“These?" Mat said, gesturing to his coat and shirt. "I really have no idea. They were just down there. I'm completely baffled." He had been very pleased to learn that Seanchan guards-for all their stoic expressions and too-straight backs-responded to bribes like other people.”

“The white cat Sal-al was lying on the straw matting in the empty conservatory. She looked at us with a wicked, conceited expression as if all her appetites had just been satisfied. She was beautiful. Vesta and I both said, "I wish I were a cat!" Before we got to the last word we smiled at each other in annoyance, not liking the idea that most human beings think very much alike.”

“the [coat] rack above his head like a javelin.On the other side of the door was Jace. He blinked. "Is that a coatrack?"Jordan slammed the coatrack down on the ground and sighed. "If you'd been a vampire, this would have been a lot more useful.""Yes," said Jace. "Or, you know, just someone with a lot of coats.”

“His matted hair was a bit longer than it should have been, his leather trench coat way too worn and soft under my fingertips. There was no incandescent light, just this flawed, wonderful being.”

“As for the young man carrying the groceries, he was a thin, fair-skinned young man, and I would have said that he had been born in the house. He had the vacant, dog-like expressions that house-born slaves, as I remembered, liked to put on when they were in public with their masters and performing some simple task. This fellow was pretending that the Waitrose groceries were a great burden, but this was just an act, to draw attention to himself and the lady he served. He, too, had mistaken me for an Arab, and when we crossed he had dropped the burdened-down expression and given me a look of wistful inquisitiveness, like a puppy that wanted to play but had just been made to understand that it wasn't playtime.”

“He should have said something, why hadn't he? Costis wondered. In fact, the king had. He had complained at every step all the way across the palace, and they'd ignored it. If he'd been stoic and denied the pain, the entire palace would have been in a panic already, Eddisian soldiers on the move. He'd meant to deceive them, and he'd succeeded. It made Costis wonder for the first time just how much the stoic man really wants to hide when he unsuccessfully pretends not to be in pain.”