Motif · Book 5, The Butcher's Masquerade

Mothers

The book's undertow: Tina who wants her mother back and has had her the whole time; Circe who, D'Nadia says, sold half of all she owned to reach her daughter and dies under her own newborn children; Signet's mother in ink on her wrist; Prudence dead over her cubs; Miriam's piano, in Prepotente's last words to a wall; Katia's Annie in the crib and Fannar's 'Do you really think you could be a mother?'; Carl's, at the Grand Canyon.

Segment appearances

• Chapter 4 — Golden Throat
• Chapter 8 — The Night Wyrm's web
• Chapter 10 — No dinosaurs of any kind
• Chapter 11 — The Recital
• Chapter 28 — Premature Questjaculation
• Chapter 36 — Swole
• Chapter 43 — The Midnight Epicure
• Chapter 49 — Kiwi
• Chapter 56 — Zerzura
• Chapter 71 — Jill
• Chapter 73 — Wonderwall, again
• Chapter 75 — Sic 'em
• Chapter 76 — Cage Fight Extreme

Progression

Kiwi and Tina (ch. 44, ch. 73, ch. 75); Circe and her daughters (ch. 32, ch. 76); Signet's first tattoo, from the night her mother was killed (ch. 29), and that mother, Princess Lunette, an incomplete flesh golem (ch. 75); Prudence over two cubs (ch. 73); Miriam's piano (epilogue); Annie in the crib (epilogue); the Grand Canyon (ch. 12).