“The door opened. She looked in the mirror and suppressed a curse. Slipping in behind some tourists, that winged shadow was back again. Karou rose and made for the bathroom, where she took the note that Kishmish had come to deliver.Again it bore a single word. But this time the word was Please.”

“Rushing, like wind through a door, and Karou was the door, and the wind was coming home, and she as also the wind. She was all: wind and home and door. She rushed into herself and was filled. She let herself in and was full.”

“Karou had things to do. Sometimes they took a few hours; other times, she was gone for days and returned weary and disheveled, maybe pale, maybe sunburned, or with a limp, or possibly a bite mark, and once with an unshakable fever that had turned out to be malaria.”

“Let's just get this out of the way so I can relax. Karou, your friends aren't going to eat us, are they?"No, Karou thought. They are not. She whispered back, "I don't think so. But try not to look delicious, okay?”

“The humans were sitting cross-legged on the floor in a circle of soldiers, pointing at things and learning more Chimaera words: salt, rat, eat, which unfortunate combination led to Zuzana rejecting the meat on her plate."I think it's chicken," Mik said, taking a bite."I'm just saying there were a lot more rats around here earlier.""Circumstantial evidence." Mik took another bite and said, in passable Chimaera and to guffaws of laughter, "Salty delicious rat.""It's chicken," insisted one of the Shadows That Live. Karou wasn't sure which it was, but she was flapping her arms like wings, and even producing chicken bones to prove it.”

“Nerves," Mik told Karou."Bad?""Terrible." Stepping up behind Zuzana, he bent down to enfold her in a spoon-hug. "Ferociously, dreadfully awful. She's unbearable. You take her. I've had enough."Zuzana batted at him, then squealed as he buried his face in the curve of her throat and made exaggerated kissing noises.”

“Just then, lit only by the flicker of his wings,the sight of him was so..right somehow. He was right. It made no sense at all, but the feeling flooded through Karou”