A Desolation Called Peace (Teixcalaan, #2)

by Arkady Martine

Your Brilliance, you have left me with all the world, and yet I am bereft; I’d take your star-cursed possessing ghost, Six Direction, if only he would teach me how not to sleep.

A disturbing flicker of thought: neglecting the dishes all week was standard-overworked-Information-agent, neglecting the dishes before a three-month trip to a war zone was the sort of tell that a good interrogator would notice.

“I am very small,” Three Seagrass said, delightedly. “I squish. Put me in between the boxes of hearts, I’ll do just fine.” There was a moment where the captain seemed to be attempting to marshal an appropriate response, and then he visibly gave up.

“Your promise is enough. Do be careful out there on the front lines, Three Seagrass. Her Brilliance thinks well of you, and it’s frustrating for the rest of us when she loses someone she likes.”

“I’m too young,” he said. “In all likelihood that will change,” said Nineteen Adze, which she seemed to think was funny and Eight Antidote wasn’t very sure about.

Alive to the possibility of disaster. She was beginning to think this was the most comfortable state for her to function in, and wasn’t that just delightful.

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

Before she could stop herself, Three Seagrass said, “Would that have been so awful? You staying with me.”

Hush. If you’re going to die, you’ll die because this thing ripped out your organs, and not for any other reason.

She wondered if she could get away with shooting Sixteen Moonrise, just by accident. Probably not. Not until she had an excuse.

All of his certainty that he’d loved her, and that it didn’t matter in the end, and he’d loved her even so.

Have we ever loved someone like that, she thought. Not quite a question. Enough to want to kill a planet in revenge for them.

Nine Hibiscus said, “Swarm. Your religion doesn’t require you to balance the entire starfucked universe all by yourself.” “Who else would try?”

I remember what I am. What you helped make him, and what he has made me.