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08b9274
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I will never let Berkley commit treason, ever," Maximus said, "but if he did, I would step on anyone who tried to hang him."
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Naomi Novik |
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afdd668
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However, I must disagree with you very strongly that providing ordinary and reasonable care in any way constitutes coddling, and I have always found that deprivation and hardship, when necessary, can be better endured by men who have not been subjected to them previously for no cause.
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Naomi Novik |
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a9b380c
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Lady, though you choose a home in the sunlit world, you are a Staryk queen indeed.
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Naomi Novik |
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6076af6
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There are men who are wolves inside, and want to eat up other people to fill their bellies. That is what was in your house with you, all your life. But here you are with your brothers, and you are not eaten up, and there is not a wolf inside you. You have fed each other, and you kept the wolf away. That is all we can do for each other in the world, to keep the wolf away.
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Naomi Novik |
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f0f5108
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There had been something gentle in her, a pool of magic, not a running stream that had washed away all the ordinary parts of her life.
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magic
mythology-fiction
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Naomi Novik |
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503bb26
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And so does pity lead straight to disaster.
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Naomi Novik |
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65bafc9
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He settled for writing a letter, in a quiet corner, while Temeraire dictated his own: "Gentlemen, I am very happy to accept your commission, and we should like to be the eighty-first regiment, if that number is not presently taken. We do not need any rifles, and we have got plenty of powder and shot for our cannons," Laurence wrote with a vivid awareness of the reactions this should produce, "but we are always in need of more cows and picks..
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Naomi Novik |
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b4f9295
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I will lay my hand upon the flow of time, if need be, that you shall have however much of it you seek.
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fantasy
rumpelstiltskin
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Naomi Novik |
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fa30dcc
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Laurence felt his face going red; she was sitting there in breeches that showed every inch of her leg, with a shirt held closed only by a neckcloth; he shifted his gaze to the unalarming top of her head and managed to say, "Your servant, Miss Harcourt."
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Naomi Novik |
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1f20218
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They are ours," he said, "although not properly the sailors: they are only along because we would not leave them to drown, and ought to be more grateful for it than they are. Laurence," he said, turning, "this is Palta, and that man is called Taruca: Iskierka snatched him, and I cannot find she asked him in the least."
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Naomi Novik |
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2a2fc11
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I know i'm making her sound like something out of a story. But it was the other way around. When my mother told me stories about the spinning princess or the brave goose-girl or the river-maiden, in my head I imagined them all a little like Kasia; that was how I thought of her. And I wasn't old enough to be wise, so I loved her more, not less, because I knew she would be taken from me soon.
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Naomi Novik |
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e1ce503
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I'd chosen- not the lesser evil, but the less immediate one.
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Naomi Novik |
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6060664
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I bent down and sang Tihas, tihas, kai tihas, kai tihas, over and over, and found myself falling into the sound of the birthday song about living a hundred years. That sounds absurd, but the rhythm of it was easy and familiar, comforting. I stopped having to think about the words: they filled my mouth and spilled over like water out of a cup. I forgot to remember Jerzy's mad laughter, and the green vile cloud that had drowned the light insi..
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Naomi Novik |
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68cab58
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Didn't he come to--to ask you for some magic?" "No, he came to enjoy the view of the Wood," the Dragon said. "Of course he came for magic, and I sent him about his business, which is hacking at enemy knights and not meddling in things he scarcely understands."
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Naomi Novik |
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a907cf5
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They would have devoured my family and picked their teeth with the bones, and never been sorry at all. Better to be turned to ice by the Staryk, who didn't pretend to be a neighbor.
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neighborliness
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Naomi Novik |
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6ee39f6
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I did not really need Magretta to tell me that love had caught my father like an unwilling fish, and having slipped the hook he had been glad to forget he had ever been on it in the first place.
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descriptive
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Naomi Novik |
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590551e
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The crew were all of them inclined to cough and sneeze, the boys particularly, and Keynes said, "We ought put them all in the water: to keep the chest warm must be the foremost concern." Laurence agreed without thinking and was shortly appalled by the sight of Emily bathing with the rest of the young officers, innocent of both clothing and modesty. "You must not bathe with the others," Laurence said to her urgently, having bundled her out a..
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Naomi Novik |
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cc956e4
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But I realized now that without quite thinking it through, I'd half-imagined myself a place here in the tower. My little room upstairs, a cheerful rummaging through the laboratory and the library, tormenting Sarkan like an untidy ghost who left his books out of place and threw his great doors open, and who made him come to the spring festival and stay long enough to dance once or twice.
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Naomi Novik |
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faedda4
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Once down by the shore, only Temeraire went directly into the deep water and began to swim. Maximus came tentatively into the shallows, but went no further than he could stand, and Lily stood on the shore watching, nosing at the water but not going in. Levitas, as was his habit, first wavered on the shore, and then dashed out all at once, splashing and flapping wildly with his eyes tightly shut until he got out to the deeper water and began..
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Naomi Novik |
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da91137
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I do not know that the Chinese system is any worse; there is a limit to the evil one despot alone can do, and if he is truly vicious he can be overthrown; a hundred corrupt members of Parliament may together do as much injustice or more, and be the less easy to uproot.
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Naomi Novik |
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8d15419
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I looked at Lukas. He did not look very pleased, but he did not look very sad either. He was only giving me a considering eye. I was a pig at the market he had decided to buy. He was hoping I fattened up well and gave him many piglets before it was time to make bacon.
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Naomi Novik |
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7188490
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I am of the opinion", Tharkay said, "that you ought not assign to free will something more likely the consequence of a sharp blow to the skull."
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laurence
temeraire
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Naomi Novik |
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0269152
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Well, I only wish you may all not have your throats slit by Uygurs," Riley said in deep pessimism, giving up, after he had tried once more at dinner to persuade them to remain. . . "I will not let anyone slit your throats at all," Temeraire said, a little indignantly. "Although I would like to see an Uygur; is that a kind of dragon?" "A kind of bird, I think," Granby said; Laurence was doubtful, but he did not like to contradict when he wa..
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Naomi Novik |
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cf49e25
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as though the magic had burned off like the liquor on a pudding.
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Naomi Novik |
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4597b10
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Little Irina must be a woman grown by now. A beauty, I have heard, surely?' It was more mockery: he had heard nothing of the sort, of course. I had traveled with my father; the court and his advisers knew I was nothing out of the ordinary, and hardly a girl to turn a young tsar's head - if he had been in any danger of turning his head at all, except perhaps all the way round like an owl.
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Naomi Novik |
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41e9a21
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My mother had enough magic to give me three blessings before she died," I said, and he instinctively bent in to hear it. "The first was wit; the second beauty, and the third--that fools should recognize neither."
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Naomi Novik |
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ad0831f
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Keynes, quite ignoring the covert gestures, the attempts at signaling, of nearly every senior officer, examined [Lily] and declared that she was perfectly fit to fly, "had better fly, I should say; this agitation is unnatural, and must be worked off." "But perhaps," Laurence said, voicing the reluctance which the captains all privately shared, and they as a body began to suggest flights out over the ocean, along the scenic and settled coast..
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Naomi Novik |
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f8cb753
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The cows were all running around their pen in manic terror.
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Naomi Novik |
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855361a
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The soldiers were already laying pikes along the wall by torch-light, with the points bristling upwards; they had draped cloaks over the poles to make small tents to sleep under. A few of them were sitting around small campfires, soaking dried meat in boiling water, stirring kasha into the broth to cook up. They cleared hastily out of our way without our even having to say a word, afraid. Sarkan seemed not to notice, but I couldn't help fee..
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Naomi Novik |
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904f4ab
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If I were very offensive, do you suppose they would go away now?
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Naomi Novik |
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41e4cb1
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Her beautiful face was blank as an unwritten book.
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Naomi Novik |
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47cc0cb
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Fear and work weren't all bad, as companions went. They were both better than loneliness, and the deeper fears, the worse ones that I knew would come true: that I wouldn't see my mother and father for ten years, that I'd never live again in my own home, never run wild in the woods again, that whatever strange alchemy acted on the Dragon's girls would soon begin to take hold of me, and make me into someone I wouldn't recognize at the end of ..
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fantasy
mythology-fiction
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Naomi Novik |
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4619243
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You learn to feel it less, child; or you learn to love other things.
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life
love
selflove
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Naomi Novik |
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a7a201e
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The creaking was every song I'd ever heard about war and battle; the horses clopping along, the drumbeat. All those stories must have ended this same way, with someone tired going home from a field full of death, but no one ever sang this part.
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Naomi Novik |
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1795a14
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How far would we have to go to run from winter?
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Naomi Novik |
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632f40f
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You speak in ignorant disdain of the foremost nation of the world," Yongxing said, growing angry himself, "like all your country-men, who show no respect for that which is superior, and insult our customs." "For which I might consider myself as owing you some apology, sir, if you yourself had not so often insulted myself and my own country, or shown respect for any customs other than your own," Laurence said."
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insult
respect
retort
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Naomi Novik |
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d1a8890
|
He scowled at me. "Jaga," he said, and for a moment I stood cold and still. Old Jaga had died a long time ago, but there weren't very many songs about her, and bards mostly sang them warily, only in summer, at midday. She had been dead and buried five hundred years, but that hadn't stopped her turning up in Rosya only forty years ago, at the baptism of the newborn prince. She'd turned six guards who tried to stop her into toads, put two oth..
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Naomi Novik |
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387754d
|
Araminta had generally considered the laws of etiquette as the rules of the chase, and divided them into categories: those which everyone broke, all the time; those which one could not break without being frowned at; and those which caused one to be quietly and permanently left out of every future invitation to the field.
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decorum
etiquette
humor
observations
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Naomi Novik |
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6a679af
|
Hollin was still sitting with Levitas's head in his lap, a bucket now beside him; he was squeezing water from a clean cloth into the dragon's open mouth. He looked at Rankin without bothering to hide his contempt, but then he bent over and said, "Levitas, come along now; look who's come." Levitas's eyes opened, but they were milky and blind. "My captain?" he said uncertainly. Laurence thrust Rankin forward and down onto his knees, none too ..
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Naomi Novik |
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126d8f7
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There are men who are wolves inside, and want to eat up other people to fill their bellies. That it what was in your house with you, all your life. But here you are with your brothers, and you are not eaten up, and there is not a wolf inside you. You have fed each other, and you kept the wolf away. That is all we can do for each other in the world, to keep the wolf away. And if there has been food in my house for you, then I am glad, glad w..
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Naomi Novik |
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94bb6b8
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She was thinner than she had been. The thing ate only sparingly. Enough to keep Kasia alive, not enough to keep me from watching her wear away, her body growing gaunt and her face hollow-cheeked.
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inspirational
thoughtful
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Naomi Novik |
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d2409ad
|
You impossible, wretched, nonsensical contradiction, what on earth have you done now?" I"
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Naomi Novik |
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18b3c28
|
All maps are fiction when the world is seen from the sky. But if ten thousand dragons choose to believe in this one, I think you will find it nearer truth than otherwise.
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Naomi Novik |
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e2ad0fb
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I hated him and his silence ferociously: I knew he was only letting me convince myself there was nothing to be done.
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Naomi Novik |