Harrow the Ninth

В одном важнейшем поединке в девятой книге Нониус и рыцарь противника сражались целый час, постоянно истекая кровью, а в конце просто пожали друг другу руки и обменялись высказываниями о доблести - а вовсе не о лечении гиповолемического шока.

“I don’t understand.” You did understand.

You could follow any blind precept, if the alternative was madness.

“Ortus,” she said, “I have known you my entire life. Did you really think I entertained any delusions that you could be mistaken, in the dark, by a dementia-ridden dog raised with no knowledge of bladed objects, for a swordsman?”

Dying is for suckers.

Always your sword, my umbral sovereign; in life, in death, in anything beyond life or death that they want to throw at thee and me. I died knowing you’d hate me for dying; but Nonagesimus, you hating me always meant more than anyone else in this hot and stupid universe loving me. At least I’d had your full attention.

I’ve seen a lot of things in my time—swords, pictures of ladies who lost their clothes in an accident, a bunch of corpses—eclectic, maybe, though now I think about it maybe not the widest variety—but I have never seen anyone look at anything the way those Lyctors looked at us. Mercymorn looked at us like we were the picture in the dictionary next to unhappiness. Augustine looked at us like we were the last thing he’d ever see.

“Can we get back to this blasted funeral,” said Mercy. “Sitting through six of these is worse than dying myself. I will let you know now that the plan for my funeral is in my top drawer, and I’ve got it down to a minute-by-minute framework, and it’s only twenty-four minutes, and it’s just lovely.”

Also, you are trying to start a fight with me to get out of the fight I am trying to have with you, which is a painfully domestic tactic.