A Desolation Called Peace (Teixcalaan, #2)

by Arkady Martine

To ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false titles—this they name empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace.

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

Some emperors are emperors of very narrow spaces, just enough to fill entirely with themselves,

Cost-benefit analysis was antithetical to sleeping.

We sent a poet where we ought to have sent a team of ixplanatl researchers.

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

Mahit felt as if she had broken the world, and hated herself for feeling that way—Three Seagrass, asekreta and patrician first-class, Third Undersecretary to the Minister for Information, special envoy to the Fleet … she wasn’t the world. Mahit had done fine without her on Lsel, had missed her only as much as she’d missed Teixcalaan, which was enormously and with aching frustration.

this person knew exactly how to take control of a conversation, combine surprise and confusion and generosity to engender rapid trust. How nice! Someone trained in basic interrogation!

Even in the Fleet. It isn’t reserved for spooks.” She had begun petting the Kauraanian kitten, and it purred like it wanted to be a starship engine when it grew up.

Exile isn’t something self-imposed.> He was wrong about that, Mahit thought, exile happened in the heart and the mind long before it happened to the body that moved in space, across borders—

and the authority it gave her. Instead she nodded. “If we go down there to fetch the envoy and our people back and there’s nothing but rent tapestry pieces and entrails, I will give you an absurd service bonus next time we’re on leave in the Western Arc and you can go buy a larger one, with more thread count.” “In such a situation, if we survive long enough to go on leave, yaotlek, I’d quite appreciate it.” “Your confidence is overwhelming.”

they had twenty words, and not a single one of them was much use to ask, Please hand over your war criminals who murdered our colonists, and also cease from contemplating attacking any of our systems closer to the heart of the Empire. In exchange, we will try really hard not to point our very large energy weapons at your spaceships.