A Desolation Called Peace (Teixcalaan, #2)

by Arkady Martine

A week wasn’t enough to know someone. But that week seemed longer. Fulcrum points usually did.

Yskandr had a blitheness to him, an inexorability, which she thought he’d learned from Nineteen Adze: not her own headlong momentum but a calculating belief in his inevitable success.

Loyalty wasn’t transitive. It didn’t move up and down the chain of command smoothly. It could get cut off, or rerouted.

Three Seagrass felt a sharp pang of recognition: this person knew exactly how to take control of a conversation, combine surprise and confusion and generosity to engender rapid trust.

Wait for the real problem, Your Excellency. Don’t borrow trouble that doesn’t come to you on its own.”