Find something useful to do with your morning,' she thought to him as she neared her chambers. 'Do something heroic in front of an audience. Knock a child into a river while no one's looking and then rescue him.

Katsa and Po were trying to drown each other and, judging from their hoots of laughter, enjoying it immensely.

But that's how memory works," Bitterblue said quietly. "Things disappear without your permission, then come back again without your permission." And sometimes they came back incomplete and warped.

I don't understand your book. Isn't every book a book of words?

That's interesting," Bitterblue said. "You think a conscience requires fear?

It was starting to seem to her that being "forward-thinking" too often involved avoiding any kind of thought at all - especially about things that might benefit from a great deal of thinking.

Only a person with the true heart of a dictionary-writer would be lying in bed, three days after being stabbed in the gut, worrying about his P's.

Bitterblue had never seen a man naked, and she was curious. She decided the universe owed her a few minutes, just a few, to satisfy her curiosity. So she went to him and knelt, which shut him up.