A Memory Called Empire

“But the Empire preserved everything, told the same stories over and over

again; why not also preserve flesh instead of rendering it up for decent use?”

At the Judiciary, Mahit sees predecessor Yskandr’s corpse and explains how, on Lsel Station, they cremate bodies and eat the ashes. Responding to the implied horror of the city ministers, she connects their memory and collection of territories, peoples, and poems—creating an analogy between their retaining of memory and wasting of bodies.

“She fished out a fistful, holding them between her fingers like her knuckles

had sprouted claws.”

When Mahit arrives at her ambassadorial apartment, she sees a mail container and grabs the letters. Mirroring her later framing of the Empire as an animal, this simile—her claw-like hand—establishes how the Empire’s citizens look at her, foreign and strange, as if she were an animal herself.

“Coming toward them was a Teixcalaanli woman dressed entirely in bone-white: trousers and many-layered blouse and a long-asymmetrical jacket. The planes of her face were dark bronze, her cheekbones wide, her nose knifelike over a wide and narrow-lipped mouth.”

While examining Yskandr’s corpse, Mahit, Three Seagrass, and Twelve Azalea are interrupted by Nineteen Adze, a confidant to Emperor Six Direction. This quote illustrates her sharp features and hints at her role as an antagonistic ally, someone who has backstabbed a friend before—the description of her “knifelike” nose being followed up by her “gracious presence […] like the edgeshine of a knife” (65).

“She felt cavernous and echoing, a glassy fragility that was like the very

beginning stages of a hangover.”

The morning after she visits Yskandr’s corpse, and his imago seemingly malfunctions out of shock, Mahit notes his absence from her mind. This imagery, comparing her mind to a cavern, so empty it echoes, ends with a simile comparing Yskandr’s absence to a hangover, illustrating both the advantages and drawbacks of imago technology.

“Mahit scrubbed her arms with soap and rinsed them clean. The whole shower

smelled of some dark wood, and roses, and she thought she knew the scent too, or at least remembered it.”

Mahit showers in Nineteen Adze’s apartment, and the surrounding smells envelop

her. She suspects, even without Yskandr’s confirmation, that this familiarity, this

memory, is his—hinting at Nineteen Adze and Yskandr’s intimacy.

“More electric prickles swam in Mahit’s fingers. Her nose filled with the remembered scent of ozone, the blue flash of light from the City’s algorithm going very, very wrong and catching Three Seagrass unawares and—.”

During Mahit’s meeting with Fifteen Engine, Yskandr’s former cultural liaison, a

bomb is detonated nearby; Mahit is injured, and Fifteen Engine dies. As Three

Seagrass tries to unlock an access point to help Mahit escape, she’s shocked by

the City’s malfunctioning AI systems—the sudden ending of this quote mirroring

Three Seagrass’s emotional shock. Though this moment doesn’t fully change her

mind regarding the City’s flawed structure, it does shake her.

“The last ship to see it has made it all the way back to the Station, and not led it

after them, either: if it hunts, it does not chase prey back to the den.”

Dekakel Onchu, a Lsel Station councilor, describes the newest threat to her pilots

—an alien threat which destroys ships. This threat is framed as a predatory animal

who sees Lsel Station as a den of prey—foreshadowing the Empire’s involvement in a later war, as both it and the aliens look to consume and hunt.

“Behind her, Nineteen Adze had framed herself in the entranceway like a pillar

of white fire, and Mahit could feel the attention in the room shift.”

As the Emperor’s confidant, Nineteen Adze commands respect with her mere

presence. She arrives at the Palace banquet, and like a force of nature, a pillar of

white fire, she will restore order to the Empire once she ascends the throne at the

end of A Memory Called Empire.

“He was as flexible as a holograph, bending in the light, saying different

words at different angles.”

Describing Thirty Larkspur, a confidant and heir to his father, the Emperor, as a

holograph, Mahit frames him as illusory. Despite his charming demeanor, he is

later revealed to be exactly this, a deceptive person who plays at civility; he saves

Mahit during an attack, but later tries to kill her through Nineteen Adze.

“What he was was comfortable, here in this strange room of trapped and beautiful birds, and looking at Mahit like she was an inconvenient piece of space debris that had to be avoided while inscribing an orbit.”

Trying to escape the other attendees at the Palace banquet, Mahit comes across a room full of birds and Eight Antidote, the Emperor’s child-like ninety-percent clone, another heir. Despite him existing in the Palace like a bird who can’t escape his cage, Mahit understands his implicit dismissal of her, as if she were debris. She’s an obstacle to him, as his father seeks to use her home’s technology to take over his body.

“To remember the sick heat of Six Direction’s hands on her wrist, the terrible

fragility of him, as if he was being ravaged by some fast-moving disease.”

When Mahit first greets the aged Emperor Six Direction, she presents her hands

in supplication, and he grabs them. Not only does this moment reveal his illness,

but alludes to his and Yskandr’s intimacy.

“Wanted to revoke it, by virtue of replacing Yskandr with an ambassador who had different ideas of what might be traded away to Teixcalaan, even in exchange for keeping the open maw of the Empire pointed at some other prey?”

Mahit discovers Eight Loop, one of Emperor Six Direction’s heirs, was the one who summoned her as a new ambassador, likely to undo Yskandr’s deal with the Emperor. She again depicts the Empire as a hungry animal, whose open maw desires territory—including Lsel Station’s imago technology.

“The harbor of all Stationers: where the dead eventually come to rest, for a

time, and then go out again, remade.”

Ankel Amnardbat, head of Lsel Station’s Heritage, discusses her home’s 14

generations of imago-lines. The room storing these imago-lines is described as a

harbor, where pilots might land, both a graveyard and means of resurrection, as

the pilots live forever through memories.

“All the way there, Mahit felt like the City was watching them, even without

cloudhooks to mark the electronic traces of their presence; felt it, and told herself she was over-reading again.”

Mahit and Three Seagrass traverse the watchful City, a place under AI control.

Fearful of the AI systems due to having been shocked by a malfunction

(Important Quote #7), she breaks her connection by not wearing her cloudhook.

“They’d use Twelve Azalea to crack open her story like the vacuum seal on

a seed-skiff, and bleed all the protecting atmosphere away.”

After Mahit kills Eleven Conifer in self-defense, the Sunlit respond and Twelve

Azalea arrives. Considering Twelve Azalea’s gossipy nature, she assumes he will

not corroborate her story, which she compares to a spacecraft, something close to

home. Despite her growing bonds with both Three Seagrass and Twelve Azalea,

she never loses sight of their cultural differences—and how they may interfere

with their bonds.

“Teixcalaanli was hovering on the verge of devouring itself alive.”

With unrest in the streets, caused by Thirty Larkspur and One Lightning’s coup

attempts, the City is on the brink of civil war. The capital, again personified as an

animal, consumes territory like food—but now devours itself, as its

imperialistic nature turns inward, with one of the capital factions being led by one

of the Emperor’s own heirs.

“When Teixcalaanli literature talked about eyes it was often talking about

touch, or the ability to affect—an eye sees, an eye changes what it sees. Half quantum mechanics, half narrative.”

Referring to the poem The Buildings, Mahit considers how Teixcalaanli literature

often uses eyes as metaphor. As per the medieval theory of vision, extramission

(the rays that come from eyes viewing objects), this description of eyes as part-advanced physics, part-narrative embodies the union of tradition and technology in the Empire.

“An end to empires. An immovable object to crash an impossible force

upon, and break it.”

Councilors Dekakel Onchu and Darj Tarats discuss an alien civilization that

threatens Lsel Station. Tarats has known about the threat for almost 20 years,

waiting to lure the Empire into open conflict—hoping for both threats’ destruction.

“Onchu imagines Tarats’s mind: he must think of Teixcalaanli as a tide, a sort of thing that could wash through and pull back again, and leave the ocean the same. She’s seen an ocean once. She’s seen what a high tide does to the shoreline.”

Onchu considers Tarats’s hatred of the Empire and his manipulation of their mperialism to benefit Lsel Station. She imagines Tarats would compare the Empire to a tide that will wash over their people and retreat. Having seen tides herself, she knows such a retreat would lead to their own doom.

“By the time they reached the station, Mahit’s headache felt large enough to

devour small spacecraft that had flown too close to its center of mass.”

Mahit undergoes neurosurgery in Belltown 6, one of the outer boroughs of the

City. Returning to the train station to call for transport from the Ministry of

Information, she expresses her pain in terms of pilots and spacecraft, fitting for an inhabitant of Lsel Station. This headache, caused by the integration of her and the updated Yskandr, contrasts with his earlier absence (in Important Quote #5).

“Grown old enough, or lived through enough incomprehensible experiences.

Perhaps she was old enough for poetry now: she had three lives inside her, and a death.”

Mahit believes poetry belongs to those who are desperate or old. While she is young, she considers her imago device in poetic terms, thinking of the imago-line that includes both versions of Yskandr; the first Yskandr is her one death, as he died at the sight of his own aged corpse.

“In the oldest version of this custom, Mahit knew, they would all drink the contents of the bowl. So much for Teixcalaanli squeamishness about the consumption of the revered dead. They ate people who were still alive.”

Mahit prepares to see the Emperor for a second time, having been offered Lsel

Station’s safety for imago devices and schematics. She, Three Seagrass, and

Nineteen Adze, protective of the Emperor, form a blood pact, a promise to

keep him safe from the ongoing coup attempts. Mahit recalls the city ministers’ horror at Stationers eating ashes (Important Quote #2), and internally calls out the Empire’s hypocrisy.

“Mahit thought of her as an enormous tiger, clawed and dangerous, and—

she knelt. She leaned into that hand.”

Before the Emperor’s address to the Empire, informing the citizens of the alien

threat, Nineteen Adze finds him. He holds her by the back of her neck while she

kneels. Mahit compares her to a tiger, a predatory animal, but in the presence of her ruler (and implied lover), she becomes docile.