The Sunlit arrived like planetrise over the Station: slowly and then all at once, a distant intimation of gold shimmering through the occlusion of the City’s confining walls, which crept closer and closer before resolving into a platoon of imperial soldiers in gleaming body armor, a vision out of every Teixcalaanli epic Mahit had ever loved as a child and every dystopian Stationer novel about the horrors of the encroaching Empire.
