well-turned leg. (But what was to be done about Sergeant Steele?)

We realized why the scouts were so shaken by the scene when we arrived. The body lying in grasses smeared with blood was a Mandate. I stared at it in disbelief. Mandates were the voice of the gods. Even during the War, they gave their oracles without partiality and remained untouched. No one, not even a deathmage, would kill a Mandate.

The conviction of the flesh weakened when that flesh was hacked away. Conducting a thousand interrogations of his own taught him that. Belief came easily in times of comfort. Contemplation and reflection were petty offerings to the goddess when weighed against the truth of how her glory needed to spread. People did not know what they needed until you forced them to see it. And sometimes they were particularly stubborn in the process.

What Stafe left unspoken was what had been gnawing at him since he’d met Viktor. By remaining in Ofra, Stafe had become a traitor to the Crown. Viktor, if he chose to be an upstanding and honorable knight, could right that wrong. Stafe’s head could sit beside the dragon’s organs for Viktor's journey home and would surely earn him more titles, lands, and the king’s favor.

Ah, but he can. I can already feel his words curling through me like roots, the magic woven into them as real as my own. These are the words of a master to a slave. These are my reward, the price I paid for leaving the dervish, Ilyas. For Armen.

“No, there’s no living there,” Tarrow said, more gently. “Not for anyone who wants to be human. They’re fascinated by life, just like humans are fascinated by death and raise up doctors to fight it and gods to preside over it. But that fascination doesn’t make the fair folk alive. It merely makes them cruel.”

Brû could not imagine what that was like. She had spent her life hearing of the Palace of Confluence with no sense of what it actually was, always a far-off storybook feeling. To be a servant here, to live the mirror of that feeling and know reality was out there, shaped by the everyday work done in the Confluence but to never see it—was it bizarre? Cruel? Another kind of normal?

I am still myself and so I am answered at last: yes, I have a soul, no matter what shape its vessel is forced into. I remember that I am sunlight made tender flesh, even as I stir soundless feathers against a starlit sky. I remember the wind in the woods, the gift of nectar, the graze of wings. Though I cannot see the sun, I fly ever closer to its resting-place, and I pray it hears me, in its dreams, when I call.

I hit the water headfirst. The sea latched onto my clothes and weighed me down like armour and crowns and scepters, all those vestments I had never wanted. I didn’t glance up at the ship. Didn’t care if the captain’s panicked eyes were peering down at me or not, and felt grateful the sea drowned out his calls. I breathed in water and choked on it, feeling my mind and vision slipping away. Then something wrapped around my waist and began dragging me... up.

Shon isn't afraid. This isn't the stark silence of his empty home. This living quiet conceals the stretch of new leaf to sun, the rustle of the worm, and the squirm of pink pinioned baby birds. It is the held breath of small lungs in small bone cages around small swift hearts that beat a little faster waiting for the listener and the whistler to pass by.

The wind turned, and the rustle of the field bled into the whistling of the wood, and more smoke blew closer. The air was bitter with it. He didn’t turn his gaze away from her. Anger. It was anger, there in its depths. She’d never had that directed at her before. Hadn’t had the chance to cause it, really. She let the hand holding the coins drop. “Tomorrow night.”

Hassan had loved her, but his eyes had still been clear enough to know how the world saw her, the horror of her power and her magic and her intolerance of human weakness. It was easier to think of that now, in the way that it was easier to see after stepping from too bright sun into a shaded room. Lamia was not here to blind him anymore.

As magehandler, I technically outrank them during transit. But what's a command here on the frontier, ankle-deep in corpses? Danger's one thing. Soldiers expect that. Some even enjoy it. But certain death? No one walks into that just because some asshole with rank tells them to. Besides, what use would they be, soft flesh and brittle steel, with a world-cracker on the loose?

“I hid him in that tree.” Her grandfather nodded at the famous one, its lopsided head barely visible in the gloom. “Gave him a ladder to climb with, and my wife Joan—you’re named for her—she fetched two pillows to cushion him. William Carlis sat there with His Majesty all through the day, while those Roundhead dogs searched high and low, but we never said a word.”

"Not me," Isaac said. "But all things are connected in the Ayn Sof. Maybe I can help him be found. Hochmah and Binah. Wisdom and understanding. Seventy-three and sixty-seven—a hundred and forty." He felt a change in the air and knew that Mansour, too, had risen; he turned to the house to get the things he would need before they went to the university. The smoke of burning Tuluz came to him one more time, and his familiar home had the smell of death.

There had to be other islands capable of supporting human settlements, Alain told himself. Life should be possible beyond the shores of Heora. That was the article of faith that drove all Exploration. They simply haven't sailed far enough to find a new home. It was their own failure, not the obvious fact that Heora did not want them.

But think—if we succeed, I’ll acquire a whole boxful of memories. Big, jewel-like memories whose sharp edges will tear my master’s world around me like old silk. I’ll escape. Eat a whole orange rather than a mere pip. Oranges are bright, like the sun. Do they taste like the sun? I think they might. I almost remember that they do.