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"Burrich," I said quietly. He paused. "No one can replace you. Thank you. For all you've done these last few months. I owe you my life. Not just that you saved me from death. But you gave me my life, and who I am. Ever since I was six. Chivalry was my father, I know. But I never met him. You've fathered me day in and day out, over a lot of years. I didn't always appreciate..."

"Why must I suffer?" I found a smile for the Fool. "Surely that is the same question that every inhabitant of Siltbay asked tonight of the fog. I suffer, my fool, because they did. Because I am king. But more, because I am a man, and I saw what happened there."

"The fight isn't over until you win it, Fitz. That's all you have to remember. No matter what the other man thinks. Or the horse."

"Murdered a dynasty," I echoed, and laughed softly. They all cared so much about these things, didn’t they? "You say it like it is an unspeakable crime, Isan. A greater evil than killing a child. But dynasties are not real. They are made up. Fiction."

"I had not become so wicked in my heart that I had stopped believing people could change. If a gentle child could turn into a monster, I thought, then surely a monster could become gentle again."

"It is true, he has suffered, but if everyone who suffered became monsters, the world would be overrun with them."

"He wanted to become a tree. He wanted to be grass. He wanted to be the clouds and the daylight, that little ant crawling among the wet blossoms. He wanted, most of all, to become air."

"Maybe it was possible to love somebody that one hated.

"They were about to kill you."

"They were about to kill you."

"A thousand people like me could die and the world would not stop turning, but breaking one person like him could break a nation."

"Knives cannot be fools," Terren spat. "Swords do not know the concept of hate. A sharp enough edge does not fear being deceived, and a strong enough weapon does not need to think to win."

"I felt like I was taming a tiger.

"The privilege of being powerful, Wei, is that I do not need to rely on trust."

"You are not some lowly peasant. You are heir to the dynasty! For you, the word blood does not mean family but country. Your veins are Tensha's flowing rivers, your beating heart its capital, your flesh its mountains and fertile valleys. Do you understand?"

"Hesin," she asked me once, "why are women always expected to love those who would hurt us? To take care of those who would use us, however they please, without the slightest regard for whether we lived or died?"

"At first, I tried to figure him out. If there was a logic to his cruelty, I reasoned, possibly I could learn to avoid it.