'For the grace and warmth from above, for the bounty of the earth below, for all the grace of the world and beyond, for your justice, and for your manifold and great mercies, we offer our thanks and gratitude, both now and evermore, in the spirit of that which cannot be named or imaged.' A time and a place for everything, and everything in its time and place.' Father cleared his throat, then set his near-empty goblet on the table and placed his hands on the back of the armed chair that was his. Rousel grinned at me, then cleared his face. I slipped behind my chair, on Father's right. Mother was standing behind the chair at the other end of the oval table. Rousel had never liked my reading to him, but then, he'd never much cared for anything I did.īy the time I reached the dining chamber, Father was walking through the archway from the parlor where he always had a single goblet of red wine-usually Dhuensa-before dinner. She liked it when I read to her, even things like my history assignments about people like Rex Regis or Rex Defou. As for Khethila, she was almost old enough, but she was quiet and thoughtful. With some fortune, since Father would really have preferred that I follow him as a factor but had acknowledged that I had little interest, I'd be out of the house before Culthyn was old enough to leave the nursery and eat with us. Younger brothers were worse than vermin, because one could squash vermin and then bathe, something one could not do with younger brothers. Two weeks ago, Rousel couldn't even have pronounced 'pedant,' but he'd heard Master Sesiphus use it, and now he applied it to me as often as he could. Stop being such a pedant, Rhenn.' The heels of his shoes clattered on the back stairs leading down to the pantry off the dining chamber. ' 'Starved' means great physical deprivation and lack of nourishment.

You're merely hungry,' I pointed out, carefully placing a paperweight over the work on my table desk. Rousel leapt up from his table desk in the sitting room that adjoined our bedchambers, disarraying the stack of papers that represented a composition doubtless due in the morning. The bell announcing dinner rang twice, just twice, and no more, for it never did.

Commerce weighs value, yet such weight is but an image, and, as such, is an illusion.

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