fei yan zo bi、ren zhe wu di (page 18)
flying on roof walking on walls、ninjas have no worthy enemies
“When Galileo Galilei of Pisa last visited me in these chambers and drank my Elbe-vinted sekt, he pronounced ‘Wine is sunlight dissolved in water’.”
August the Cold poured Cinderella of the Bohemian Forest a full glass of his Saxon wine, and raised it to her pretty face. Sunlight refracted in the pale golden liquid, and her radiant beauty was not lost on him. Now she was smiling at him with all the charm and artless innocence that had beguiled a ballroom at midnight.
“It is not surprising that the famous astronomen is a visitor here. Surely you have all the knowledge-crafters of all the world paying you homage and thronging to gather in your salon.”
“Not all the world. There are knowledge-crafters, especially atom-crafters and alchemists in Cathay, Yapon, and Goryeo who do not come, who cannot come, who will not come.”
“Nor do you need them to come,” smiled Cinderella even more dazzlingly, “not when Marie and Pierre Curie do come to you to extract polonium and radium from your uranium.”
Cinderella had a hand lightly on his arm, casually not far from where his royal seal hung from a roped cord. Even lighter were the bubbles from the Schloß Wackerbarth sparkling wine they were raising to their lips. And lighter still was the laughter and sense of invincibility in the air, between the pair.
Until it was cut like by a dagger by the sound of running footsteps on the roof and perpendicularly along the walls.