House of Chains (Malazan Book of the Fallen, #4)

by Steven Erikson

‘Death is not an unkind fate,’ Darist said above him. ‘If she was a friend, you will miss her company, and that is the true source of your grief—your sorrow is for yourself. My words may displease you, but I speak from experience. I have felt the deaths of many of my kin, and I mourn the spaces in my life where they once stood. But such losses serve only to ease my own impending demise.’

What matter the colour of the collar around a man’s neck, if the chains linked to them were identical?

The heart is neither given nor stolen. The heart surrenders.’