Ninefox Gambit (The Machineries of Empire, #1)

by Yoon Ha Lee

Cheris remembered long hours in Shuos Khiaz’s office hunched over lists of numbers. Her imagination wasn’t large enough to encompass the deaths, the cities unmade and the books smothered into platitudes, but that wasn’t any reason not to try.

“I’m Ajewen Cheris,” she said. She would call herself Kel no longer. “But I’m also Shuos Jedao. And apparently it’s not time for me to stop fighting.”

WOWWWW

A Lanterner’s life had worth the way a heptarchate soldier’s life had worth. A life was a life. It was a simple equation, but she hadn’t been a mathematician then, and Kel Command had failed to understand the notation.