Status Updates From The Silver Tide (The Copper...

She loved the shape of this small ship, the segmented curve of the sails. It carried twenty crates full of the dried petals of a certain orchid, the captain had told her, greatly prized in the southern lands as a means to make both perfume and poison. That is what this place is, thought Ephemeral. It is perfume, and it is poison. The scent of the orchids seeped up from the hold until everything was permeated with it.

“he leaned back out to look down on the face of the ghost. The figure was still looking back up at him, he could make out the smooth planes of his face, the darker furrow of his brow. Sebastian thought the figure looked worried, or confused. And then, as he watched, the ghost began to fade away, evaporating like marsh mist. In a handful of seconds, the street was dark once more.”

I knew she was going to rip my heart out in this book. I just thought I’d get at least 100 pgs in first. Alas, this doesn’t bode well for my feels in the next 500 pgs…

Now Frith stood on the doorstep, looking down across crowded roofs to the sea below. The rains of earlier had cleared swiftly, just as Wydrin had said they would, and now the night sky was a hectic explosion of stars.

The light coming through the slats lay across his brown skin like bands of gold, and Wydrin experienced the odd tightening of the chest she often felt when [they] were alone. There had been other men, of course, men with whom she had spent pleasant evenings and memorable afternoons, but being with [him] made her fingers itch for her daggers, filled her with an indefinable need to fight, to protect.

Wydrin rose early the next morning, a fat slice of sunshine cutting through the slats, laying a warm hand across her forehead. She expected to find Frith asleep next to her, in the deep death-like sleep of the horribly drunk and soon to be hungover,

‘Augusta said this place was riddled with ghosts,’ whispered Wydrin. ‘I can’t believe the old baggage was right for once.’
Sebastian opened his mouth to answer, and found he could not. The sight of the pale-blue figure had stilled him, thrown a hook in his heart and captured it. There was something about it that was deeply familiar and deeply alien at the same time.

“There were oil lamps wedged into the soft dirt every ten feet or so, and she could smell their thick scent, along with the wild odour of Euriale’s dirt. And another, stranger smell. That was the Spinner.”

“There were signs now that she was nearing home – skulls propped on sticks and wedged into tree hollows, their smooth foreheads painted black and white, banners of bird feathers and bear skins hanging from the trees.”

“The moon had painted the clouds with light, and they hung in the sky like ghostly courtiers paying homage to their queen.”