A Desolation Called Peace

She’s a barbarian, but don’t hold it against her. She’s brilliant.

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

But the habits of memory created all kinds of false harbors.

The adjutant, Twenty Cicada, made an entirely remarkable noise, like he’d drowned a laugh and swallowed its corpse.

She had begun petting the Kauraanian kitten, and it purred like it wanted to be a starship engine when it grew up.

And the continuity of endocrine response worked for everyone, Stationer or Teixcalaanlitzlim or something else: endocrine response said, in that brutal language of the flesh, This person has had their hands inside you, and you welcomed them in. Let’s do it again. Here are nice chemicals to help.

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

I am very small,” Three Seagrass said, delightedly. “I squish. Put me in between the boxes of hearts, I’ll do just fine.

We-when-we-are-Teixcalaan are known without singing...We-when-we-are-Teixcalaan are known with language only, and still clearly...Language is not so transparent... language is not so transparent, but we are sometimes known, even so. If we are lucky.

I thought you hated them,” Nine Hibiscus said, dryly. “Was all of that complaining about ecosystem disruption for show, then?” Twenty Cicada looked up at her, and dismissed most of his work holos with the hand that wasn’t petting the small void on his knee. “I do hate them,” he said, smiling. “But this one likes me, and what am I going to do with the things, space them? It’s not their fault they exist.” She came to sit next to him, knee to knee. There always seemed to be more oxygen in one of Twenty Cicada’s garden rooms. (Not seemed: there was. Plant respiration. She’d checked the readouts once. It was a fractional difference, but real.) The Kauraanian pet lifted its head and opened yellow eyes. It made a noise like a badly tuned stringed instrument, stood, paced in a tight circle on Twenty Cicada’s lap, and settled down again. “I didn’t think you’d space them, Swarm,” she said. “But this is cuddling.” “It yowls if I don’t,” Twenty Cicada said, perfectly bland, and Nine Hibiscus laughed.

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

How good is Information at raising the dead?” “It isn’t my specialty,” Three Seagrass said. “The yaotlek is expecting all of us in the medical bay morgue,” Twenty Cicada confirmed, ignoring all insinuations of necromantic powers.

and—bleeding starshine, if she pulled this off she was going to write her very own epic poem about herself,

Having whole hours to contemplate her degree of fuckedness was a luxury.

The motion of a swift is an impenetrable language; as incomprehensible to me as the thoughts of a flower when it opens its petals at dawn, without memory or mind. A coherent logic and a dance, but not one I can shape within myself. All my attempts are approximation. One cannot render meaning in language one finds meaningless; nevertheless I know there is a design, a speaking, a world just on the other side of shadow, untouchable but nonetheless real. Three years since I came home from Ebrekt, and I still dream of the swifts, running: in dreams, sometimes I understand them.

But there was absolutely nothing sexy about a decontamination shower. This moment was, in fact, the least attractive Three Seagrass had ever felt while being naked and near someone she’d had sex with.)

ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false titles—this they name empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace. —Tacitus (quoting Calgacus), Agricola 30

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

This person has had their hands inside you, and you welcomed them in. Let’s do it again. Here are nice chemicals to help.

On the flagship Weight of the Wheel: “You’d have to ask medical,” said Two Foam. “Someone ask medical,” said Mahit. “I can’t talk to anyone. I’m not a citizen.” And she smiled, terrifying and far too beautiful with all those teeth exposed, gesturing to her entire lack of cloudhook.

Mahit couldn't decide if she was horrified, proud, or simply, deliciously, hideously intrigued.

There wasn’t an iota of Information Ministry training that covered tripartite negotiations from the bridge of a Fleet flagship, where one of the negotiating parties wasn’t even human and one of the others wasn’t Teixcalaanli, and none of the parties were Information agents except the negotiator. She should write a procedure manual. If she lived long enough to be that bored.

She didn't know what to do, and Yskandr didn't know what to do, and Three Seagrass was going to keep hurting her like she had yesterday, keep thinking of her as 'my clever barbarian' and not as Mahit Dzmare, no matter how many times they kissed, and there was no such thing as safety and no such thing as going home.

She'd meant, 'When you understand that when the Empire commands, I can't say no.' She'd meant, 'When you understand that there's no room for me to mean yes, even if I want to.' She'd meant, 'You don't understand that there's no such thing as being free.' Free to choose, or free otherwise.

We’re both exiles, she’d thought, right then, and had hated herself for thinking it. She’d been gone a few months. She had no right to the name. She was home. She wasn’t, and she knew it. (There was no such place any longer.)

Of course. Giving out information—well, that’s what we’re for, here in Information.

Eight Antidote had never had any restrictions on his media accesses. He’d watched a lot of people have sex on holoproj. It seemed messy and also made people do stupid things afterward.

Don't borrow trouble that doesn't come to you on its own.

exile happened in the heart and the mind long before it happened to the body