Arkady Martine made a huge splash with her debut , A Memory Called Empire , racking upHugoandNebulanominations as well as dozens of vital plaudit . Early next yr , she ’ll relinquish a continuation , A Desolation hollo Peace , but io9 has the cover and a juicy exclusive excerpt to share only today .
First up , here ’s a abbreviated summary , follow by the reveal of the full cover by artist Jaime Jones .
An alien armada lurks on the edge of Teixcalaanli space . No one can put across with it , no one can destroy it , and Fleet Captain Nine Hibiscus is running out of option .
See the full cover reveal below!Image: Jaime Jones (Tor)
In a do-or-die effort at statecraft with the cryptic invaders , the fleet captain has beam for a diplomatic envoy . Now Mahit Dzmare and Three Seagrass — still reeling from the late upheaval in the Empire — face the impossible task of trying to pass on with a hostile entity .
Whether they win or fail could deepen the fate of Teixcalaan forever .
Read on for the book ’s first several dozen opening page , including the prelude and first chapter .
“ First , reality was suspend . All falling out to Inca communications protocol occurred at once : the principle regularise personal impinging ( visual , oral , and bodied ) , drinking , and eating were broken . When Ciquinchara first satisfy the vanquisher he was allowed to do what no Native American could , and now the tables were change state . Since there was no signifying context to frame their interaction , the actors exposed themselves to limitless risk . Atahualpa could have been slaughtered or Soto and Hernando poisoned . . . . ”
— Gonzolo Lamana , in Beyond Exoticization and Likeness : Alterity and the Production of Sense in a Colonial Encounter
“ To ravage , to slaughter , to usurp under faux titles — this they name conglomerate ; and where they make a desert , they call it pacification . ”
— Tacitus ( quoting Calgacus ) , Agricola 30
PRELUDE
To consider — not language . To not think language . To think we , and not have a spit - sound or hollo for its crystalline depths . To have put away tongue - phone where they are unsuitable . To think as a mortal and not as a wantful vocalisation , not as a blank - eyed hungering beast , not as a child thinks , with only its own ego and the cries of its backtalk for company . To look outward from the two - ring or three - doughnut of one of our starflyers and see every pinpoint spark , every coalition - heart star . To see the form these stars make in our eyes reflecting the design of our eyes in the darkness on the old satellite . How our eyeshine glowed in the soil - home , the blood - home ! How we closed them and were invisible , dark - scavengers , hidden - hunter ! How our starflyers glow in the void - menage , the loose - home of us ! How we err sideways , like a closing center , and are invisible ! To conceive as a individual , with the singing fractal drove of we , and see these place that we have not yet scavenged , not yet torn receptive , chela as delicate as surgeon - scalpel , for their secrets !
Oh , the other hunger , the hunger of we that is nothing to do with the body . The hunger of we to attain out .
This torso or that body : flesh full of the factor for strength and savagery , flesh full of the genes for solitaire and pattern - spotting . This dead body a curious body , an observer body , coach well for celestial sailing and surveying , its claws lace up through with the filament of metallic element that allow it to talk not only to we but to any starflyer it touch on . This dead body a body that almost did not become we , almost became meat rather , but is we , and sings we , and is a body for nominate other bodies meat , for puddle also other bodies with itself : this consistency full of outfit and clever with its hands on the triggers of a starflyer ’s vigour cannons .
These body , singing in the we , singing together of the flesh of bodies who are not we , but have built starflyers and energy cannons . Bodies who are meat and can not sing ! Bodies who reckon voice communication , who yell with their sass and leak water from their eyes , who are clawless but vicious in their own hungriness to turn over out . Who have extend to so much of the nullity - home already , and dwell in it , and have occur so very close to the jumpgates behind which are all of our blood - homes , Modern and old .
These bodies sing : the clever sum dies like every other meat , like we do , but it does not remember what its dead meat know . So we have brought down our sibling - consistency onto one of their planets , not a blood - home but a dirt - dwelling , full of imagination to scavenge , and we have render them up for usage , the meat and the resources both .
To sing — hunger quenched . To sing — agreement . Except :
Another trunk furnish counterpoint , a discordant chord . This body a curious body , an observer body , a stubborn and patrolling body who has slip sideways in and out of vision in the same sphere of void for lo these many Hz and remain a singular trunk even so . This body sings in the we , sings of a few clever meat body that do commemorate what their dead meat know . But not all of them . Not all the same knowing . Not like the telling of the we .
To think of a we that fragments ! That does not flock , that remembers but could not take for the human body of a murmuration . We sing perturbation and we sing the hunger of reaching - out , to think of atomization ! We sing , too : What does this clever essence have that we do not ? What singing is their singing , that we can not learn ?
And we ship our starflyers whirling , whirling close . Close enough to savor .
CHAPTER ONE
. . . INTERDICT SUSPENDED — For a duration of four month , extensile by Council Holy Order , the interdict regarding Teixcalaanli military transport through Stationer space is suspended ; all ships bearing Teixcalaanli military callsign are allow to pass through the Anhamemat Gate — this break does not authorize Teixcalaanli ships , military or otherwise , to tail at Lsel Station without prior visas , approvals , and customs clearances — SUSPENSION AUTHORIZED BY THE COUNCILOR FOR THE MINERS ( DARJ TARATS)—message repeats . . .
— antecedence message deployed on diplomatical , commercial , and universal frequencies in the Bardzravand Sector , 52nd Day , 1st Year , in the 1st Indiction of the Emperor of All Teixcalaan Nineteen Adze
Your Brilliance , you have left me with all the world , and yet I am lovelorn ; I ’d take your star topology - cursed possessing trace , Six Direction , if only he would teach me how not to sleep .
— the private notes of Her Brilliance the Emperor Nineteen Adze , undated , locked , and cipher
Nine Hibiscus watched the cartograph oscillation through its last week of recorded exploitation for a third time , and then switch it off . Without its pinpoint stargleams and fleet - apparent motion spark inscribed in light , the scheme table on the bridgework of Weight for the Wheel was a compressed black expanse , dull matte , as impatient as its police chief for new information .
There was none approaching . Nine Hibiscus did n’t require to watch the cartograph again to remember how the displayed planet - points had blink first distress - red ink and then out - of - communication smuggled , vanishing like they were being swallow by a lunar time period . No matter how thick put the crinkle of incoming Teixcalaanli ships were record on that cartograph , none of them had advanced into the flood of vacuous secrecy . Beyond this point , Nine Hibiscus intend , not without a shimmering expectancy , we are quite afraid to see .
Her own weightiness for the Wheel was the second - close vas to the communicationless swath . She ’d sent only one ship far out than she ’d take her own people . That was the hybrid scout - gunner call Knifepoint ’s Ninth Blooming , a most - invisible sliver of a ship that slipped free of her flagship ’s open - mawed repair shed and into the silent black . Sending it might have been Nine Hibiscus ’s first mistake as Her Brilliance the Emperor Nineteen Adze ’s newest yaotlek — air force officer of fleet commander , with multiple Teixcalaanli legions under her control . An emperor made new yaotleks when that emperor wanted to make a war : the one begot the other . Nine Hibiscus had heard that older read the first prison term when she ’d been a cadet , and thought it herself approximately once a calendar week , absent confirmation of absolute observed accuracy .
Nineteen Adze , new - crown , had very badly want to make a warfare .
Now , at the very head of that war , Nine Hibiscus hoped send Knifepoint had n’t been a mistake after all . It ’d be useful to avoid unforced errors , considering how unexampled a yaotlek she was . ( It ’d be utile to avoid error at all , but Nine Hibiscus had been an officer of the Six Outreaching Palms — the Teixcalaanli imperial armed services , hands outstretched in every centering — long enough to know that errors , in warfare , were inevitable . ) So far Knifepoint was running as placid as the dead planet up ahead , and the cartograph had n’t updated in four hours .
So that ploy could be going any way at all .
She leaned her articulatio cubiti on the scheme table . There ’d be elbowprints later ; the sonant pillowing anatomy of her arms left its oil on the matte control surface , and she ’d have to get out a concealment - cleaner fabric to wipe them aside . But Nine Hibiscus liked to have-to doe with her ship , know it even when it was just waiting for orders . Feel , even this far from its engine core , the humming of the large machine for which she suffice as a brain . Or at least a ganglion cluster , a central point . A fleet headwaiter was a filter for all the info that came to the bridge , after all — and a yaotlek was more so , a yaotlek had farther reach , more hands to extend out in every possible direction . More ship .
Nine Hibiscus was going to need every one she had . The Emperor Herself might have wanted a war to turn off the teeth of her rulership on , but the warfare that she ’d post Nine Hibiscus out to gain ground was already horrifying : ugly , and mysterious . A poison tide lapping at the bound of Teixcalaan . It had begin with rumour , stories of aliens that struck , destroyed , vanished without warning or demands , leaving shattered ship pieces in the void if they left anything at all . But there were always horror stories of spooks in the black . Every Fleet soldier grew up on them , passed them down to new cadet . And these particular hearsay had all crept inward from the Empire ’s neighbors , from Verashk - Talay and Lsel Station , nowhere central , nowhere important — not until the old Emperor , evermore - sun - caught Six Direction , died . . . and in his dying declared that all the rumors were true .
After that the war was inevitable . It would have hap anyway , even before five Teixcalaanli settlement outpost on the other side of the jumpgate in Parzrawantlak Sector went as soundless and dull as stone , just where those horror account would have creep out from , if they were going to crawl out of the black spaces between the stars at all . It merely might have happened slower .
Her Brilliance Nineteen Adze had been Emperor for two months , and Nine Hibiscus had been yaotlek for this war for almost half that clip .
Around her the bridge was both too busy and too unruffled . Every station was occupied by its appropriate ship’s officer . Navigation , actuation , weaponry , comms : all arrayed around her and her strategy table like a solid , scale - up version of the holographical workspace she could call into being with her cloudhook , the glass - and - alloy sheathing on her proper eye that linked her — even here on the edge of the Teixcalaanli imperium — to the great data - and - story networks that held the conglomerate together . Every one of the bridge circuit ’s post was occupied , and every resident was trying to look as if they had something to do besides wait and wonder if the effect they had been sent to defeat would view them short and do — whatever it was that these alien were doing that snuffle out planetary communication systems like flames in vacuum . All of her bridge deck officers were nervous , and all of them were tired of being patient . They were the Fleet , the Six Outreaching Palms of Teixcalaan : conquest was their manner , not massed hold off on the edge of the inevitable , paused in distressful secretiveness at the very cutting edge of six horde worth of ship . closest to the risk , and yet still unmoving .
At least when Her Brilliance Nineteen Adze had made her yaotlek to prosecute this state of war , Nine Hibiscus thought , she ’d lease her keep her own ship as flagship . Each of these officers was a Teixcalaanlitzlim she ’d worked with , served with , commanded — each of them she ’d led to triumph at the rising at Kauraan System less than three months ago . They were hers . They ’d trust her a little longer . Just a piddling longer , until Knifepoint come back with some actionable information and she could let them loosen a snatch . savor a piffling line , a little rubble and fire bloom from the last of an alien ship . A fleet could last a long time , fed on those sip of sugar - water violence , as long as they believed their yaotlek knew what she was doing .
Or that ’d always been how Nine Hibiscus had feel , when she used to attend under Fleet Captain Nine Propulsion before Nine Propulsion had gone off to navigate a desk planetside in the City . She ’d come up all the way to Minister of War under the last , idle , lamented Saturnia pavonia , and Nine Hibiscus — who spell her name with the same number - glyph as Nine Propulsion used , and had n’t yet regretted that late - teenage mavin - eyed choice — had thought she ’d believably be Minister under the fresh one . Had expect that .
But instead , Nine Propulsion had guide retirement almost immediately upon Nineteen Adze ’s Ascension Day . She ’d left the City alone , gone home to her birth system — no hazard yet for one of her old subordinates to leave out by and ask her what for , and why now , and all the usual gossip . Instead , Nine Hibiscus , bereft of the comfort of mentorship ( she ’d been prosperous to have had it so long , if she was being honest with herself ) had woken up one transmutation with an pressing infofiche stick subject matter from the Emperor Herself — a committal .
If this warfare is winnable , I need you to win it . The Emperor ’s black cheekbone like knife , like the edges of the solar flare of the sunlight - spear throne she model on .
And now , call her back to herself in this present moment , a low voice to Nine Hibiscus ’s verbatim left : one that would n’t galvanise her at that space . ( The only one who could sneak up that close , irrespective . ) “ Nothing yet , then , sir ? ”
Twenty Cicada , her ikantlos - prime , highest - ranking of all the officers who served directly under the Fleet Captain and not in another administrative division . He was her adjutant and second - in - statement , which was one of the mode that rank could be used — she could n’t imagine having anyone else in the military position salve for him . He had his weapon folded neatly across the cadaverous thinness of his chest , one eyebrow an expressive arch . As always , his uniform was immaculate , consummate - Teixcalaanli . He was the very trope of a soldier in a propaganda holofilm : if you ignored the trim oral sex and how he seem like he had n’t wipe out in a calendar month . The curl edges of green - and - white - inked tattoos were just seeable at his carpus and throat when the uniform shifted as he moved or breathe .
“ Nothing , ” said Nine Hibiscus , brassy enough for the rest of the bridge to get word . “ Absolute quiet . Knifepoint ’s hightail it shut up , and at their usual focal ratio they ’re not proceed to be back for another shift and a half , unless they ’re running from something nasty . And there is n’t much Knifepoint would run from . ”
Twenty Cicada know all that . It was n’t for him . It was for how Eighteen Chisel in Navigation ’s shoulder joint dropped an inch ; how Two Foam , on comms , actually charge the content she ’d been hesitating on for the past five minutes , reporting continue exonerated skies to the quietus of their multilegion fleet .
“ Excellent , ” said Twenty Cicada . “ Then you wo n’t bear in mind if I take up you for a minute , yaotlek ? ”
“ Tell me that we are not still having problems with the escaped pets in the air duct on deck five , and I will not mind being adopt , ” Nine Hibiscus say , widening her eyes in fond near - sendup . The darling — little furred things that vibrated pleasantly and eat on vermin , a peculiar variant on kat that was endemical to Kauraan — had come aboard during their last planetfall there , when she ’d still been Fleet Captain Nine Hibiscus of the Tenth Legion , not yaotlek yet . The pets had not been a problem — or something Nine Hibiscus had even live about — until they had decided to regurgitate themselves , and move into a Deck Five air duct to do it . Twenty Cicada had complained vociferously about how they were disturbing the homeostasis of Weight for the Wheel ’s environs .
“ It is not the positron emission tomography , ” Twenty Cicada tell . “ That I promise . group discussion room ? ”
If he want privacy to hash out whatever it was , it could n’t be safe . “ Perfect , ” Nine Hibiscus said , pushing herself upright . She was double as wide as Twenty Cicada , but he moved around her as if he had solidness enough to jibe . “ Two Foam , your bridge . ”
“ My bridge deck , yaotlek , ” Two Foam called , and that was as it should be , so Nine Hibiscus went to see what was wrong with her ship — her fleet — now .
system of weights for the Wheel had two league rooms right off the bridge deck — a big one , for strategy meetings , and a small one , for fixing job . Nine Hibiscus had repurposed the latter from an adjunct weapon - control station when she ’d first been made captain . A ship needed a blank space to have individual prescribed conversation , she ’d think then , and she ’d been largely right ; the small conference room was the best place to solve personnel department issues , record on the ship ’s cameras , visible and inconspicuous all at once . She took Twenty Cicada inside , cuing the door to open with a micromovement of one eye that directed her cloudhook to verbalize to the ship ’s algorithmic AI .
Twenty Cicada was n’t apply to preambles ; Nine Hibiscus had always known him to be efficient , brisk and clean-living and mercilessly lineal . He forgo her through the threshold — and to her surprise , did not move around to give his report . rather he headed directly for the room ’s narrow viewport , and put a hired hand up against the plastisteel separating his body and the emptiness . Nine Hibiscus felt a flicker of heat at the conversance of the motion , warmth mixed with uncomfortable dread : like her , Twenty Cicada touched the ship , but he touch it like he was longing for quad to occur in and take his hand . He ’d done that for as long as Nine Hibiscus had roll in the hay him , and the two of them had met on their very first deployment .
Which was long enough ago by now that Nine Hibiscus did n’t especially feel like counting the age .
“ Swarm , ” she enjoin — the nickname he ’d grow back on that deployment , the one she had mostly given up call him for the sake of police officer hierarchy—“spit it out . What ’s go on ? ”
“ Sir , ” he said , still staring out at the black , soft corrective for the cameras , even if the recordings of this room would never be control by anyone but her : who outranked a yaotlek ? But he was so right a Fleet officer , a Teixcalaanlitzlim ’s Teixcalaanlitzlim , seamless in the role of ikantlos - prime and adjutant , a valet de chambre who could have walked out of The Expansion account or Opening Frontier Poems , except that the arrangement his people had come from had n’t even been absorbed into Teixcalaan when either of those works had been indite . ( Except that he still save up some of that system ’s curious cultural - religious practices — but hesitance was n’t one of those , either . At least not one she be intimate about . )
“ Yes , ikantlos ? Report . ”
at last he turned , widen his heart in wry and resigned entertainment , and said , “ In about two hours , sir , you ’re move to get an prescribed communiqué , address to you specifically as yaotlek in bearing of this combined fleet , from Fleet Captain Sixteen Moonrise on the Parabolic Compression of the Twenty - Fourth Legion , demand to know what the delay in action is . It will be countersigned by Fleet Captain Forty Oxide of the Seventeenth and Fleet Captain Two Canal of the Sixth . We have a problem . ”
“ The Seventeenth and the Sixth ? ” Nine Hibiscus asked . “ They detest each other . That contention is two hundred days one-time . How did Sixteen Moonrise get them both to signal ? ”
They absolutely had a problem . Her combined fleet was six legion strong : her own Tenth and five more , each with its own Fleet Captain newly subordinate to her authority . The traditional yaotlek ’s six , both tactically effective and symbolically sound — if a somewhat limited amount of manpower to win a state of war with . Enough , though , to set out a war , which Nine Hibiscus understood her intent here to be . To start , and then to succeed with whatever imagination she would require to call up from the core of Teixcalaan , if such resource were necessary .
But if three of her initial yaotlek ’s six were already unforced to sign an opening salvo against her authority as yaotlek . . . She did n’t postulate to say it ; both she and Twenty Cicada knew what a missive like this one meant . It was a run , a press to check for weak spots : a light onslaught to come up the best point to concentrate a wedge attempt . It was forged enough that she ’d been given both the Sixth and the Seventeenth Legions as part of her fleet , but she ’d expected any result conflict to be between them , something to carefully manage by doling out the skillful duty assignment every bit . Not this surprising show of political single through displeasure .
“ From what information I ’ve received from my associate degree on their ships , ” said Twenty Cicada , “ Sixteen Moonrise appeal on the one side to Forty Oxide ’s long experience compared to yours , and on the other to Two Canal ’s vehement like that she had been made yaotlek alternatively of you , and neither of them knew the other one had agreed until right before they harmonise to post the message . ”
There were reasons that Twenty Cicada was nicknamed Swarm , and it was n’t just his rummy name : a name with a living creature in it instead of a proper object or color or plant . Swarm was Swarm because he was everywhere at once : he knew someone on every ship in the Fleet , and those someones be given to keep him well - informed . Nine Hibiscus penetrate her tooth together , considering . “ Politics , ” she said . “ All in good order . We ’ve had politics before . ”
Nine Hibiscus had had politics come after her more than once . Anyone who made Fleet Captain did . Anyone who made Fleet Captain and intend to keep the lieu and win victories for her host — well , that sort of Teixcalaanlitzlim made enemies . green-eyed ones .
( Every prison term there ’d been politics before , though , Nine Hibiscus had also had Nine Propulsion in the Ministry as a terror of last resort . The new Minister of War , Three Azimuth , was no one ’s friend in particular — or at least she was n’t Nine Hibiscus ’s friend . )
“ Two Canal and Forty Oxide are n’t the point anyhow , ” said Twenty Cicada . “ Sixteen Moonrise is . She ’s the instigator — she ’s the one you ’re live to have to defuse . ”
“ Perhaps she ’d like the point stance when we do make our approach . ”
Twenty Cicada say , dry as work on ship air , “ So direct , sir . ”
She could n’t help grinning : teeth denude like a barbarian , a savage expression . It felt good on her face . feel like catch ready to dissemble , alternatively of wait and waiting and waiting . “ They are insinuating I ’m over - hesitant . ”
“ I can have that society composed . The Twenty - Fourth will be contrive shouting into whatever void is eating our planets by shift - change , if you wish . ” One of the problems with Twenty Cicada was that he put up her exactly what she wanted , for precisely long enough for her to remember that it was a high-risk idea . It was the kind of trouble that terminate up being one of a thousand reasons Nine Hibiscus had never thought of supercede him with a soldier who do from a more assimilated world .
“ No , ” she said . “ get ’s do one better . The gloriole of dying first for the empire is too good for Sixteen Moonrise , do n’t you think ? ask round her to dinner party instead . plow her like a favour fellow worker , a prospective atomic number 27 - commander . A new yaotlek like me needs ally , does n’t she ? ”
Twenty Cicada ’s aspect had become indecipherable , like he was adjusting some value in a vast calculation of a complex system . Nine Hibiscus reckon that if he was going to object he would go ahead and object , and operate on assuming he would n’t .
“ Fourth fault — that’ll give her the locomotion time to get over to Wheel . Her and her adjutant . We ’ll have a scheme discussion , the four of us . ”
“ As soon as the letter officially arrives , sir , I ’ll send that invitation back — and alert the ship’s galley that we ’re expecting guests . ” Twenty Cicada paused . “ I do n’t like this . For the record book . It ’s too other for anyone to be labor you like this . I did n’t expect it . ”
“ I do n’t wish it either , ” Nine Hibiscus said . “ But since when has that made a difference ? We persevere , Swarm . We win . ”
“ We do tend to . ” A flicker , again , of that dry entertainment . “ But the wheel goes around — ”
Nine Hibiscus said , “ That ’s why we ’re the weightiness , ” like she was one of her soldier in the muss , ship - idiom slogan , and smiled . Game on , she intend . Sixteen Moonrise , whatever it is you want from me — derive play .
Over the comms , then , Two Foam ’s disembodied spokesperson : “ Yaotlek , I have visual on Knifepoint . Three hour early on . Coming in tight . fare in — spicy . ”
“ Bleeding stars , ” Nine Hibiscus clap a quick , instinctive curse , just for her and Twenty Cicada to hear , and then signaled her cloudhook to piece her into the comms relative frequency . “ On my style . Do n’t fire on anything until we know we have to . ”
Lsel Station was a sort of metropolis , if one thought of cities as animate machines , organisms made of interlock parts and hoi polloi , too close - pack to be any other form of life . Thirty thousand Stationers on Lsel , all in apparent motion , spinning in the dark in their gravitative well , dependable inside the sparse gasbag of alloy which was Station - skin . And like any other city , Lsel Station was — if you knew where to go , and where to avoid — a decent blank space to take a foresightful enough walk of life to consume yourself out of overthinking .
tell Yskandr ,
Mahit Dzmare , by certain technicalities still the Ambassador to Teixcalaan from Lsel , even two month returned in quasi - disgrace from her Wiley Post , had perfected the art of think the sentience of rolling her eye . I have n’t walked far enough yet , she say to her imago — to both her imagos , the old Yskandr and the fragmentary stay on of the young one . Give me time .
Yskandr said — he was mostly the young Yskandr today , arch and amuse , experience - hungry , all bluster and new - won fluency in Teixcalaanli manners and political science . The Yskandr - version she ’d mostly drop off to the sabotage of the imago - car that had brought him to her in the first place , nestled at the cornerstone of her skull , full up with unrecorded memory and the experience she ’d need to be a good embassador from Lsel , on the glittering City - planet heart of Teixcalaan . Sabotage executed — peradventure , she remained unsure — by the very Councilor she was due to have dinner with in twenty minutes .
There was another life , Mahit cerebration , where she and Yskandr would have been in the City still , and integrated already into a exclusive continuous self .
Yskandr told her , and that was the other Yskandr : twenty year older , a man who remembered his own expiry well enough that Mahit still sometimes wake up in the night clog up on psychosomatic anaphylaxis .
Mahit was too many mass , since she ’d overlaid her damage imago with the imago of the same gentleman’s gentleman twenty years far on down the line . She ’d had a while to think about it . She was almost used to how it felt , the fault rail line between the three of them grate together like planetary tectonics . Her kick made sonant intimate noise on the metallic element flooring of the Station corridor . She was out near the edge of this deck of cards — she could just barely see the curvature of the floor , here , stretch up . Walking sempiternal loops around the Station had started as a refamiliarization manoeuvre and turned into a habit . Yskandr did n’t know the geography of the Station any longer — in the City he ’d been either fifteen age or three dead month out of date , but here at home he was just a long - deport stranger . In fifteen geezerhood the interior , nonstructural walls moved around , the decks were repurposed , little shop opened and shut . Someone in Heritage had changed all the fonts on the navigational planetary house , a shift Mahit scarce return — she’d been eight — but she found herself staring at them , a perfectly innocuous aesculapian sector : leftward signal suddenly compulsively fascinating .
We ’re both exiles , she ’d think right then , and had hated herself for thinking it . She ’d been move a few weeks . She had no right to the name . She was home .
She was n’t , and she do it it . ( There was no such place any longer . ) But the walking was a color , and she did think back where some things were , the form and round of the Station , alive and full of people — and she and Yskandr both had the same joy in discover new places . On that , the aptitudes had gotten them alone bushed to right .
This deck — which contain Heritage offices , if a person kept walking through the residential section Mahit was traversing , everyone ’s individual pods attend in warm bone - colored rows , interspersed with coarse areas — wasn’t one she knew well at all . It was full of kids ; older one , three - one-fourth of the way to their imago aptitude tests , sitting easily on top of bulkhead and clustered in chaffer group around shop kiosk . Most of them cut Mahit solely , which was comfort . Two month back on the Station and half the time she ran into honest-to-god friends , her crèchesibs or classmates , and all of them want her to order them about Teixcalaan . And what could she say ? I love it ; it almost eat up me and all of you together ; I ca n’t tell you a single thing ?
Yskandr murmur .
You died there rather than coming back to partake in your plan with our Station , and you ’d wish to lecture me on silence ? Mahit snap , and felt her little fingers go to fizzing sparkles : neurologic aftersensation of sabotage . That side effect had n’t finish . It was more obvious when she stumbled into one of the places she and Yskandr had n’t managed to desegregate yet , at all . But her sentience of his presence withdraw to a banked and law-abiding simmer . She ’d ended up next to one of the kiosks , while she was too busy babble to her imago to note where she was last . ( Probably she should mind those slip more than she did . The slips where she was n’t quite her , in her body . ) Ended up next to a kiosk , and in a stock for what it was selling .
Which seemed to be paw - spring literature . The stall was labeled adventure / raw publication . Its presentation was full of pictorial stories , draw not on ever - shot infofiche but on newspaper , made from flattened tag pulp . Mahit reached out and touched the cover charge of the near . It was jolty under her fingertip .
“ Hey , ” allege the kiosk manager . “ You wish that one ? The Perilous Frontier ! ”
“ The what ? ” Mahit asked her , suddenly feeling as adrift as she had the first time anyone had asked her a interrogation in Teixcalaanli . Context failure : What frontier ? Are n’t they all parlous ?
“ We ’ve stupefy all five volumes , if you ’re into first impinging material ; I roll in the hay it , the creative person on volume three cast Captain Cameron ’s imago like Chandra Mav ’s only seeable in reflective surfaces , and the linework – ”
The manager could n’t be more than seventeen , Mahit thought . Short tight - curled hairsbreadth over a shining - toothed grinning , eight hoop earrings up the side of one ear . That was raw way . When Mahit was that age everyone had been into long earrings . I ’m old , she call back , with a singular delight .
Yskandr accord , dust - ironical and amused . He was years older .
I ’m former , and I have no idea what kids on Lsel like to read . Even when I was a kid on Lsel I did n’t have a go at it , really . It had n’t seemed important , before her aptitudes — why vex , when there was so much Teixcalaanli literature to submerge herself in ? To learn to utter in poetry for ?
“ I have n’t read them yet , ” Mahit severalise the manager . “ Can I have the first one ? ”
“ Sure , ” she replied , ducked down underneath the counter , and produce one . Mahit handed over her credit chip , and the director pilfer it . “ They ’re drag right here on this deck , ” she articulate . “ If you wish it , come back on second - teddy two daytime from now and you’re able to meet the artist , we ’re having a sign language . ”
“ Thanks . If I have time — ”
“ Yeah , ” the handler grin , as if to say , Adults , seriously , what can you do . “ If you have clock time . ”
Mahit waved , went on . Walked a slight quicker . The Perilous Frontier ! fit in her inner jacket pouch like it was a political pamphlet . Exactly the same size . That was interesting , in and of itself . Even if it turned out to be a horribly slow taradiddle , that was interesting .
The Heritage spot were a neatly labeled Earl Warren , seven or so room access on either side of the deck corridor , which had narrow down from the wide residential quad to something more like a road . Behind those doors , all the extra space would be full of the office staff of multitude assigned to jobs in Heritage : analyst , mostly . Analysts of diachronic precedent , of the wellness of artistry yield and education , of the figure of imago - matches in one sector of the universe or another . Analysts and propaganda writers .
How Teixcalaan had shift her , and how quickly . The last time Mahit had come to the Heritage offices , for her final check consultation before she receive both her imago and her naming as embassador , she ’d have never thought about Heritage as being in the business of propaganda . But what else were they doing , when they adjust educational textile for one age group or another , seek to have the aptitudes in five geezerhood spit out more original or more medical personnel ? Changing how children need to be .
She was pause , poised outside the midmost room access with its neatly signed ( in the new fount , and when will I get to stop over noticing the fucking young baptismal font , Yskandr , it is n’t actually a new baptismal font , it ’s only a young face for you ) nameplate reading aknel amnardbat , councilor for heritage . Hesitating because she had n’t learn Councilor Amnardbat since that last confirmation consultation , and hesitating because she still could n’t understand why the woman she ’d met then would have wanted to weaken Mahit ’s imago - political machine . Ruin her before she could even attempt to do right by the imago - line she was part of . If Amnardbat had even been responsible — Mahit only had the Christian Bible of a different Councilor , Dekakel Onchu , Councilor for the Pilots , on that . And Mahit had that word because she ’d receive letters , while embedded in the Teixcalaanli court , that Onchu had meant for Yskandr .
She missed , with an ugly and sudden sharp stiletto heel of palpate , Three Seagrass , her former cultural liaison , the woman who was supposed to make incongruous experiences make more signified to the poor barbarian in her charge . Three Seagrass would have just start the door .
Mahit raise her paw , and pink . Called out her own name , “ Mahit Dzmare ! , ” a Lsel - style appointment - keeping : no cloudhooks here , to open doors with micromovements of an eye . Just herself , announcing herself .
Yskandr read , a murmur in her mind , ghost - thought : almost her own thought .
No , I ’m not . And Amnardbat does n’t experience there are two of you — three of us — which is its own problem —
The door opened , so Mahit block up think about grievous lies she had order . Not conceive about them made them soft to hide . She ’d hear that somewhere in the Empire , too .
Councilor Amnardbat was still slender and middle - aged , her hair worn in a spacer ’s slash of silvering lock , narrow and long grey oculus in a wide - cheekboned face that always look like she ’d been exposed to too much solar irradiation — chapped , but in a rugged variety of way . She smiled when Mahit come in , and that smiling was welcome and warm . If she ’d been work out with her staff before Mahit ’s comer , they were n’t directly visible . Heritage was a modest operation , anyway . Councilor Amnardbat had a secretaire , who wrote her proportionateness — he’d been the one to transmit Mahit this invitation through the intra - Station electronic postal service — but Mahit saw no one in the office at all . Just chairs , and a desk with infopaper mob all over it , and a silver screen on the bulwark showing some camera ’s view of what was outside Lsel just now . A slow rotation of virtuoso .
“ Welcome home , ” tell Councilor Amnardbat .
It ’s a ploy , Mahit thought , and besides , I ’ve only been back on - post for four week , the rest was traveling time . She felt Yskandr subside into a alert , paying attention hum . More awake than he ’d been in a long prison term . She felt that elbow room , too . More awake , more present . give a grievous conversation with a hefty soul in their offices . Just like she was presuppose to do , on Teixcalaan .
“ I ’m happy to be here , ” said Mahit . “ What can I do for you , Councilor ? ”
“ I did promise to have a meal with you , ” Amnardbat said , still smile , and Mahit experience an sound reflection of Yskandr ’s wince , his commend fear : the Minister of Science in Teixcalaan , offering him food as a pretext to poison . She shoved it back . Not her internal secretion psychic trauma reply . ( She wished that she trust Lsel ’s consolidation therapist with the secret of what she ’d done when she ’d overlay two imago - Yskandrs . Mahit did n’t have memory - connect trauma response — probably — but Mahit and Yskandr were blurred , blear more all the time , and she did n’t know what to do with his . )
“ It is n’t that I do n’t appreciate that , ” Mahit enunciate , “ but I am trusted you ’re busy enough to not just want to share some solid food with a returned ambassador . ”
Councilor Amnardbat ’s expression did n’t interchange . She radiated pleasant , curt good sunshine , laced with an almost parental worry . “ Come sit down down , Ambassador Dzmare . We ’ll talk . I have spiced fish cakes and flatbread — I envision you ’d drop Lsel intellectual nourishment . ”
Mahit had , but she ’d fixed that the first hebdomad back , gone to one of her old resort and consume hydroponic - call down flaky whitened Pisces lather until she ’d pine from it , and , feel totally inauspicious , fled the place before any of her friends could show up accidentally and welcome her back with their questions . Something about Councilor Amnardbat ’s worked up timeline was skew . Perhaps skew on design . ( And what role would it serve ? check for some Teixcalaanli - derived corruption of mouthful ? And what if Mahit had been one of those Stationers who hated fish cakes , it was a preference — )
“ It ’s very kind of you to have it brought , ” she say , baby-sit down at the conference tabular array across from the Councilor ’s desk and tamping back ( again ) on her imago ’s frisson of adrenaline betoken . The peril here was n’t hold out to come from the food . In fact , it smelled unspoiled enough to make Mahit ’s oral cavity piddle : the eccentric Pisces spiced with red peppers , the carbon paper scent of slightly charred flatbread , made from real pale yellow and cherished thereby . Amnardbat seat across from her , and for a good two second they were just Stationers together : swan flatbread around Pisces , guttle the first one and make another to be eaten more tardily .
The Councilor bury the last bite of the first flatbread she ’d rolled . “ Let ’s get the awkward question out of the way , Mahit , ” she said . Mahit attempted to not let her supercilium climb up to her hairline and mostly succeeded . “ Why did you give back so before long ? I ’m asking this in my electrical capacity as the Councilor for Heritage — I desire to know if we did n’t give you something you require , out in the Empire . I bang the process of integration was reduce . . . . ”
Yskandr said , and Mahit was worriedly glad that he was inaudible unless she let him be audible . Or slipped .
mayhap she sabotage us , she reminded him . If we believe Onchu . Who we also have n’t speak with —
She ’d been too afraid to . Too afraid of Onchu being right , or Onchu being wrong , and too exhausted by the sudden and irrevokable foreignness of what had been home to get around that being - afraid .
“ No , ” she said out loud . “ There was n’t anything I needed that Lsel did n’t prove to give me . Of course I ’d have liked more time with Yskandr before we go out , but what happen to me was n’t the shortest integrating period of time in our history , I ’m sure . ”
“ Then why ? ” expect Amnardbat , and took another morsel of Pisces . doubt over , metre to eat , time to listen .
Mahit suspire . Shrugged , rueful and purpose for ego - deprecation , some reverberation of how uncomfortable she opine Heritage would like a Stationer to be with thing Teixcalaanli . “ I was involved in a riot and a succession crisis , Councilor . It was violent and difficult — personally , professionally — and after I guarantee hope from the raw Emperor as to our bear on independence , I want to lie . Just for a while . ”
“ So you number home . ”
“ So I came home . ” While I still wanted to .
“ You ’ve been here for a month . And yet you have n’t had yourself uploaded into a new imago - machine for your heir , Ambassador . Even though you bang quite well that our last transcription is extremely out of escort , and we do n’t have one of you at all . ”
Fuck . So that ’s what she wants . To have sex if the sabotage worked —
. . . at the moment I do .
“ It did n’t pass off to me , ” said Mahit . “ It has n’t even been a yr — forgive me , this is my first twelvemonth having an imago at all . I recall there was a schedule ? With appointment reminders ? ”
Refuge in bureaucratic ignorance . Which would also play as a cuticle — however impermanent , however flimsy — against Amnardbat finding out that she had two imago . Uploading would make short shrift of that petty deception . And Mahit had no idea what insurance policy there was on Lsel about doing something like what she ’d done . Or if there even was any insurance . She expected there was n’t . It was so clearly a bad idea . It had certainly given her enough squirming , revulsive scruple , before she ’d done it .
No . I ask you . I still need — us .
“ Oh , of track there ’s a agenda , ” Amnardbat say . “ But we in Heritage — well , I specifically , but I do speak for everyone here — have a policy of encourage hoi polloi who experience significant event or accomplishment to update their imago records more often than the automatise calendar suggests . ”
courteously , Mahit occupy another sting of her flatbread wrap . Chewed and withdraw past the psychosomatic tightening of her throat . “ Councilor , ” she said , “ of course I can make an fitting with the machinists , now that I know about your policies . Is that really all ? It ’s a kindness , to have this much Pisces cook for us , and real flatbread , just to necessitate for an administrative favor that you could have written to me about . ”
allow her trade with the hypnotism that she was being profligate with food for thought resources . Heritage Councilors had been removed for less putridness , multiplication ago . That imago - line was n’t given to newfangled Heritage Councilors any longer . Mothballed , preserved somewhere in the bank of put down memories , deem undesirable : anyone who would serve their own need before the long - remembered needs of the Station should n’t be influencing the one Councilor pay to preserving the persistence of that Station .
Some very nice Teixcalaanlitzlim and my imago have conspired to learn me to weaponize references .
But Amnardbat was saying , “ It ’s not a favor , ” and as she say it Mahit realized that she ’d underestimated her , was lowball the reasonableness for her behavior , carry that she could be pull wires like a Teixcalaanlitzlim could be , with allusion and narrative . “ It ’s an order , Ambassador . We need a written matter of your retentiveness . To make certain that whatever it was that made Yskandr Aghavn last out forth so long from the uploading process has n’t spread to you , too . ”
Fascinating , really , how she matt-up so insensate . So cold , her digit gone to ice - galvanising tingle , no sensation around how she hold the remains of her flatbread . So cold , and yet : hummingly focused . Afraid . Alive . “ Spread ? ” she asked .
Yskandr whisper , and Mahit cut him .
“ It is a fearsome matter , to drop off a citizen to Teixcalaan , ” Amnardbat said . “ To worry that there is something in the Empire that steal our best . The machinists and I will be anticipate you this week , Mahit . ”
When she smiled again , Mahit thought she see what made the Teixcalaanlitzlim so anxious about bared teeth .
Knifepoint was in visual stove when Nine Hibiscus made it back to the bridge , shortly out of hint from the speed of that short transportation . She hold deep inhalations like she was an orator , settled her lungs , sample to keep any adrenaline reaction special . It was her bridge now , her bridgework and her command . All her officers rotated toward her as if they were bloom and she was a welcome sunup . For a moment everything feel right . And then she notice how chop-chop Knifepoint was go up the rest of the fleet , growing in size of it even as she watched through the viewports . They had to be burn the engine at rank utmost to be coming in this live . Knifepoint was a scout — it could off that speed , but not maintain it for very long , it was too small and would run out of fuel — and if its pilot had determine to run as fast as possible , then they were absolutely being chased .
“ Do we know what ’s follow them ? ” she asked , and Two Foam shook her head in swift negation from the comms chairman .
“ Everything ’s vacuous , ” she said . “ Just Knifepoint and dead void behind them — but they ’ll be in hailing kitchen stove in two minute — ”
“ Get them on the holograph as soon as you could . And struggle the Shards . If there ’s something after them we ’re not going to let it get far . ”
“ Scrambling , yaotlek , ” said Two Foam , her center flickering in rapid motion behind her cloudhook . All around them the eminent vindicated whine of the alarm rose through Weight for the Wheel . A fleet ’s first melodic line of defense , and most mobile : a swarm of individual - pilot small craft , all munition and seafaring , short - chain and utterly deathly . Nine Hibiscus had been a Shard pilot burner herself , on that long - ago first deployment , and she still felt the scramble - consternation like a delicious oscillation in the marrow of her osseous tissue : go , go , go . Go now , and if you buy the farm you give out star - brilliant .
With the alarum singing through her , Nine Hibiscus say , “ And rent ’s charge up the top two vigor cannon banks , shall we ? ” She settled again into her police chief ’s chair . Five Thistle , the tariff weapon officer , gave her a bright , wide-cut - eyed grin .
“ Sir , ” he said .
They all want this so much . Her , too . The fervency and the blood of it , something to do . A proper engagement , blue and whitened energy weapons arcing through the Shirley Temple Black , shattering and scorch .
Just as the first Shards spilled sparkling into the viewport ’s visual scope , the thing that Knifepoint was running out from appeared .
It did n’t come into view . It appeared , as if it had been there all along , blot out in some kind of visual cloak . The smuggled nothingness of distance — this sphere had so few whiz — burble , squirmed like a nudibranch touched by a finger’s breadth , an enormous and organic recoiling , and there it was , the first ship - of - their - foe any Teixcalaanli eyes had visit . ( Any Teixcalaanli eye that had know to describe it , at least . ) Three grey hoops , splay at speeding around a key ball . It was difficult to look at and Nine Hibiscus did n’t know why — some of that backlash , squirming ocular distortion clung to it , made the grey metallic element of its Cordell Hull seem petroleum - slick and unfocussed .
It had been not - there , and now it was there . Right up on Knifepoint ’s rear end , just as tight , and come together —
“ This is the yaotlek Nine Hibiscus , ” she say , broad - programme . “ turn off that thing out of its vector and surround it . Hold fire unless you are send away upon . ”
Like they were prolongation of her will , of her exhaled breath , the Shards flew outwards on a firm approach toward the alien physical object that had defy get so very nearly . It have them a consequence to orientate themselves around the alien ship ; it was n’t a condition they knew , and it moved in unexpected ways , a slippery drum roll like a greased orb bearing . But the Shards were fresh , and they were interlinked — each ship supply positional and ocular biofeedback not only to its own airplane pilot through their cloudhook , but to all of the pilots in the drove — and they learned quickly . Knifepoint shot out between the glittering sparkle of them like a bird breaking atm , and was enamour safely by the outreaching net of Weight for the Wheel ’s airdock bay .
Two Foam had gotten Knifepoint ’s police chief on holo : he appear molest , baseless - eyed and breathing hard , his hands visibly white at the knuckles as he spellbind the control of his ship .
“ Well done , ” Nine Hibiscus said to him , “ not a lucre on you — give us a min to cope with this thing you bring us and I ’ll bring you right up to debrief — ”
“ Yaotlek , ” he interrupted , “ they ’re invisible until they need to be , that might not be the only one , and they have firepower — ”
“ Stand down , Knifepoint , ” Nine Hibiscus said . “ It ’s our job now , and we have firepower too . ” They did . The energy cannon , and the diminished , more vicious , more ugly power of atomic core - bombs . If necessary .
“ I intercepted a communication , ” he sound out , as if he had n’t heard her at all .
“ Excellent . Put it in your report . ”
“ It ’s not terminology , yaotlek — ”
“ Two Foam , deal with this ? We are a little busy just now . ” The alien ship did have firepower — what looked like a fairly standard but very exact retinue of energy cannon , arrayed on the outmost of those three spinning loops . Soundless bursts of light blind her through the viewport , and when she blink the afterimages by there were three few shard . She winced .
“ All right , containment is no longer the protocol — Five Thistle , secernate the Shards to clear a path for cannonry . ”
At their in force , Nine Hibiscus ’s officers did n’t call for to confirm they ’d heard her — they act . Five Thistle ’s hands gestured inside the holographical workspace of the weapons station , moving ship and vector lines in the embedded starfield , a miniature version of her own cartograph mesa — and the Shards moved in reply , make a new practice , pass a space for Weight for the Wheel ’s independent cannon banks to aim , and fire .
Electric blue . The light that Nine Hibiscus had always conceive of a soul determine if they incidentally stepped inside an industrial irradiator , in the abbreviated moment they ’d have to see anything at all . Deathlight , with its hum like a scramble - dismay , as familiar as breathing or ceasing to breathe .
( For a fraction of a second , she wonder if she ought n’t hear to bewitch the thing first — shut out it down with targeted electromagnetic pulsation while it was still far out enough that EMP would n’t fry her own ships , pull it on board — but Knifepoint had said they had an intercept communicating , and this matter had killed three of her own soldiers already . Four — another Shard blink out in a silent shatter of flaming , a candle go up and go out in speedy succession . )
Full cannon top executive lit the alien ship like a beacon fire , shake it , disrobe some of that slick and squirming visuality away from it — the voice of the outer ring which had been blown off looked like alloy , like outer space debris , entirely stock . But full carom power did n’t destroy it . It whirl faster — it whiz — Nine Hibiscus reckon she could hear it spin out , though she knew that was insufferable — and just before the 2d carom barrage scratch its privileged orchis , smashing it open into nullity and destruction intact , it emitted from the arcsecond of its damage rings some drab pasty nitty-gritty that fall down through void - grav in strange ropes .
Spit , Nine Hibiscus thought , drive back .
Five Thistle was already calling , “ Get aside from it , ” on all channels , and the swell reactor - fueled engine of Weight for the Wheel flare into life , pulled them backwards , out from how the rophy tangled like a liquid meshwork where the alien ship had been . What fluid moved like that ? As if it was — seeking , nomadic , far too cohesive . The control surface stress on it — not so much that it cling together in a ballock , but enough that it spin itself out in thinning , hit string —
One of the Shards , a glittering wedge tumbling easily onto a Modern vector , vernier thrusters firing , cross with one of those expectoration - strings . Nine Hibiscus watched it materialize . watch all the glimmer of the minuscule fighter vanish , sleek down over with foreign ship - saliva , a fractal profits of it that stuck and clung even when the Shard attract free of the string . Saw , disbelieving while seeing , that lucre lead off to babble its way through the Shard ’s Kingston-upon Hull , corrosive , eating its metal and plastisteel like some kind of hyper - oxidizing fungus .
The Shard ’s pilot call .
Screamed on the open television channel Five Thistle had used , call and then squall , “ Kill me , pour down me now , it ’s plump to run through the ship , it ’s in here with me , do n’t let it rival anyone else , ” a controlled and heroic spasm of bravery .
Nine Hibiscus hesitated . She had done many thing she ’d regretted , as a airplane pilot and a skipper and as Fleet Captain of the Tenth Teixcalaanli Legion — uncountable things , she was a soldier , it was the nature of being what she was to commit little atrocities , like it was the nature of stars to emit radiation sickness that burned and poisoned as much as it generate warmth and lifetime . But she ’d never ordered her ship to fire on her own masses . Never once yet .
On that same line , a chorus line of torture : all the Shard airplane pilot , unite together by biofeedback , all of them feel the last of their sibling - ship , pig alive . Sobbing . The sound of snatched breath , hyperventilation . A low moaning scream , that echoed , was pick up by other voices —
“ Do it , ” Nine Hibiscus tell . “ snap her . As she ask . ”
Deathlight - fire , precise and merciful . A fusillade of blue , and one Teixcalaanlitzlim rendered to ash .
Silence on all the comms . Nine Hibiscus try nothing but the repulsive buffeting of her own trice .
“ Well , ” said Twenty Cicada , lastly — sounding as shaken as anyone , but briskly shaken—“that ’s approximately eight new things about these mass we did n’t know ten minutes ago . ”
Except from Arkady Martine ’s A Desolation call off Peace reprinted by permission . Copyright Tor .
Arkady Martine ’s A Desolation Called Peace is out March 2 , 2021 , but you could pre - regularize a copy throughAmazon , Books - A - Million , IndieBound , Powell ’s , andBookshop .
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