A Desolation Called Peace (Teixcalaan, #2)

by Arkady Martine

Yskandr

If he lives, he won’t even be human. He’ll be part of something else.>

“Swarm. Your religion doesn’t require you to balance the entire starfucked universe all by yourself.”

“Stationers are chains,” Mahit said, “lines, not—he’s describing a fractal web of minds,

listening to the yaotlek and her adjutant argue about whether he should functionally join the enemy forces, biochemically, mentally, entirely, in hopes of being able to stop a war.

Simile

Eight Antidote

whoever is carrying a courier message from Three Azimuth, stop, please, wait.

I need to stop that message. It’s wrong. It’s false.

And he tried, as hard as he could, not to think, But you’re dying, and it’s horrible, and what if Three Azimuth and Nineteen Adze were right, and that genocide order is the only way to stop it?

Nine Hibiscus

Mahit

be prepared to die, or to solve the problem, exactly as he had in the medbay of Weight for the Wheel.

Yskandr

the still-present shape of that alien ship that had brought the negotiators down to Peloa-2.

Darj Tarats

Let me,> Yskandr said—

They were closer together now. The trick of slipping in and out of Yskandr Aghavn or Mahit Dzmare wouldn’t work, eventually. They’d be past it.

Didn’t want, herself, to be careful. Only to win.

Mahit—her, not Yskandr,

fascination—lifted her burning, insensible hand to slap him across the face.

Haha yay!

He died again,

It hurt. It hurt every time.

It wasn’t words, exactly. It was feeling.

coming back to him: a singular voice, a person,

Tarats’s

Mahit

Three Seagrass—

amazed and horrified and utterly delighted, all at once,

Haha

Haha

Haha

Two Foam—

Twenty Cicada

Nine Hibiscus

the space-kissed bronze of her cheeks.

“Shard Pilot Fifteen Calcite,

The degree of loyalty Nine Hibiscus commanded was intense. Radiant.

it’s not like Shard-sight was when you were a Shard pilot, it’s the new programming, the collective proprioception—

the Shard trick—I mean, the proprioception upgrade.”

Three Seagrass

it’s based off the algorithm for the Sunlit—”

War and Science again, working together and not letting Information in on the game—

just like it had been during the near-insurrection two months ago.

Mahit

Councilor Tarats,

Obvious, really.

Haha

Haha

do you really think I am the first to trade our technology for our continued existence?

Teixcalaan doesn’t let us stay clean.