The Friday 56 (With Book Beginnings): Sharps by K.J. Parker

Welcome to The Friday 56, a weekly meme hosted by Freda's Voice.

These are the rules:

1. Grab a book, any book.

2. Turn to page 56, or 56% on your eReader.

3. Find any sentence (or a few, just don't spoil it) that grabs you.

4. Post it.

5. Add the URL to your post in the link on Freda's most recent Friday 56 post.

I'm also taking part in Book Beginnings, a weekly meme hosted by Rose City Reader.  The rules are pretty simple - you share the first sentence or so and your initial thoughts, impressions, or whatever else it inspires.  Don't forget to link up your post's url with Rose City Reader.

This week I'm spotlighting my next read, Sharps by K.J. Parker.  I'm not familiar with this author, but I'm really looking forward to it because it sounds like it will an awesome fantasy novel featuring lots fencing!  I need more fencing in my life.  

Book Beginning:

Ever since she was a little girl, she'd had a recurring dream.  She was on top of the stupid pillar, looking down into a deep, still green pool, where the blurred outlines of huge fish drifted lazily just under the surface.  Then, quite suddenly, she was in the dried-up pool, looking up, as water poured out of a broad pipe twenty feet above.  In no time at all the pool was full - with water, with fish, with dead bodies drifting like the fish; a dead man floated past on his back, and she knew he was her husband.  But she neither sank nor drowned; the water lifted her, right up to the top of the pillar, where she'd come from.

56:

Eurid Aten was able to make a certain amount of play with the report in his speech to the Conclave of Lodges a week after the murder.  The dagger, he said, was, if honourable members would excuse the pun, a two-edged clue.