#the engineer trilogy

[thirty-five-owls]

Basically the engineer trilogy.

[thirty-five-owls]

Resisting the urge to scurry along the corridors of my dungeon, pull up a chair next to the human I’ve just abducted, and explain to them why I chose each song to put in this kj Parker playlist.

[quoththegryphon]

He remembered a story he'd heard when he was a boy, about a tiny doorway in a mountain that led into another world; vast plains and mountains under unlimited skies, all contained inside a little door. Closed, the book was just a flat brown thing; you could put a couple of reports on top of it and bury it completely, so you wouldn't know it was there. Open, it led to something monstrous and huge; reading it, he thought, would be an undertaking on par with invading a large and hostile country, and once you ventured inside, there was more than a chance you'd never get out again.

The Escapement, by K.J. Parker

[brushesandbourbon]

"The man you thought you loved never really existed. I wrote him, like a character in a book; I made him up when I wrote you those letters. It was so hard, it took me a whole day to write one. I guess I always knew you'd never love the man I really am. He'd never have ridden to Civitas Eremiae, and screwed up everything for his people, just to save one woman. I had to invent him, too; just like I invented my father's perfect son, who never really existed. There was a real Valens Valentinianus once; he was a stroppy boy who hated hunting and fencing and hated his father, and loved a girl he saw once. When my father died he had to go, because there was a country to be governed; and I suppose I must've thought, if I can't be me, I might as well be someone perfect--the good duke, the world's best huntsman, the ideal of pure courtly love; and after that, the great leader in adversity, and then the avenger, though I was never really comfortable with him.

The strange thing is, I've been the imaginary man so long, I don't know how to be anything else. And, as you say, Daurenja killed him, just because he was better at swordfighting. It's a hell of a thing, for your entire conception of good and evil to depend on the outcome of a fencing match. If I won, my ideas of right and wrong are vindicated. If I lose, I must've been wrong all along. And I lost. ... So what are you planning to do now?"

"Nothing," she said, as she sat down and picked up her embroidery, " nothing of any importance. What I've been doing my whole life."