Over the past week, I returned to my favorite genre—science fiction. A duology that had earned critical acclaim was waiting on my shelf, and I thought a space opera that ends in two books would be a manageable read. So I picked up A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine—the first of the Teixcalaan duology.

In the author introduction, I learned that Arkady Martine is the pen name of AnnaLinden Weller, a researcher in Byzantine history. She also lives with her wife. These two small details stayed with me. I’m aware that knowing an author’s background influences how we read their work—and in this case, it did. This is not a novel about science or even space. It’s about power, politics, and identity in a highly cultured empire. In Teixcalaan, poetry is a diplomatic tool. Every sentence carries multiple meanings, and communication is layered with subtext.

At its core, the story is about a small space station’s struggle to stay independent while remaining useful to a much larger empire. There’s political instability, a looming succession, and the pressure of memory—literal and metaphorical. Mahit Dzmare, the protagonist, is a brilliant ambassador, conscious of her otherness and torn between preserving her identity and wanting to belong. It reminded me of how an American might see an Indian: exotic, interesting, but still an outsider. And how the Indian might quietly want to be part of the American story without losing their own. You could substitute any pair of cultures. That tension is central to Mahit’s character.

But this isn’t a post about Mahit or even the book. It’s about two characters from within the empire—Three Seagrass and Twelve Azalea. They felt like a hidden story embedded within the main plot. A side narrative that carries its own emotional weight.

Three Seagrass and Twelve Azalea. Reed and Petal.

From the inside, most of what they do is technically avoidable. They’re smart, skilled, and deeply Teixcalaanli—products of their culture and proud of it. But they do something unexpected. They deviate from the script. They make personal choices in a world where everything is political, where every word is a career move and every gesture is part of the performance. Their quiet rebellion isn’t dramatic, but it is significant.

Three Seagrass is witty, capable, and strategically charming. She claims to like barbarians, but it’s not about novelty—it’s about contrast. What draws her to Mahit isn’t the exotic, but the friction of an unaligned mind. Her alliance with Mahit starts off as protocol, and perhaps ambition. But somewhere along the way, it becomes personal. Helping Mahit is no longer just part of her job; it becomes something she wants to do, needs to do. It’s about meaning. About mattering in a way that her empire doesn’t always permit.

Twelve Azalea isn’t quiet—he’s playful, bright, and unafraid to poke at the edges of protocol. Where Seagrass is precision, Azalea is momentum. He slips through rules with a smile, bends them with charm, and never stops moving. His loyalty to Seagrass is spirited, not solemn; the kind of support that lifts, teases, dares. He opens doors not just because someone has to, but because it’s fun to see what happens when he does. Through it all, he remains essential—not a shadow, but a spark.

Their relationship isn’t romantic in the traditional sense, but it carries all the signals of deep connection. They move in sync. They anticipate each other’s reactions. And they share glances that say more than full conversations. There’s no declaration, no turning point. Just years of familiarity, of trust built wordlessly over time. It’s the kind of bond that doesn’t need defining—but you feel its absence when it breaks.

When Five Agate—the trusted lieutenant of the soon-to-be emperor—arrives to rescue Mahit, Seagrass, and Azalea from the War Ministry, there’s a scuffle. Gunfire. Confusion. And in that chaos, without ceremony or closure, Twelve Azalea is killed. No speech. No slow-motion final look. Just silence and the void it leaves behind.

Later, Seagrass writes him a poem. In Teixcalaanli culture, that is how you say someone mattered. It’s how you tell the world—quietly, beautifully—that someone’s absence has carved a mark. If you’ve been paying attention to their story, you understand: this was love. Not loud. Not declared. But deeply, unmistakably real.

In a world obsessed with structure and performance, they chose something human. They made decisions that weren’t strategic. They stepped outside the patterns the empire had given them and acted from feeling, not calculation. In doing so, they revealed something the empire often forgets—that beneath the masks, people remain.

There are many fascinating characters in A Memory Called Empire—Mahit, Yskandr, Nineteen Adze. But for me, it’s Reed and Petal who linger. The diplomat and the rebel. The poem and the silence. The ones who made their own story within someone else’s empire.