As well as the Languageless and the SM, for self-mutilated, at first we called the incoming army the Deaf. Embassytown’s human deaf objected hard to that; they were right and we were ashamed. Then someone named the attackers according to an antique language. It meant that same word, deaf, but rendered the Surdae any insult seemed diluted; particularly because, fast bastardised or misunderstood, the term became the Surd and then misprisioned into the Absurd. Hosts, coming to kill us for sins we’d committed, if at all, without intent.
