A Memory Called Empire (Teixcalaan #1)

by Arkady Martine

THE problem with sending messages was that people responded to them, which meant one had to write more messages in reply.

The histories, Ambassador, are both exciting and all too accurate.”

“You’ve spent the night with the most dangerous woman at court and you’re wearing her clothes.”

“Is there anything else?” he asked. I need to escape this very pleasant and very life-threatening prison of an office complex before dawn, in order to receive an illegal machine looted from the corpse of my predecessor. Can you help me with that? “No, thank you,” Mahit said.

If I was a more judicious sort of man, Ambassador, I would not only call the Sunlit but imply that you’d blackmailed me into committing . . . oh, there’s got to be a crime for stealing from the dead. Is there a crime for that, Reed?” “Plagiarism,” said Three Seagrass, “but it’d be a stretch in the courts.”