To all appearances I held the lute casually, carelessly. But in my heart I was clutching it with a white-knuckled fierceness. I cannot hope for you to understand this. When the Chandrian killed my troupe, they destroyed every piece of family and home I had ever known. But in some ways it had been worse when my father’s lute was broken in Tarbean. It had been like losing a limb, an eye, a vital organ. Without my music, I had wandered Tarbean for years, half-alive, like a crippled veteran or one of the walking dead.
