“When people say a knight's job is all glory, I laugh and laugh and laugh. Often I can stop laughing before they edge away and talk about soothing drinks.”
“I'm sick of this. Call me what you like, say I'm without honor, I don't care. I'm not getting on any more horses to whack you people with a stick.”
“And if wishes were pies, I`d weigh more than I do.
Sir Myles of Barony Olau ”
“WE do try to eat," Raoul called back to her [Kel]. I go all faint if I don't get fed regularly. Only think of the disgrace to the King's Own if I fell from the saddle."
"But there was that time in Fanwood," a voice behind them said.
"That wedding in Tameran," added the blonde Sergeant Osbern, riding a horse-length behind Kel.
"Don't forget when what's-his-name, with the army, retired," yelled a third.
"Silence, insubordinate curs!" cried Raoul. "Do not sully my new squire's ears with your profane tales!"
"Even if they're TRUE?" That was Dom. It seemed Neal wasn't the only family member versed in irony.”
“There is a saying in the Islands. Beware the women of the warrior class, for all they touch is both decorative and deadly.-Yuki”
“Not too fast," called Raoul. "Let's not scare anyone."
"His majesty said with all deliberate speed!" chirped the courier. He flinched under Lerant's glare.
"That's how we're doing it," Raoul told him. "Deliberately.”
“Sir, people never wanted me to make it to squire. They won't like it any better if I become a knight. I doubt I'll ever get to command a force larger than, well, just me.'
Raoul shook his head. 'You're wrong.' As she started to protest, he raised a hand. 'Hear me out. I have some idea of what you've had to bear to get this far, and it won't get easier. But there are larger issues than your fitness for knighthood, issues that involve lives and livelihoods. Attend,' he said, so much like Yayin, one of her Mithran teachers, that Kel had to smile.
'At our level, there are four kids of warrior,' he told Kel. He raised a fist and held up one large finger. 'Heroes, like Alanna the Lioness. Warriors who find dark places and fight in them alone. This is wonderful, but we live in the real world. There aren't many places without any hope or light.'
He raised a second finger. 'We have knights- plain, everyday knights, like your brothers. They patrol their borders and protect their tenants, or they go into troubled areas at the king's command and sort them out. They fight in battles, usually against other knights. A hero will work like an everyday knight for a time- it's expected. And most knights must be clever enough to manage alone.'
Kel nodded.
'We have soldiers,' Raoul continued, raising a third finger. 'Those warriors, including knights, who can manage so long as they're told what to do. These are more common, thank Mithros, and you'll find them in charge of companies in the army, under the eye of a general. Without people who can take orders, we'd be in real trouble.
'Commanders.' He raised his little finger. 'Good ones, people with a knack for it, like, say, the queen, or Buri, or young Dom, they're as rare as heroes. Commanders have an eye not just for what they do, but for what those around them do. Commanders size up people's strengths and weaknesses. They know where someone will shine and where they will collapse. Other warriors will obey a true commander because they can tell that the commander knows what he- or she- is doing.' Raoul picked up a quill and toyed with it. 'You've shown flashes of being a commander. I've seen it. So has Qasim, your friend Neal, even Wyldon, though it would be like pulling teeth to get him to admit it. My job is to see if you will do more than flash, with the right training. The realm needs commanders. Tortall is big. We have too many still-untamed pockets, too curse many hideyholes for rogues, and plenty of hungry enemies to nibble at our borders and our seafaring trade. If you have what it takes, the Crown will use you. We're too desperate for good commanders to let one slip away, even a female one. Now, finish that'- he pointed to the slate- 'and you can stop for tonight.”
“I've said it before and I'll say it again, my lord. You are an evil man.”
“My new knight mistress is famed for wielding sharp edges: Sword, Knife and Tongue!”
“Haven’t you ever noticed that people who win say it’s because the gods know they are in the right, but if they lose, it wasn’t the gods who declared them wrong? Their opponent cheated, or their equipment was bad.”
“He was overconfident”, she told him. “And I won so the gods must have thought I was right. Otherwise they’d have made me lose. You know how trial by combat works.”
“You won because you were good” he corrected her. “I find it hard to believe the gods sit forever about the Divine Realms betting on jousts and trials by combat.”
“Oakbridge did his work with dramatics and prophecies that all would go horribly awry. Having dealt with him over midwinter, Kel wondered why the man hadn’t died of a heart attack. Instead he seemed to thrive on disaster and finding people seated in the wrong places.”
“I’m to attend balls and banquets without my squire?" demanded Raoul, all innocence. "I can't handle things like requesting water to shave with, or getting my clothes pressed. I need Kel.”
“When it was her own doing, she was always tempted to skip a day, or just glance down, then get back to the ground. Kel had to force herself to keep her vow.”
“So long as there are nobles and commoners, the wealthy and the poor, those with power will be heard, and those without ignored. That's the world.”
“When in doubt," the mage Numair Salmalin had taught the pages, "Shoot the wizard.”
“Do we say, Oh now I'm going to be nice to the weak and the small? Or do we do as we learned when we were pages?”
“When people say a knight's job is all glory, I laugh, and laugh, and laugh.”
“She wanted an extra advantage today, more than she'd had in training with Raoul or knights like Jerel. When the trumpet blared, she told Peachblossom, "Charge."
Muscles bunched under her. The gelding flew at his top speed down the dirt lane, hooves thundering in packed dust. For those brief seconds Kel felt like an army of one. She loved no one so much as her horse.”
“It’s the only bad thing about animals,” she told Cleon. “Most don’t live as long as we do.” “I know, sweet,” Cleon said, kissing first one of her eyelids, then the other. “But think how bleak life would be without them.”
“She decided to be quiet for now. There was a Yamani saying: “You need never unsay anything that you did not say in the first place.”
“You don't think history gets rewritten, sometimes?”
“Buri rode along with her own Group Askew and two more Rider Groups, the Sixth, called Thayet’s Dogs, and the Fifteenth, Stickers.”
“motivation predicts higher academic performance, fewer criminal convictions, and better employment outcomes. Children who have a so-called “rage to master”—a term coined by Ellen Winner to describe the intrinsic motivation to master a specific domain—are more likely to be successful in any number of endeavors, from art to science.”
“Guils is the greatest weapon vecause its cuts rarely heal and it aims for the heart”
“How amazing it is that friendships can become so full that you can't imagine what your life was like before them.”
“Vedete, una storia che finisce puoi affrontarla. Fa male, e per un po' è un dolore così lacerante che è come se i polmoni collassassero e il cuore implodesse ogni volta che ti rendi conto che se n'è andato. Ma man mano che passa il tempo, almeno per me, è quello che è rimasto, quelle briciole sul pavimento, che ti aiutano a continuare. Quelle modeste prove che ti aiutano a guarire, questa è l'idea che mi sono fatta.”
“But if monsters could look like humans, and humans could look like monsters, how could anyone ever really be sure that the right people stood on the outside of all those cages?”
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