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21 " Anglisc voices: words drumming like apples split over wooden boards, round, rich, stirring. Like her father's words, and her mother's, and her sister's. Utterly unlike Onnen's otter-swift British or the dark liquid gleam of Irish. "
― Nicola Griffith , Hild
22 " There are no commandments against love," he said. "
23 " Hild faced him influencing, because Edwin was like a dog: show fear and he would chose you down. But then she broke her gaze. To challenge an uneasy before his men was to invite death. "
24 " They’d left behind their stone houses in Caer Luel and beautiful white fountains, their red-tile roofs and straight roads, their perfectly round red bowls with pictures of dogs hunting deer around the rim, their exact corners and glass cups. And now the marble statues had lost their paint and stood melancholy white streaked with moss; tiles had blown off in storms and been patched with reed; men built fire sands directly on the cracked and broken remnants of once-brilliant mosaics. "
25 " Hild looked at the hot spark and flicker of her carnelians and pretended they were coals. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been warm. Couldn’t even remember when she’d eaten something hot. "
26 " We ride in service to a dream from the gods. If our dreamer’s horse fails, you will give her yours. If her food runs low, you will her your own. She will light our way. And now we ride. "
27 " She accepted the mantle of the uncanny and until the end of this journey it was her fate. It was her vision they marched to, into a future she had dreamt for them. "
28 " Hild,” he said. “Now I know that name. You are in the lady Breguswith’s dream, the jewel that will light my way. "
29 " I want to learn, to wander and ask and think and listen like…like a priest of a prince.”“Not gold?”“Gold comes to priests and princes. "
30 " She walked on the wave of sound the length of the tables and back up again until she stood before Edwin, on the other side of the board. "
31 " You didn’t leave powerful kin of questionable loyalty at your back. "
32 " Bishop Rhiel says a book is full of secret signs that tell a story. A god’s story. It sounds as though it should be interesting, but it isn’t. "
33 " His voice was like the cowbells, soft-metalled and dull, but with music buried in it somewhere. "
34 " Being puzzled mad him anxious. Being anxious made him angry. "
35 " She imagined Begu’s mother, Enynny and Ennynny’s mother, and her mother before her, back into memory, sitting here by the ferns drinking the cold, minty water, and talking quietly in British. So many. All gone into the mist. She felt a twist inside, a longing for a family and home that never was. "
36 " It was easy to talk to Begu. Perhaps because she said such strange things, perhaps because Hild got the sense she never took people seriously. "
37 " Hild put together her information like a broken redcrest pavement and pondered the picture. "
38 " I have my fa’s hair. Not soft like yours.”“I like how yours feels wiry and strong. Like you. "
39 " This was for her path, for her freedom, for her life and family. To make her dead da proud. She was strong. She was royal. She would set her will. She would do this. "
40 " Hild’s dreams of birds stolen from their nests by stoats became so evil Onnen threatened to stuff her ears with tallow and threatened to find another sleeping place. "