Greenglass House

Nobody said it had to be a story with an ending all neatly tied up like some ridiculous fairy tale. This story's true, and true stories don't have endings, because things just keep going.

Always check for traps, left is always right unless there's a middle, always put your healer in the best armor and wear your magic rings on your toes instead of your fingers...What else?...Always have rope.

Troube comes when a person starts asking for money; it never does what they think it will do. And then there's the problem of destiny. Things never turn out well when you try to outwit destiny. Only fools do that.

... The thing about attics and basements was, everything in there had once been a treasure to someone.

It is not merely our adversaries we must investigate...We must always work to know ourselves better, too.

I've never understood all this stock people put into destiny anyhow. Only fools rely on destiny. ... Plus, if destiny exists, it doesn't seem it would be very functional if you could thwart it with a single wish.

Never overlook folklore if you want to really know about the place it came from.

It is the magic of that-which-remains, of that-which-is-alone. It is, in many ways, the magic of desperation, but it is never the magic of chance. When one remains, it is the one that was meant to remain. It is the one that is special; it is precious because it is unique; it is powerful because that is how it survived. There is one bone in a cat that may call me, but it must be separated from the others to do its work. It has potential when it is connected to the rest, but when it is sundered away, its potential becomes power.

Everyone know—or at least, was probably told as a child—that you can make a wish on a shooting star. Not everyone knows that the only way to be sure it will come ture is to speak it aloud before the star disappears, and this is a nearly imposssible fet to manage.

Well . . . well, yes, I suppose it’s very old. Perhaps someone just assumed that since it was an antique, it must be worth something.

Found it,” Mr. Pine said, waving a plastic bottle of colorless liquid and a box of matches. “It was on the liquor shelf, ’cause that’s both logical and safe. Your mother, sometimes . . .

Sirin pointed to the hat. “Helm of Revelations,” she said, deadpan. “Eyes of True and Aching Clarity,” she added, indicating the glasses. “Now you’re just making stuff up,” Negret protested. “Obviously, though it’s interesting that it was magic glasses that clued you in rather than the invisibility cloak.” She grinned. “It’s fun. Look.” She took a pair of brown leather gloves from the pocket of her pants. “For you. Wildthorn’s Crackerjack Gauntlets, for Pickers of Locks and Creepers Through Windows Needing Nimble and Foxy Fingers.” She eyed the roof overhead, creaking under the weight of winter. “Also guaranteed to be useful when it’s cold.

In a tabletop game? Chance and probability. The higher your ability score, the better your chances. You roll a die to see if you succeed. For you, here and now?” She grinned. “Believe you can do it and try hard.

But Milo had a shiny gold present to open, and presents trumped sad trees any day of the week.

Milo Pine did not run a smugglers’ hotel, but his parents did. It was an inn, actually; a huge, ramshackle manor house that looked as if it had been cobbled together from discarded pieces of a dozen mismatched mansions collected from a dozen different cities. It was called Greenglass House, and it sat on the side of a hill overlooking an inlet of harbors, a little district built half on the shore and half on the piers that jutted out into the river Skidwrack like the teeth of a comb. It was a long climb up to the inn from the waterfront by foot, or an only slightly shorter trip by the cable railway that led from the inn’s private dock up the steep slope of Whilforber Hill. And of course the inn wasn’t only for smugglers, but that was who turned up most often, so that was how Milo thought of it.

There was a city that could not be mapped, and inside it a house that could not be drawn.

There is a right way to do things and a wrong way, if you're going to run a hotel in a smugglers' town.

But when things were passed to you, you were supposed to pass them on to someone else eventually too.

Plus, the thing about attics and basements was, everything in there had once been a treasure to someone. Otherwise there'd have been no reason to keep it.

An entire notebook in code?” He dropped it on the bed and stared at Sirin. “What on earth is going on with all these people?

The Wayfaring Galleria emblazoned on its side. Across the top of the picture was the title: The Odd Trails: Scavengers, Peddlers, and Huntsmen of the Roaming World (Advanced Player’s Handbook). “Cool!

That was the moment Milo first started thinking maybe there was something odd going on.

Mr. Vinge wasn't exactly looking at them, but past them. Milo turned and saw only the stained-glass window and the snowy night beyond, tinged in shades of pale, pale greens: celery and celadon and tones like old bottle glass.

it isn't only locked doors that hide treasures.

The rain had not stopped for a week, and the roads that led to the inn were little better than rivers of muck. This, at least, is what Captain Frost said when he tramped indoors, coated in the yellow mud peculiar to that part of the city and hollering for his breakfast. The rest of the guests sighed. Perhaps today, they had thought. Perhaps today, their unnatural captivity would end. But the bellowing man calling for eggs and burnt toast meant that, for another day at least, fifteen people would remain prisoners of the river Skidwrack, and the new rivers that had once been roads, and the rain. No wonder Georgie had thought he might like it. Substitute snow for rain and subtract a few people and the author might’ve been writing about Greenglass House. In the book, however, one of the guests, a man named Phin, suggested that they pass the time by telling stories. “In more civilized places, when travelers find themselves sharing a fire and a bottle of wine, they sometimes choose to share something of themselves, too,” Phin told them. “And then, wonder of wonders—no strangers remain. Only companions, sharing a hearth and a bottle.” The wind and rain rattled the windowpanes as the folks gathered in the parlor looked from one to the next: the young girl in her embroidered silk stole; the twin gentlemen with the tattooed faces; the gaunt woman with her nervous gloved hands constantly moving; the other woman, gaunter still and hidden beneath two layers of voluminous shawls, whose red-brown skin showed in small flashes when her wraps did not quite move along with her. “If you will listen,” Phin said, swirling his glass, “I will tell the first tale. Then perhaps, if you find it worth the trade, you will give me one of yours. Listen.

I’m a gardener. I work up at the monastery at the top of the hill, only what with the weather I got stuck on my way home. Home being down in Shantytown, miss, which is rather a long trip to take on such a wretched night. You can see how I wound up here. Nothing strange about it at all.

…when travelers find themselves sharing a fire and a bottle of wine, they sometimes choose to share something of themselves, too,” Phin told them. “And then they, wonder of wonders – no strangers remain. Only companions, sharing a hearth and bottle.

the flakes of your cereal with your spoon to make one in your breakfast bowl;

All his life, ever since he was really small, Milo had been very bothered by sudden changes of plan. More than bothered. Being surprised made him uneasy at the best of times.