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There was no comfort to be extracted from the dead,
Unconventional thinking was a danger to a well-tested hierarchical system.
There had once been a seventh ward for the seventh faction, the Liozh. The Fortress’s interior had been demolished and rebuilt to remove the seventh ward, at staggering expense, after the Liozh heresy was put down.
Yeah that'll never come up again. No worries there.
What Mikodez didn’t understand was why they hadn’t used one of the smaller fortresses instead.
Also def not important for later
his immortality relied on the high calendar in its present form, and the high calendar didn’t just include the numbers and measures of time, but the associated social system.
“Killjoy,” Kujen said. “You’re not going to fold on this one, are you?” Mikodez smiled at him. “You wanted more funding for research on that latest jamming system, didn’t you?” “It’s unlike you to resort to naked bribery,” Kujen said, “not that I’m complaining.”
Are they gonna kiss or what
Someday someone might come up with a better government, one in which brainwashing and the remembrances’ ritual torture weren’t an unremarkable fact of life.
Uh-oh
Capping each spoke was each faction’s emblem, the high factions opposed by their corresponding low factions: the Shuos ninefox with its waving tails, each with a lidless eye, and the Kel ashhawk in flames; the Andan kniferose and the Vidona stingray; the Rahal scrywolf and the Nirai voidmoth scattered with stars.
If you looked too long at the ceiling, which Cheris did once, you started to see stars, faintly at first, then closer and closer, faster and faster, the luminous smears of nebulae resolving into individual jewels of light, and even the velvety darkness admitted cracks behind which great gears groaned – but she stopped looking.
“I don’t think they can force-feed someone a ghost corpse,” Jedao said, “but to my knowledge it’s never been tried.
that won't come up again no way
However, consensus mechanics meant the high calendar’s exotic technologies would only work if everyone observed the remembrances and adhered to the social order that the Rahal had designed.
This sounds familiar
“Time happens to everyone,”
The problem with authority is that if you leave it lying around, others will take it away from you.
Jedao’s brief silence spoke volumes. “The point of war is to rig the deck, drug the opponent, and threaten to kneecap their family if they don’t fold,”
I’ve always found it charming how your high language associates “silence” and “community.” Where I come from, it’s “silence” and “death.”
In a just world she would feel sick, but instead it was as though she stood outside herself, in a world turned to iron and crystal and cryptic facets.
“All communication is manipulation,”
Sometimes the universe was determined to send creeping things after you no matter how far away you stayed from planets.
Do you think it makes any difference whether you’re killed by a knife in the back or a bullet?
“I wish I knew I was doing this right,” Cheris said, “but there’s nothing for it but to move forward.” “The only unforgivable sin in war is standing still,” Jedao said. “It’s better to be doing the wrong thing wholeheartedly than to freeze.” “You’ve lost soldiers.” It wasn’t what she had meant to say.
It was an eerie building, full of walls that sang your breath back to you as poetry, and light that coruscated like flowers. Beautiful, if you wanted to feel that beauty hid unhealthy secrets from you.
“You don’t sleep at all. What do you do in all that time? Count ravens?” Jedao was silent for so long that she thought something had happened to him. Then he said, “It’s dark in the black cradle, and it’s very quiet unless they’re running tests. Out here there are things to look at and I can remember what colors are and what voices sound like. Please, Cheris. Go sleep. You will never realize how valuable it is unless someone takes it away from you forever.”
“Are you lonely when I sleep?” He didn’t answer, but this time she left a small light on.
Dogs were much more pleasant to be around than grumpy fellow soldiers, even with all the slobber.
tru tho
The first recorded Kel formation was a suicide formation. She had learned that at academy sometime and forgotten it. Now she would never forget.
The universe ran on death. All the clockwork wonders in the world couldn’t halt entropy. You could work with death or you could let it happen; that was all.
“Have more confidence,” Weniat said. This had the opposite of the desired effect.
“I wasn’t crazy when I killed everyone at Hellspin Fortress,” Jedao said rapidly. “Nirai-zho has the answers, Nirai Kujen, the black cradle’s master, but don’t ever, ever trust him.”
If I stick my neck out under the same axe, will you believe my sincerity?”
She had to remind herself to see the blood.
The Kel had respected her. Now they feared her. Respect was a good lever, but fear was better. If she was going to make a bid for immortality, she needed a very good lever.
If she devoured the last of them, she could carry on the fight, but the person doing so might not be Kel Cheris. Had he meant to manipulate her into this choice? She didn’t think so, but this was Jedao.
She would have known him in the dark by his footsteps, or by the taste of his mouth, or the way he always broke left when he was startled.
this would take a lot to explain but this is actually a woman reliving a man's memory, so it's actually gay
There was a cold, pale fire in her heart. The hexarchs had no idea how badly they had fucked up.
Her every maneuver would be to the sandglass necessity of rebellion. The tide in her heart turned to the memory of amputations and evaporated soldiers, to deaths spent like counterfeit coins.
