Should-Read: Highly recommended:
Walter Jon Williams: Quillifer: "Sir Basil gaped at me, then laughed...
...“My advocate!” he scorned. “That is precisely what I need, another advocate! And further, one who reads his Mallio in the Rawlings translation, hah!”
He pointed a finger at me. “Look you—how would you translate the following: ‘Quatenus permittit aurum prodit lex’?”
I was a little surprised to find myself at school again, but rose to the challenge. “‘Laws goeth where gold pleaseth.’” Though there was no way to translate “prodit” in all its subtlety, with its hint of betrayal, and of keeping the subject on a short leash, and bound by strict Necessity.
“Ay, plain but serviceable enough,” Sir Basil judged. “Yet Rawlings has it, ‘Howsoever gold and laws goeth ever in company.’ He understands not even that prodit, which is plain as—” He made a fist. “As the corruption of the common law by the judiciary!”
“I have the Delward translation at home,” I said. “But I preferred not to risk it on the journey”...
