A Memory Called Empire

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2019

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Prelude-Chapter 4

Chapters 5-8

Chapters 9-12

Chapters 13-17

Chapter 18-Aftermath

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Discussion Questions

Prelude-Chapter 4Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Prelude Summary

Content Warning: A Memory Called Empire depicts death, including death by ritual suicide, violent suppression of protest, and imperialism—as dehumanizing language is used against those targeted by the fictional Teixcalaanli Empire.

A Memory Called Empire opens on the deck of the Ascension’s Red Harvest, a starship of the Teixcalaan Empire—as the narrator describes the maps of star systems on screens. These star maps trace the reach of the Empire and the potential of the Empire to conquer further. The captain of the ship stops at Lsel Station, a mining colony, before returning to the capital. There, Mahit Dzmare, a new ambassador, boards the Ascension’s Red Harvest, leaving Lsel Station to replace Yskandr Aghavn, the previous ambassador. After she leaves, the Lsel Station council discusses her new position, as the narrator explains how miners use a technological implant—an imago device, a state secret—to store people’s memories in each other. Mahit arrives at the Empire’s capital with an imago device storing Yskandr’s memories. Meanwhile, the councilors discuss the issues with this imago device, noting that in Yskandr’s 20 years as ambassador, he’s only returned once to update his device. They discuss the Empire’s urgent request for a new ambassador and Mahit’s aptitude for the position.

Chapter 1 Summary

Like all full chapters, Chapter 1 opens with epigraphs from sources about the Teixcalaanli Empire and its expansionist history. The first epigraph describes Lsel Station, and the second describes how to access the “City,” the center of the Empire. As Mahit arrives, her imago device’s implanted memory of Yskandr shares details about the City. She recalls her and her brother vying for the ambassador position, which created distance between them.

As Mahit ponders the lack of integration between her own mind and Yskandr’s implanted memory, she meets Three Seagrass, a native of the City who will serve as her asekreta, a cultural liaison associated with the Ministry of Information. Navigation requires Three Seagrass’s credentials and cloudhook, a device that covers one’s eye so one may watch media and access select spaces. She tells Mahit that they have to go to the Judiciary to discuss Yskandr’s fate. Yskandr, still not fully integrated, can’t tell Mahit what he did to require a replacement. As Mahit enters the Judiciary, she discovers Yskandr died, and she must see his body. His implanted memory, shocked at the sight of his dead body, retreats from her consciousness. The city ministers, including a Twelve Azalea, discuss Yskandr’s funeral, and one condescendingly asks about burial customs on Lsel Station; Mahit says they cremate the body, which is then eaten by loved ones. The ministers’ theories about Yskandr’s body fail to convince her.

Chapter 2 Summary

Opening with excerpts from a news broadcast of an insurrection and a Lsel Station pilot training manual, Chapter 2 sees Mahit find her quarters and become more acquainted with Three Seagrass. They discuss Yskandr’s death, which Three Seagrass calls accidental. She calls Mahit a barbarian, seemingly without malice. She encourages Mahit to go through her backlog of mail, which she will assist with. They find an invitation to the Emperor’s for a performance, and Mahit uses the occasion to point out how condescending Three Seagrass has been. They then discuss the language of the Teixcalaanli Empire, and its naming conventions. As they talk, Twelve Azalea arrives, and he announces that, as the other ministers left, he used imaging equipment on Yskandr’s preserved body. Twelve Azalea notes Yskandr’s brain is filled with metal, but lacks points of entry. Mahit is shocked, not having considered the possibility of violence in the City. She wonders aloud why Twelve Azalea told her about Yskandr, and he admits he’s testing her. She decides she must see Yskandr’s body for herself.

Chapter 3 Summary

Chapter 3 opens with excerpts from a source on Teixcalaanli funerary practices and a Lsel Station pilot transmission recording his last observations of enemy ships. Mahit, Three Seagrass, and Twelve Azalea journey to the Judiciary to examine Yskandr’s body. Twelve Azalea uses his credentials to enter the Judiciary. Three Seagrass tries to enter her credentials, but Mahit and Twelve Azalea want to keep their group visit discreet.

Entering the room where Yskandr’s body lies, the trio examines him. Three Seagrass and Twelve Azalea don’t understand why there’s a metal device inserted into the back of Yskandr’s neck, near the base of his skull. Having grown up on Lsel Station, Mahit knows this implant is an imago device. Stopping herself from touching the base of her own skull, she and the others discuss what this implant could mean and Yskandr’s role in the imperial court. They notice Nineteen Adze approach. An ezuazuacat, one of Emperor Six Direction’s confidants, Nineteen Adze admits she and Yskandr were close. Mahit lies that Three Seagrass and Twelve Azalea joined her to mourn Yskandr, making up a ceremony that would explain their presence. After Nineteen Adze leaves, the trio decide to cement their secrecy by telling each other secrets. Twelve Azalea believes Yskandr was murdered. Mahit explains the function of the imago device, and Three Seagrass reacts badly, shocked by the merging of identities and memories. Mahit and Three Seagrass return to their quarters, and Mahit checks how many messages await her before falling asleep.

Chapter 4 Summary

Chapter 4 opens with excerpts that detail the culinary delights of the Teixcalaanli Empire and the demographics and growth of miners on Lsel Station. Mahit notes Yskandr still has not reemerged in her consciousness. She worries about their seemingly failed integration. Noticing Three Seagrass is already dressed, she joins her for breakfast, eating a creamy porridge that would be poisonous if it didn’t age for 16 hours.

Mahit and Three Seagrass head toward the Palace, and Mahit notices anti-imperialist propaganda at the entrance of a subway. Three Seagrass assures her that it will be removed soon. As they head to a meeting with Fifteen Engine, Yskandr’s own cultural liaison, Mahit sees sun temples, which trigger a hazy remembrance of an oath between Yskandr and someone else. Fifteen Engine seems reluctant to speak with her, and she develops a dislike for him. He knows about imago devices, which shocks Mahit.

As the trio talks, a bomb goes off, killing Fifteen Engine and injuring Mahit. Three Seagrass rushes to her, saying she does not want to explain her death to the Emperor. As the City’s electronic defenses activate, Three Seagrass uses her cloudhook to open a door. While she gains access, she inadvertently touches a wall. Incapacitated by electronic defenses, she loses consciousness. The Sunlit, the City’s militia, secure the location and demand Mahit go into custody for her own protection. She refuses, demanding that she be allowed to meet Nineteen Adze and that Three Seagrass be taken to a hospital. The Sunlit relent.

Prelude-Chapter 4 Analysis

These opening chapters contrast the grandeur of the futuristic Teixcalaanli Empire with the practicality of Lsel Station. They also emphasize the role of history in creating identity and political structures, clarifying technology such as the imago device—which embodies Construction of Identity Through Memory by literally implanting memories in people for the sake of knowledge. As the Teixcalaanli Empire is an empire, Imperialism and Cultural Assimilation necessitate Mahit’s role as an ambassador. After the death of her predecessor, Yskandr of Lsel Station, she faces culture clash, especially when it comes to funerary practices and simmering tensions between capital factions. These factors hint at Yskandr’s mysterious death and the value of his life.

In a show of power, the Ascension’s Red Harvest, an imperial warship with a map of Teixcalaanli space, arrives to pick up Mahit. Capable of destroying Lsel Station, this ship brings the “poison gifts” of the Empire: “trade agreements and poetry, taxes and the promise of protection, black-muzzled energy weapons and the sweeping architecture of a new governor’s palace” (13). Ranging from creative to destructive, these gifts are a threat. Accepting them means becoming a mark on the Empire’s star charts, part of the “division of the universe into empire and otherwise, into the world and not the world” (13). The allure of the Empire is power, but it is no less a threat to those it has annexed.

The influence and popularity of Teixcalaanli verse snare the young from Lsel Station, with Councilor Amnardbat noting Mahit and Yskandr share “[t]he same aptitudes. The same attitude. The same xenophilic love for a heritage that was not the heritage Amnardbat protected: a documented fascination with Teixcalaanli literature” (16). While Lsel Station’s younger demographic begins to prefer local literature, like the graphic novel The Perilous Frontier, memorizing imperial verse remains an avenue to prosperity at the heart of the Empire. Knowledge is cultural currency. Although the Teixcalaanli bureaucrats who know about imago devices blanch at the idea of mechanical memory and its preservation, they prize memory above all else. When Mahit discusses funerary practices from Lsel Station, the city ministers’ preservation of Yskandr’s body reminds her that the Empire’s ethos about the dead transfers to the living as well: 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?” (35). Lsel Station preserves memory as well, but its preservation connects to profession rather than poetry; for the Empire, there’s no difference between the two.

Steeped in literary traditions that stretch back to the Empire’s planet-bound days, Teixcalaan embodies both innovation and tradition. Teixcalaan is governed by an Emperor and an “entire artificial intelligence that kept the Jewel of the World in operation, all the sewers and the elevators and every code-locked door” (93). Despite these systems of technological control, the City appears less safe than Yskandr’s outdated image of it. The malfunctioning of the City’s AI systems and the bombing that injures Mahit and kills Yskandr’s former cultural liaison demonstrate The Collectivism of Information and Artificial Intelligence. As ixplanatlim, or scientists, recover the injured Three Seagrass, they explain her injury as “neurostunning, a mistake in the wiring, a fluctuation in the numbers of the enormous algorithmic AI that the City’s autonomic functions” (101). In other words, despite having advanced technology at his disposal, Emperor Six Direction struggles to maintain collective control of Teixcalaan—the novel’s futuristic lens reframes his hubris as an inability to control a computer, upon which his empire relies.