“Besides, woods made sense. Woods were home.”

“She was trying to force her theory to make sense, but there were some annoying knobbly facts getting in the way. She had the uneasy feeling that she was thumping mismatched jigsaw pieces together to make them fit.”

“Sometimes fear made you angry. Perhaps after years anger cooled, like a sword taken from a forge. Perhaps in the end you were left with something very cold and very sharp.”

“Where is your sense of patriotism?"I keep it hid away safe, along with my sense of trust, Mr. Clent. I don't use 'em much in case they get scratched.”

“Clent, however, suppressed any sense of pity without the slightest difficulty. His brain was busy with the icy clockwork of calculation. If only this young woman’s fears were justified! Beamabeth Marlebourne would be unlikely to threaten anybody, locked away inside the Luck’s cell for the rest of her life. Such a fate had a tempting poetry to it too, given that she really was the Luck of Toll, and had been all her life.”

“Mosca said nothing. The word ‘damsel’ rankled with her. She suddenly thought of the clawed girl from the night before, jumping the filch on an icy street. Much the same age and build as Beamabeth, and far more beleaguered. What made a girl a ‘damsel in distress’? Were they not allowed claws? Mosca had a hunch that if all damsels had claws they would spend a lot less time ‘in distress’.”

“Fear made everyone look very alive in a strange and fragile way, like the last flare of a candle before it dies.”