Especially given Bechimo’s feelings about Uncle, who, as it happened, was on the Disallowed List, the Double-Plus Disallowed List and, Theo guessed, the Don’t Send a Mother’s Day Card List.

If you gotta leave before I come back, I want to thank you for sharing the music. Remember that you’re not alone, ever; that there’s always the music, connecting all of us, and the whole world, too.

If I’d talked to anybody, instead of just passing judgment on myself, knowing that I was evil, because I was heir to every evil thing that had been visited upon me.

You will have to be on your guard, and when your guard slips, you must recover.” My fencing master used to say something eerily similar to that. And then she’d add that making a recover was much more difficult than simply doing the thing right the first time.

Freely given, freely shared, between true companions and friends.” That was an old phrase, but Gran had made sure I knew all the old phrases. JoAnn looked – and according to the land, felt – startled. For a long moment, she didn’t move, then she smiled again – a little less firmly – and took the bag from me. “The feast increases, with the goodwill of all.

The instinct for profit, thought Jela – personal profit. That instinct was maybe not a long-term survival trait.

Let us return to ‘no’. It has the charm of brevity.

The words “brilliant,” “radical,” “original” were more often than not the descriptors applied to Scholar Kiladi’s work. There was of course a leavening of “popinjay,” “recluse,” and “dangerous madman” from his detractors, but those served more to relieve than alarm her. A scholar who did not make collegial enemies was a scholar who was not exercising his intellect to its fullest extent.

Lifeless corpses.

The bonfire was going a treat.