Page 24

Poor fairy

I riset leaves the apostate tower in a state of alarm so restless it could be felt by anyone sensitive to threads of force. The Seal guard says nothing, only moves after her as she darts back to the palace.

Curses on her father’s integrity for refusing her help!

Iriset closes her eyes, pressing tears out, and grits her teeth against a wail. She keeps going.

Sweat itches her scalp, runs down her spine, and she suddenly, halfway across the quartz yards, jerks at the winding cloth mask, tearing at it, pulling it out of its knots and twists.

She frees it, and her thick brown hair falls down, knotted in places, braided in others, but messy for how she’s undone the mask.

Her stylus falls to the path and she grabs it up; it was hidden in the carefully twisted headdress, and the scrap of silk that is her craftmask, too.

Her perfect craftmask. It’s genius! And she made it from scraps and stolen tools!

It should be a triumph. But she crumples it angrily and stuffs it into the front of her robe.

Her cloth mask is pale orange, and she snaps it out fully into its broad rectangle, then settles it over her head with the short side over her face, the rest falling over her loose hair.

She finds the pinholes sewn in and pins it in place against the braids at her temples.

She’ll not display her grief, her fury and frustration, for everyone.

From beneath the sheer mask, the world turns various shades of orange and red, shadows of fire.

Watching her is Sidoné mé Dalir.

Iriset stops. Her shoulders heave as she wrestles herself under control.

Sidoné cocks her head and Iriset waits for an I told you so or false sympathy. But the body-twin merely says, “Her Glory would like you to help her with the dress and go with us to the mirané hall for its presentation.”

Iriset blinks her tear-tacky lashes. She’d forgotten that the scarf-dress she designed is complete. Delivered to Her Glory this morning.

“I can tell her you’re ill,” Sidoné offers skeptically.

“No.”

After dismissing the Seal guard, Sidoné takes a corner of Iriset’s mask and wipes it gently against Iriset’s cheek. She steps nearer and keeps her eyes on her work until she’s dried away every smear of crying. “It’s hard, sometimes,” she says.

“What is?” Iriset demands, not wanting to share compassion. She’s alone, not a member of some sisterhood of handmaidens.

But Sidoné pinches Iriset’s chin exactly like a scolding sister. She angles Iriset’s face toward her own. “Holding everything together.”

Iriset tugs free of Sidoné’s grip.

“Being forced to remain calm at Amaranth’s side will help you find balance in it. Come with me, and be what you are here to be.”

Iriset goes. She has little choice. And Sidoné is correct: She needs focus.

No one in the women’s petal inquires after her visit, thankfully.

But Iriset is still rather sullen as she helps Her Glory into the ecstatically linked scarves, careful not to touch her skin when possible.

Amaranth notices and leans in, or turns unexpectedly, teasing Iriset with physical contact until Iriset huffs herself into smiling, too.

It’s good. Amaranth acts like her friend, and that will work to Iriset’s advantage when she makes her next move. It must.

Anis mé Ario brings out a long, lacquered box of paints and artfully decorates not only Amaranth’s face but all the handmaidens’, including Sidoné’s.

Ziyan makes a point of asking Iriset which colors will complement Her Glory’s dress best. Iriset pauses just long enough for Ziyan to know Iriset understands the other handmaiden is trying to include her, to make up for previous rejections. They both wish Nielle were here.

When they’re finished, thick black lines their eyes, small interlocking blue and white four-point stars dance along their cheekbones, and mirané brown covers their mouths.

On Her Glory and the mirané handmaidens, Anis lines the lips with thin black so that their mouths match their skin in perfect mirané tone but stand out just as their eyes do.

The same color darkens Iriset’s lips, and Istof’s, but while the rich color flatters Istof’s mouth, turning her cool tan skin coppery, the mirané brown clashes with Iriset’s dusky peach cheeks. On her, the color is like a wound.

For Anis’s turn, Iriset is voted artist for her skill with drawing.

She doesn’t bother pretending she can’t do it anymore, and lines Anis’s eyes and mouth exquisitely.

Iriset places the four-point stars perfectly to balance the thickness of Anis’s lips with the square shape of her jaw.

And she reshapes the shadows of Anis’s brow with a curving line of black.

It’s then, looking at Anis’s painted face, that Iriset feels better.

When Her Glory sweeps into the mirané hall with her handmaidens, the impression they give is of a god and her mirrored avatars.

The Hall of Princes not only houses the throne but is home to the mirané council, any session of justice presided over by the Vertex Seal, royal announcements, and the intermittent social event.

The latter is the occasion for that evening’s gathering.

The peristyle court is built of towering dark wood, raising stacked domes in patterns four layers high.

The central dome caps directly over the Vertex Seal, its apex pierced by a star-eye window through which the moon always glows.

Webs of flow force tied with ecstatic knots spread between the columns, and in their spectrum flower petals hover, along with faceted glass beads reflecting rainbows.

At the touch of an architect bearing the proper stylus, the webs rearrange into new patterns: a rose of light, then a few moments later a four-point star, and after that a word of power that could be read in line with the rest of the webs to create a poem honoring the Vertex Seal or Aharté.

It’s a fancier, more intricate version of city graffiti.

The occasion is to welcome home a frontier ambassador who’d been stationed along the Cloud Ranges.

General Bey méra Matsimet appears in glorious uniform, and octagonals of other soldiers from both the city army and the Empire Forces Army scatter throughout the crowd to honor the ambassador.

The mirané council attends in full, small kings from various city precincts, prominent architects in the competing colors of their specialty schools, artists, priests, and all the spectacle of the empire.

Amaranth blows through it like lightning, drawing every eye, flirting, arguing, and deigning to bless with her attention, flanked always by her armed body-twin and her handmaidens.

The gown of scarves is perfect, shifting with her movements, threatening to bare every fold and curve of her body but never—quite—doing so.

The architects salivate over its delicate design and no few miran applaud delicately.

A lanky and unusually gender-ambiguous miran laughs in delight, then chides Amaranth on lack of subtlety.

Amaranth quietly replies, “Hardly obvious enough for my target.”

It makes several people markedly uncomfortable, Iriset notices with interest. Amaranth is the Moon-Eater’s Mistress and everyone knows exactly what she does every morning, for the line of Mistresses have done the same for hundreds of years.

Yet here is a thin mirané woman whose lashes flutter with distaste when Her Glory passes; there a cloud-pale Ceres man in the ambassador’s party whose neck and cheeks spot absolute fuchsia and he cannot speak but to sputter as he stares at the low side curve of her breast bared by a diaphanous blue scarf.

It’s a quick way to see who doesn’t quite accept the Moon-Eater’s Mistress for exactly what she represents. Iriset wonders if Sidoné is keeping a list. Somebody should be.

Iriset does her best to play her role, careful to move with the other handmaidens, copying their light steps, holding her hands loose as they do.

Sometimes they achieve an illusion that they’re mere extensions of Amaranth’s dress.

Nobody pays Iriset attention except as part of the Moon-Eater’s Mistress’s whole.

It should have been strange and soothing: Iriset is not inclined to fading into any background, either as her father’s daughter or as apostate, but this way, all eyes are on her yet not taking her apart. What an intriguing tension!

Her Glory is given a cup of honeyed beer, and nods that her handmaidens can accept, and Iriset does so hurriedly. It’s heavy on her tongue but dulls the taste of that humming energy.

She hears Sidoné hiss slightly just before Amaranth slinks toward a Silent priest with wiry white hair stuck out from her mirané skull in tight curls, and deep smiling wrinkles aging her face.

Silent priests (and Lyric méra Esmail) wear their faces clean-shaven, and Iriset wonders if the fashion was intended to favor fem-forward bodies.

“Amaranth,” the old priest says warmly. She’s flanked by two younger mirané men, also in the high-collared sleeveless red robes of Silence.

One lets his eyes take Amaranth all in before lowering his gaze politely, the other’s mouth tightens in disapproval before he smooths his expression bland again and touches both eyelids.

“Holy Peace,” Amaranth says, inclining her head ever so slightly.

Ah, she’s not any Silent priest but their most tranquil, the head of the order. Iriset doesn’t know her name and recalls that divesting oneself of even a name is considered necessary for achieving true Silence. A name disrupts balance just by existing.

( There is a thing the Silent priests and the numena agree upon! To the priests a name is a shackle to break, to the numena an angle for interrogating even the most basic principles of the universe, for when we are the ones to put names to those principles, we simultaneously conjure them.

Do you know who named the fifth force?)