When power is gone the memory of power lingers. — Guy Gavriel Kay

In this world, where we find ourselves, we need compassion more than anything, I think, or we are all alone.

Devin had never trusted the priests of Eanna in his whole life. They were too shrewd, by far the most subtle of the clergy, by far the most apt to steer events to their own ends, which might lie out of sight, generations away. Servants of a goddess, he supposed, might find it easier to take the longer view of things. But everyone knew that all across the peninsula the clergy of the Triad had their own triple understanding with the Tyrants from abroad: their collective silence, their tacit complicity, bought in exchange for being allowed to preserve the rites that mattered more to them, it seemed, than freedom in the Palm.

Words were power, words tried to change you, to shape bridges of longing that no one could ever really cross.