Tigana

by Guy Gavriel Kay

Memory was talisman and ward for him, gateway and hearth. It was pride and love, shelter from loss: for if something could be remembered it was not wholly lost.

One did not, Arduini had said, in a much-quoted display of artistic temperament, build up and maintain an establishment of quality by using enforced, surly labor.

“Is this what happens to us?” Devin said then, quietly, reaching for words to frame this new, hard thought. “When we are no longer free. Is this what happens to our love?”