A Desolation Called Peace (Teixcalaan, #2)

by Arkady Martine

It bothered Eight Antidote,

that Eleven Laurel,

spent an afternoon once a week entertaining an eleven-year-old kid

the Ministry of War was a tactician’s garden,

they were watching him all the time.

Fleet Captain Nine Hibiscus of the Tenth

“Nobody fired at all.”

the Fleet Captain, Nine Hibiscus. She’s got this reputation—her soldiers would do anything for her.

Who makes that call, Cure, to send our people to lie for us?”

Palace-East

the Third Palm is what’s left of the military part of Information.”

Minister Three Azimuth—ah, no, it was still Minister Nine Propulsion then,

She didn’t get permission, she just decided, and none of her people asked a single question about it.”

Mahit

imagoless and longing,

her egg-shaped residence pod and staring at the comforting off-white curve of the ceiling

Details make the scene real.

Haha

she wasn’t one integrated person but a suspect, secret, virulent merge of three.

you were spilling trauma reaction all over my endocrine system,

He took over their body entirely so rarely. Only when he needed to.

expectations for what would happen after a person received a live memory and a line of experience to be part of.

Dekakel Onchu

Awake was close to frightened, and exhilarating.

Twelve Azalea

a scream that had taste—a foul, oilslick, tongue-coating taste

Synesthesia wasn’t in Nine Hibiscus’s usual suite of neurological

even if this wasn’t language, it was responsive to what Knifepoint had done.

“Or they could be machines communicating.”

Modem to modem

Fourteen Spike—

Haha

Third Palmers—political officers, in common parlance, the Ministry of War’s intelligence branch—

highest level of nonofficer specialist soldier.

Fourteen Spike was for barbarians. Not aliens.

Not something that not only wasn’t civilized but wasn’t even human.

the Tenth Legion trusted her, would die for her like she’d die for them: that was a captain’s bargain.

working on fractured ground, without the comfort of the Minister of War to contact as a last resort—

Haha

This is dross, Captain. It’s precious, but it’s not a memory.

the Third Undersecretary to the Minister of Information,

Three Seagrass

Three months ago Three Seagrass never would have seen it.

clinical-grade insomnia

Haha

Simile extended

The Third Undersecretary—well, any Undersecretary of the six of them, really—had discretionary authority over assigning Ministry personnel on priority nineteen requests,

those same incomprehensible aliens that Mahit Dzmare had used to defuse a civil war while Three Seagrass watched,

Haha - she writes to herself an official assignment.

Patrician First-Class Three Seagrass, asekreta,

Haha

Eleven Lathe, her poetic model,

Twelve Azalea’s