Trickster’s Choice by Tamora Pierce

Trickster’s Choice
Your mother is the King’s Champion; your father is second in command of the realm’s spies.
Your godfathers are the King and one of his advisers.
Your godmothers are the Queen and her governess.
Your adoptive uncle is the realm’s most powerful mage who is married to your adoptive aunt who is also a mage as [...]

Friday, March 7th, 2008
All I know is what the words know, and dead things, and that
makes a handsome little sum, with a beginning and a middle and
an end, as in the well-built phrase and the long sonata of the dead.
                -- Samuel Beckett