Tammy: Re: Zaimid: At the time I used Alexander Siddig, then on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and currently on Atlantis (he’s older now).
Tammy: Sarai’s cause, and you have sworn your life to it–your life is no longer yours to dispose of. It’s the same as being in the military. Your life is no longer your own; it belongs to your superior officers. Call it privilege, and perhaps it is, but it is the privilege of an officer of the greater cause to which Junai promised her body and her life, not that of the daughter of a noble house.
Tammy: No, [Topabaw]’s a thug and a punk who relies on fear. He’s lazy, relying on the terror built up by the generations of his predecessors to do his job for him. Aly got lucky with Topabaw. He’s the direct reference to the tactics of the Gestapo and the apartheid intelligence service, ruling with a club rather than his head.
Those who are training as knights aren’t in the palace–they don’t have the facilities to train there.
Tammy: And Topabaw does too have a spy among the Balitangs — he has Aly!
Words of Tamora Pierce 