A Desolation Called Peace (Teixcalaan, #2)

by Arkady Martine

“I’m not ordering an attack, Undersecretary. I’m ordering a heart-strike. Wipe that one colony off the skin of the universe and see what sort of negotiations we get to have after they know what we can do.”

Teixcalaan didn’t do that kind of thing, anymore. It was too

the atrocities Teixcalaan had smartly given up committing.

negotiation is not going to be what you’ll get after you order the Fleet to bomb a populated planetary settlement into radioactive winter.

negotiation’s never been what you’ve liked, has it? Not on Nakhar. You prefer efficacy, Minister.”

Minister of War was talking about killing a whole planetary system, and Eleven Laurel was agreeing.

if this was what being in the Fleet was really like, he was sorry for wanting it.

S...

S...

S...

the proprioception link,

let us not give Her Illuminate Majesty any reasons to send Information or Science in here to take over our decision-making.”

“I understand why Nine Hibiscus prefers Information to you Third Palmers.

My best student is willing to die in executing this plan, if it means we get what we need—”

“Sixteen Moonrise?”

the ya...

how many bodies would be on that planet, even if they were all one mind

He was going to tell someone his idea. He was. But he was going to tell the Emperor Nineteen Adze,

Fleet Captain Forty Oxide

Nine Hibiscus

M...

Two Foam

Three Seagrass,

“Before you answer, yaotlek, find out if any of the other legions in your six are under similar attack or have changed position. I suspect this is not an isolated incident.”

the Twenty-Fourth Legion—Sixteen Moonrise’s legion—had begun a slow, inexorable approach toward the aliens’ planetary system.

Cause and effect, as plain as sunlight.

“They understand retaliation just fine,”

<Not a smile,> Yskandr told her. <A threat. A displeasure. A very Teixcalaanli expression, even if it looks like how we’d smile if we wanted someone to know we were going to enjoy hurting them.

she had watched Mahit turn the performance of barbarism directly against the Minister of Science Ten Pearl, at the very first event they’d ever been to together.

It may be something else we cannot even imagine—our enemy is otherwise than any alien species I know of.”

Chatoyant Sirocco

Quickly, Mahit said, “Ask the Emperor.

Eight Antidote

because he was the imperial heir Eight Antidote, and his cloudhook was the second-strongest key in all of Teixcalaan.

he wanted someone to stop him. That would mean it wasn’t his responsibility anymore.

Cf. Nine Hibiscus and her shrapnel of responsibility, p. 325 ch. 13.

That would mean someone else, someone grown up entirely, would be the one in charge of doing this. Of stopping a—a planetary genocide.

Except: the grown-ups were in charge, and so far they weren’t stop...

Haha

“They’re people. Not humans, but people,

they probably are people, but not the kind of people we can understand—

“Sometimes it is better to cauterize,”

Nine Hibiscus

Yskandr was a shiver-quiet hum of pain in her wrists,

Haha

Time for Twenty Cicada to keep talking.

Question

The idea that there might be something other than Teixcalaan, when one said the word for world.)

a sudden, imago-doubled flood of relief—

Eight Antidote

How did he tell the Emperor Herself that she was wrong?

“It’s a planetary genocide,”