Sailing to Sarantium (The Sarantine Mosaic, #1)

by Guy Gavriel Kay

Who are you, artisan, to step between a god and his sacrifice?”

Philosophy could be a consolation, an attempt to explain and understand the place of man in the gods’ creation. It couldn’t always succeed, though. There were times when comfort could only be found in a woman’s laughter, a friend’s known face and voice, shared rumors about the Antae court, even something so simple as a steaming bowl of pea soup at a table with others. Sometimes, when the shadows of the half-world pressed too near, one needed the world.

A lie. It didn’t end until you died. Life was an ambush, wounds waiting for you.

“I would sooner die clothed in porphyry in this palace,” the Empress Alixana said quietly, “than of old age in any place of exile on earth.”

You moved through time and things were left behind and yet stayed with you. The nature of how men lived.