A Desolation Called Peace (Teixcalaan, #2)

by Arkady Martine

don’t trust anyone who makes you feel good without knowing why they want you to feel that way.

Deliberately, she thought in Stationer, We’re not free. And in the same language, Yskandr agreed: <There’s no such fucking thing.>

It is the minds of a people that have to stay free. Bodies die, or suffer, or are imprisoned. Memory lasts.

And am I made to die? / To lay this body down / to let my trembling mem’ry fly / into a mind unknown?

“We haven’t died yet,” she said. “Despite the best efforts of a great many people.”

<Eventually,> Yskandr murmured, whisper-thin, <we fall. It doesn’t hurt, really. The falling.> Only the sudden stop at the end?

Honesty was awful, and it was an intense, full-body relief at the same time—a tension released.