Page 28

The blade guides her, and she shifts one step, then another, lifting it to slowly swipe down, turning toward the tug of rising force drawn up from the crystal ground by the sun.

She reaches, gathering it without cutting, but bending instead, twisting the rising force—it scatters around her, and she frowns just a little.

Heat kisses her all over, and she turns with the cutting edge vertical.

She lowers it, imagining how it would feel to be barefoot, bare-bodied, dancing through the natural forces with this blade as a guide.

Iriset stumbles a little, her arm already beginning to ache from holding the heavy blade.

Rising force presses to her back, lifting the small hairs of her neck. Two fingers brush her elbow and slide down her skin to her wrist.

“Like this,” the Vertex Seal says in her ear. Only his two fingers touch her, but she feels the flush of rising force, like pure light and yearning vines, up and down her body from heel to nape.

Iriset’s eyes snap open and she cranes her neck to glance at him.

Lyric’s attention is on her arm, on his two fingers gently lifting her wrist. He glances briefly at her and she lowers her eyes fast. As if given permission he cups the base of her hand, making a basket of his to cradle her and the hilt.

He moves her hand, her arm, and moves with her.

She can’t stop her popping ecstatic from spiking out at him.

In the corner of her eye she sees his lips quirk up. “If I wasn’t fresh from the temple that pop might be distracting.”

Merciful Silence, the Vertex Seal is flirting with her. Iriset fumbles Garnet’s force-blade and jerks away, spinning to lower her head and cover her eyes with her fists clenched tight around the hilt. “Your Glory,” she says. She knocks the cold pommel to her forehead.

“Give me that,” Garnet says. Amusement paints his tone thick.

Iriset relinquishes the blade but keeps her eyes lowered, splaying her fingers like a mask instead. Lyric moves nearer, the priest-red of his robes swishing in her vision, bloody against the bright floor of the Crystal Desert.

“There are classes for wielding the force-blade,” the Vertex Seal says, unaffected. He gently lowers her hands from her face. Barely touching her, which is so much worse than if he’d woven their fingers together.

“Ah,” she says smartly, tingling all over from crystal dust and sweat and also the absolute burn of how badly she wants to fling herself at him, or almost anyone really, just to relieve this pressure. “I, ah, am learning with Sidoné. How to fight. With my hands. Hand-to-hand, I mean.”

Unbelievable.

But Lyric smiles just enough to tilt his eyes. “You didn’t learn in the undermarket?”

“Not me.” Iriset flicks her glance at Garnet. I’m harmless , she tries to project. “I was much more invested in the security-design side of defense.”

Garnet snorts, then says, “You have a meeting with Baladin Yadira shortly, Your Glory.”

“Yes. Excuse me, Iriset.”

“I need to get cleaned up for my last lesson with Ambassador Erxan,” she says as if it matters that she’s busy, too.

“Oh yes.” Lyric looks out to the south, toward the gates through which his intended will walk tomorrow. “Thank you,” he murmurs.

Iriset bows lower and waits for them to leave. When their soft footsteps have faded enough, she straightens. She presses her hands against her belly and whispers, “ Fuck. ”

But seven days before the initial total eclipse, on the ninth day of the quad of the Smiling Sun, Iriset receives permission to assist Raia in ans security work.

The quartz yards surrounding the palace complex are flat planes of crystal boulders, quartz sand, crushed shells, and pools shaped to honor the forms of force in whose quadrant they shine.

In the summer, heat lifts in visible waves, reflecting off the surface every hour of the day but for midday, when the sun is partially eclipsed by the moon.

Palace architects set knot obelisks low to the ground to anchor threads of design like a web to catch the naturally occurring rising force and direct it into tight channels: The excess energy powers part of the palace wind system to keep the force-fans turning.

A century ago, enterprising rebels hijacked the channels and used ecstatic force to trigger a massive fire hot enough to burn flesh.

The Vertex Seal’s youngest son died in the attack.

But summer life in the palace is intolerable without the wind system, and so instead of tearing out the design, the architects assigned to its regular maintenance will all be executed if anything goes wrong.

The work Iriset does with Raia is not the usual reorientation of the security of the quartz yards; it’s specialized for the first royal wedding in thirty-one years.

As they crouch in the heat, hair tied high and white cloth masks covering their necks, sweat slides down Iriset’s temples and her breathing thins.

Tiny sheer-moths with fibrous, fluffy wings kiss their tongues to Iriset’s skin for the salt, while overhead grass kites soar in perfect squares, soaking heat and lifting on the summer eddies.

Their sharp shadows slice occasionally across the sand.

Waterskins slump beside Raia’s toolbox, warming unpleasantly but still drinkable.

Iriset grumbles to herself that this would go quicker without her robe, so she could use every surface of her skin to sense the forces.

But they’d both be burnt crisp—anyone would be, this time of year, under this high sun.

They ought to have been working at night, when the sun is no obstacle, but that’s when the aesthetic designers swarm the yards to ready the wedding decorations and entertainments.

Raia’s careful work impresses her, the intricate way an braids knots within knots so that the security threads weave seamlessly into the anchors already planted, and when an hands two knots off to her it’s with an elegant hooked motion, ans stylus transferring force to hers easily.

Iriset smiles as they work, at the sheer relief of designing again.

She only wishes she could ask for her silk glove: She’d made it for exactly this sort of design, when stretching force-ribbons between multiple hands is necessary, for the glove replaces the stylus in gripping and directing the forces, so one might pinch or pull, and use the multiple fingers for intricate knotting.

But that would certainly give her away.

As she works, a tiny hole gnaws at her heart: falling force dissipated with longing.

Even the heat, even the sticky, sweaty discomfort, the cramped ankles, and sore neck she gains by the end of the day remind her of her favorite work.

But by Silence, Iriset relishes the focus.

This is the closest she’s come to feeling like herself in quads, and she won’t resent it.

It’s bliss to participate in this massive design, fixed with various dominant forces, perfectly balanced, perfectly attuned, and meant to web over the whole of the palace complex.

It’s the largest design she’s worked on, and though not the most complex, everything else she’d designed had been intended for solo work. She could not have built this alone.

But she can certainly take advantage of it. She knew this would be the perfect excuse to study the layers of palace security. By the end of these few short days, she’ll be an expert. Garnet was right to hesitate. It’s worth the wait.

If only she could tag the work with her name. Sign the knots silk silk silk . Silk was here.

That last day in the quartz yards, sweating as they break for water, she asks Raia about the creature behind the throne.

“Oh,” an says softly, wiping ans forehead with the end of ans cloth mask. Raia glances at the damp spot turning the linen translucent against ans fingers. “The numen.”

Iriset frowns. She thought Diaa of Moonshadow was being facetious when she called it a fairy. “Numen are real?”

“Numena, plural.” Raia’s voice remains distant. “It’s from a pre-Sarenpet word that means something like ‘those who manifest’ because they appear from nothing, supposedly.”

(The Moon-Eater’s mother gave them that name, when she said they must be a people in order to matter, and people have names. To her it meant to express .)

“I thought they were only a story—or all gone from here after the Apostate Age.”

What Iriset knows of numena now is only this: They’re magic. Not force-crafters, not architects, but magic, because there is no internal logic to their ways, no bearing on nature or science. And Iriset does not believe in magic.

Raia says, “I understand they are rare, and they stay far away from the empire because of our design. They are creatures of change, of chaos, and we put everything into stability and balance.”

Iriset stares at Raia’s discomfort, at ans refusal to glance toward her or angle ans head in a way to indicate an listened without making rude eye contact. She says, “That numen chained behind the throne is not healthy.”

An flips ans hands awkwardly. “What can we do? He tried to kill the Moon-Eater’s Mistress.”

“Not Amaranth.”

“So he should be freed?”

“Or killed.”

Raia looks at her eyes then, shocked. “Iriset.”

“It is not mercy, or kindness, keeping him this way. I spoke to him, and he is a living creature. Would you chain a dog for a hundred years?”

“You see yourself in his collar.”

She holds Raia’s gaze, neither agreeing nor denying.

“I will not allow that to happen to you, Iriset,” an says with quiet passion.

“Not even if I attempt to murder the—”

Raia’s hand flashes out and covers her mouth. “Never say such a thing!”

Ans fingers smell of lilies and quartz dust and sweat, and they tremble against her lips. Iriset lowers her eyes and an lowers ans hand. “I am sorry, Raia,” she says, swallowing her anger.