R. F. Kuang

“You would make a terrible prostitute. No charm.”

“You’re a war orphan. You’re a southerner. You weren’t supposed to pass the Keju. The Warlords like to claim that the Keju makes Nikan a meritocracy, but the system is designed to keep the poor and illiterate in their place. You’re offending them with your very presence.”

Combat, Strategy, History, Weaponry, Linguistics, and Medicine

“Consider me bullied and intimidated, just let me sleep.”

“Sometimes I think this is as bad as the Speer Massacre,” Kitay said cheerfully. “And then I think—nah. Nothing is as bad as the casual genocide of an entire race! But this is pretty bad.”

“Suni’s mom fucked a monkey,” Ramsa said happily.

felt the chimei’s breath hot on her neck. It scratched at her face, pulled at her lips and nostrils the way a child might.
“Play with me,” it insisted in Kesegi’s voice. “Why won’t you play with me?”

She heard a bird’s laughter. She heard a god’s amused sigh.
You children, murmured the Phoenix. You absurd, ridiculous children. My children.

Back in Tikany, Rin had once fallen out of a tree and hit her head so hard against the ground that she lost her hearing temporarily. She’d seen Kesegi shouting at her, gesturing at his throat, but nothing had come through. It was the same here. Something was missing. She had been denied access to something.

Jima hadn’t taught them to curse in Mugini, but Shiro caught the gist.