yarrr, ye scurvy boy-king, halt ye whinin'

He awoke under his own reflection, with the sound of low, uneasy, talk going on about him. The hurt in his head was greater than it had ever been; worse than when Richard had reached the end of his decent forbearance; worse even than it had been at Volos, when he had been heavily addicted to opium for months, and the lack of it had driven him nearly out of his mind.

He had survived that. He would survive this. He closed his eyes for a moment, feeling the lids rest in the two drained excavations which were all that seemed left of his face. Then he opened them, and, holding them open, let them travel over the mirror above him.

Himself, stripped of his coat, lying prostrate-limp, bloody Lamuel in the lamplight on a rough trestle table in the centre of a small crowded room, which held somewhere a vague smell of sulphur and horseradish.

And faces all round him: some clear-cut and sharp in the same light; some obscured; some lost in the shadows. Seven faces. One of them, seeing the movement of his lashes, looked up and watched the glass as well.

It was Philippa. Francis Crawford closed his eyes and ridiculously, for a man who had struck to kill without hesitation that evening, said to himself, Pray God, let me not weep.

from The Ringed Castle by Dorothy Dunnett