“I looked down at my hands. They were folded neatly together on the table like they belonged to someone else, as if someone had left their gloves behind and I had arranged them ready for collection.”

“For years after my father left us for Belladonna, I had looked for him... the last time someone had seen them, they were living on a duck's back.”

“But when I took up my pen, my hand made big, jerky letters like those of a child, and the lines sloped down the page from left to right horizontally, as if they were loops of string lying on the paper, and someone had come along and blown them askew.”

“But give me more credit than that. Someone else may have dealt the hand, but I picked it up off the table, I played every card, and I had my reasons.”

“Thanks to His Majesty," the magus said, and my father seemed startled at the correction but not displeased. He looked thoroughly satisfied and very much like Ina when she has all her embroidery threads arranged to her satisfaction. He looked so pleased that I checked over my shoulder to see if there might be someone else behind me who had drawn his attention.”

“The first time someone I loved left me behind...I didn't know how my family would balance. We had been such a sturdy little end table, four solid legs. I was sure we would now be off-kilter, always unstable. Until one day I looked more closely, and realized that we had simply become a stool.”