#elayne kevarian is a badass

[adragoninspace]

I'm rereading THREE PARTS DEAD and Elayne Kevarian makes me think of Kathryn Janeway so much.

[abronzeagegod]

There was no one in the room to see the momentary slouch of Elayne's shoulders, the bow of her head. No one saw her set the scroll down and lean against the desk. Of the four million souls in the artificially brilliant city beyond her window, not one saw her bend. Nor did they see her head rise and starlight blood from her eyes and from the numberless, fractally dense glyphs upon her flesh, shining through her body and garments as if they were fog. The room darkened, and smoke rose from the parchment where she touched it. Her wrath broke, and she shrank within her skin and was nearly human again.

Three Parts Dead, Max Gladstone; Elayne Kevarian is not happy to hear from Alexander Denovo

[abronzeagegod]

Elayne burned in the city’s stead. Fire crowned the Skittersill and would have eaten it but for the Aberforth and Duncan deal; Purcell’s firm, meanwhile, tried to pull free of its obligations, and would have succeeded but for Elayne. She bridged the fire and the firm, and the two met in battle, on her and through her. She was too far gone to scream. Fire could not consume wood and brick and stone, so it torched instead through her mind. The iron-wrought cages where she locked her memories melted. Images long discarded, moments of weakness and pain chained in dim corners, broke free, and she: was a twelve-year-old girl hiding face down in cave mud, breathing moss and much as a mob poured past the cavern mouth, torches n their hands and whiskey on their breath. She tasted fear and bile and ice-cold anger. Run, she had to run, but could not - and wouldn’t it be better to crawl into the dark and remain, and grow twisted more by shadows? was fourteen and killing for the first time, with a simple steel knife in those days of sorcery, entering a man’s ribs again and again and again, the shock of his body’s weight through the steel as he bore her down. was the snow that fell on Desedeil Lex for the first and last time, and left smoking holes in stone. Gods died in the sky, pierced by thorns of light, as Crafsmen clad in war engines marched through the city’s wreckage. Stench of motor oil and blood, saltpeter and ozone, brick dust and sand. Life’s million colors faded black and white from soul-loss as she staggered from her war machine down an alley, fatigues bloodsoaked, her eyes shining and her body wet, toward where Temoc lay impaled. was a body in a dim-lit room n Alt Coulumb, given away from herself, robbed even of the right of rage. City lights outside the window, sharp as instruments of torture, while in her soul’s depths delicate mad hands gripped the roots of love and pulled, and pulled, and pulled, and willed them to come loose. was a hundred moments of pain and defeat, anger and sorrow, innocence lost, and none mattered, because from each she had emerged stronger than before, welding out of horrors new truth, new determination. To be what? Professional? Successful? She was both, she’d been both, and here she stood, saving a city’s bones even as its people died. She had grown strong. But what world would had she built with her strength? A world where she saved what could be saved and left the rest to rot?

Last First Snow, Max Gladstone

[abronzeagegod]

"Before you try to kill me," Elayne said, with slight emphasis on try, because it always helped to plant seeds of doubt in a potential adversary, "you should know I'm here to help."

Last First Snow, Max Gladstone

[abronzeagegod]

When I was a young woman, I thought myself an actor, someone who moved the world. And I was. But the older I grow, the more I feel like everything I thought I willed, I willed because of forces beyond my control. The closer I stand to the center of history’s river, the more I’m swept in the current. In my youth, I broke gods, and my power has grown since. But power is time’s tool, not mine.

Last First Snow, Max Gladstone