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“These are your successors?” Amaranth continues boldly, eyeing both younger priests.

Their modest priestly robes fall to their knees, and red trousers and slippers cover the rest of them.

Only faces and arms are bare. Each has a hood pulled over their short hair, the sheer cowl hanging to the bridge of their noses in a pretense of hiding their eyes.

Beside them, Amaranth is naked. She studies them as if intending to eat them.

The Holy Peace’s humor disappears slowly as she watches Amaranth, and Iriset guesses why: Neither the Vertex Seal nor the Mistress is supposed to show preference for who the Silent priests choose to lead them, but somehow Amaranth is making a move.

Now her talk of a target makes more sense. Though Iriset can’t read exactly what Amaranth communicates to the priests, they certainly can. None of them approve, but the mirané priest who barely hid his dislike of Amaranth’s attire trembles once.

“How very handsome you both are,” she says.

“Balance does not require beauty,” says the more pleasant of the two. “Only discipline.”

“Both please the Moon-Eater.”

“And discipline pleases your brother,” the less pleasant one says.

“Oh yes.” Amaranth skims a painted hand down his bare arm. “The balance between us maintains the whole empire. Seal and Mistress, Silence and Hunger.”

The priest manages not to flinch away from her, and Iriset finds a moment to admire his discipline, indeed. Amaranth’s touch is a thing to drown in.

“Her Glory understands discipline,” the Holy Peace says. “To please the god every day.”

“And herself the rest of the time,” says Beremé mé Adora, the head of the mirané council, as she joins them.

Amaranth smiles sharply. “Just because I am not always pleasing you, Beremé, it does not follow that I am always pleased. It is a simple matter”—she flicks her glance at the Holy Peace again—“to displease me.”

“Something to take care with, Your Glory,” the Holy Peace answers. “Lest your displeasure find its way to the Moon-Eater.”

“The Moon-Eater accepts everything I offer him,” she says, gaze firmly on the old priest. Bold, daring.

It’s like a confrontation between cousins of the Little Cat’s court.

A dominance challenge. She wonders which Amaranth favors, and why.

Iriset takes a drink of her honey beer to cover again the disconcerting hum on her tongue.

Her movement draws Beremé’s shrewd glance and Iriset instantly regrets it.

None of the other handmaidens pulled attention.

“One must be displeased on occasion,” says the unpleasant priest, caught up in the conversation, “if one is to be alive.”

“Surely there is displeasure in death, Brother,” answers the other priest.

“Not for the dead, who return to Aharté’s Holy Silence.”

Amaranth breaks her challenge-stare with the Holy Peace. “Wisely spoken, Brother,” she says, marking Brother with an intimacy that’s anything but familial.

The poor priest’s lips part and he says nothing, lowering his eyes fast. The nicer priest raises his eyebrow, clearly suppressing a smile.

Amaranth has won.

She nods to the Holy Peace and moves away. Beremé follows at her side, maneuvering between Her Glory and Sidoné. “Crass, Amaranth,” the sharp-faced mirané prince says, obviously amused. “But somehow still elegant.”

“I thought he might hate me a little if I made him hard while standing next to his Holy Peace.”

“If he hates you and still is appointed to the council, you won’t have done yourself a favor,” Sidoné says.

Amaranth glances at her, and Iriset is positioned perfectly to see the tilt of her brow that suggested Her Glory knows Sidoné only speaks up in order to disagree with Beremé.

“But the Holy Peace will have to appoint him fully aware that he’ll make an enemy of the Moon-Eater.

She can’t pretend ignorance now. None of them can. ”

Beremé says to Sidoné, “And if he hates her openly, even Lyric will notice and take less of his counsel.”

“Why drive a wedge between Lyric and his council?”

Beremé gives the impression of rolling her eyes without doing so.

Iriset suddenly realizes: It isn’t the mirané Amaranth wants her brother to trust less.

Sidoné seems to understand, too, and scowls. Her glance at Amaranth, though, is shocked. Is Sidoné a true believer?

That’s—Iriset turns her head toward the throne, feeling a sudden draw of…

humming? No, something insubstantial. A tug of forces.

Except, this argument is about alliances on Lyric’s privilege council.

The Holy Peace is ready to appoint someone to replace her.

Iriset should be paying avid attention. It’s in her best interest. But something near the throne is strange.

Everyone in the hall moves around like they don’t feel it, like Iriset is the only one not wearing a null wire.

“Your handmaiden is bored,” Beremé drawls.

Her Glory frowns at Iriset, who directs her attention back to the game.

“Tell me who fashioned this dress for you,” the mirané prince continues, asking Amaranth but eyeing Iriset with slight flicks of her gaze and side-eyes—the only polite way to study a face.

Iriset stares at Beremé’s opal rings instead.

Opals welcome design, and the rings are likely functional as well as pretty.

“Menna is not capable of such imagination.”

“A friend in the Ecstatic School, Beremé. Do you think you know all my friends?” Amaranth teases.

“I should hope so.”

Her Glory laughs prettily and dismisses her handmaidens with a broad, elegant wave.

Iriset slips away immediately.

A dark brown man with a flat nose stops her, saying her name a bit too loud. There’s a ripple in the nearby people, whisperings of Little Cat , but then the man introduces himself as a merchant interested to know if Her Glory has discussed garlic tariffs.

For a moment Iriset can’t even think what garlic is.

She shakes her head, avoiding him, but is interrupted by another man, older, with a fresh honey beer for her.

He’s mirané, claims to be related to Bey and Lapis mérs Matsimet, and curious to know her better.

Iriset takes the beer and listens just long enough to not seem rude, before excusing herself with a tight smile.

But a sudden tug on a trailing scarf from her robe nearly trips her, sloshing her drink.

An older miran touches his forehead in apology with the absolute fakest expression of sincerity she’s ever seen.

Someone else snickers. Iriset clenches her jaw.

A mirané woman steps forward and offers to help Iriset tie up that scarf and, as she does so, chatters at Iriset about a garden exhibit during the Days of Mercy that her family is hoping Her Glory might visit.

The woman’s friend taps a fan against her thin ceramic mask and says they should be asking about the soon-to-arrive Singix’s interest in the flowers of Moonshadow.

Iriset murmurs about asking, then darts away.

She moves through the party nearer to the throne in a spiraling pattern, as though she seeks to lie to herself about her target.

She keeps her eyes down behind her mask, not wishing to be caught again, though it’s good—it has to be—that she’s being sought out for access to Her Glory.

It means she’s a known quantity, and some courtiers are beginning to test her.

The ones willing to look past her parentage, at least.

Can she use mirané networking to rescue her father? She doesn’t have enough time for developing a vast web of conspirators!

“Iriset mé Isidor,” says a miran, sidling up beside her. It’s the ambiguously gendered person who laughed so delightedly at Amaranth’s outfit. “I was sorry to hear you weren’t wearing a cat mask again.”

Iriset’s smile is pinched. “Can’t repeat myself.”

The miran laughs the same tinkling laugh. “Hehet méra Davith. Allow me to entertain you for a moment.”

Iriset hums, looking for a way out. She certainly won’t trust anyone who approaches so openly, only after she’s separated from Her Glory.

“That dress truly is spectacular. The delicate use of—what is it? Friction-buttons?”

She stops. “I’m sure if I knew I’d be sworn to secrecy. But you could ask Her Glory.”

Hehet leans in, all his straight hair shifting across his shoulders.

He’s got at least thirty-two glittering stars painted with some sort of mica paint shimmering all over his face.

It’s a very successful mask if the goal is to obscure or confuse features.

“Ask directly? My dear, asking requires an answer and I’d never put Her Glory in the position of having to lie to me. ”

“But it’s well and good if I do?”

“Naturally.” Hehet’s grin is as spectacular as his starry mask, and look, there’s glitter in his teeth. “Now, if you ever want someone to lie to you , talk with Forez méra Baret over there, leaning on Dove méra Curro, who never lies but always seems to be.”

“Sounds like they don’t have much to talk about,” she murmurs.

“One leads a faction who only believes in undercutting your mistress, the other has no faction at all, which is an impressive feat.”

“What do you want from me?” Iriset asks, finally looking directly at Hehet. The dazzle of glitter on his cheeks might actually be made of tiny mirrors.

Hehet puts a scandalized hand over his breast. “Such directness!”

She waits.

With a sighing little pout, he says, “I want to be the friend of Her Glory’s friend, of course.”

“The Moon-Eater’s Mistress and I aren’t friends,” she snaps, exasperated. Glancing at the throne. Why can’t anyone feel that bizarre hum she’s feeling?

In the sudden silence Iriset looks back at Hehet. He wears an unbelievably satisfied smile.

“Excuse me,” she says, without excuse, and ducks away. She pushes past several people, hoping she remembers to ask Sidoné about this annoying person later.

She approaches the throne itself, cutting behind it to avoid the Vertex Seal where he stands chatting with Ambassador Erxan. Iriset wants to stare at him: Her brief glance told her he isn’t wearing paint at all, and a small white mask lies discarded around his neck. He took her thoughts to heart.

But behind the throne is where the tug of threads has its core.

Crouched barefoot on the shallow steps of the dais, leaning its rear against the moon rock forming the throne’s base is a man—or a man-shaped thing.

Worn gray trousers tie at its ankles and about its whip-thin waist, and a dark sleeveless robe hangs open over its chest. The thing’s skin is a washed pink, drained of true color, as if once it had been a glorious, oiled miran, but centuries of shadows have withered its rich skin from that red-brown of the Moon-Eater’s moon into this sickly salamander pink.

Even its long, lank hair is the same shade, its lips, its fingernails, and what should have been the whites of its eyes.

Around a vivid pink pupil its iris is faceted black.

Like shards of black diamonds drawn together and glimmering sharp.

A thick steel collar rings its neck. A chain is attached to the collar, its other end bolted to a ring at the base of the Vertex Seal throne. No one else in the room pays it any attention.

Iriset can barely breathe.

She slips nearer, unable to resist, and offers her warm cup of beer.

The creature takes it in both pink hands, and its long fingers brush the back of Iriset’s knuckles. She shivers, and the creature’s skin flushes silvery for the briefest moment, then falls to its dreary pink again.

Iriset stares. It drinks the beer in one long pour, its diamond-black eyes on Iriset the entire time.

“I’m so sorry,” she whispers as she accepts the empty cup again. “I’ll bring you more if I can.”

She does not know why she makes the promise, except that her inner design thrums with power at its nearness. Its lips part and sharp pink-ivory teeth show: a line of tiny fangs. It says a word she doesn’t know, in a rasping voice like tearing bark off a tree.

Shaking her head, Iriset backs away. Suddenly she’s terrified. Her eyes widen. Being noticed by such a thing cannot suit her role, her scheme. She can’t sympathize with this prisoner when rescuing another prisoner is her goal.

As she leaves, her blood slows to its regular paces, and ecstatic force pops in her ears; rising a tingle at the back of her neck; falling a churn in her gut; and flow flow flow like nausea.

She hadn’t felt any forces when she was near it, but had somehow thought she felt more!

What a mystery, but too dangerous of one.

“Poor fairy,” says a voice, catching her. Diaa of Moonshadow, Amaranth and Lyric’s mother. Iriset covers her eyes with her fingers and says nothing.

“It’s been here longer than I’ve been alive,” Diaa continues softly, putting her arm around Iriset to murmur.

“For a hundred years and more, captured trying to murder the Moon-Eater’s Mistress during the reign of Ladalir mé Idris Her Glory.

There is nothing you can do, hiha, but I always approve of the new courtiers who are affected by its presence. ”

With that, Diaa squeezes her and floats away to a new encounter.

Iriset doesn’t know if she should be impressed or horrified that the mother of the Vertex Seal considers such monstrosity no more than a gauge with which to judge the personality of her children’s friends.