A Desolation Called Peace
Arkady Martine
Top 10 Best Quotes
“She’s a barbarian, but don’t hold it against her. She’s brilliant.”
“But the habits of memory created all kinds of false harbors.”
“She had begun petting the Kauraanian kitten, and it purred like it wanted to be a starship engine when it grew up.”
“and—bleeding starshine, if she pulled this off she was going to write her very own epic poem about herself,”
“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.”
“Wait for the real problem, Your Excellency. Don’t borrow trouble that doesn’t come to you on its own.”
“It is the minds of a people that have to stay free. Bodies die, or suffer, or are imprisoned. Memory lasts.”
“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.”
“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 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.”
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Book Keywords:
starship, teixcalaan, cats, science-fiction
