Page 32

The cult of Silence

T wo hundred years ago, perhaps the most famous Vertex Seal lived: Safiyah mé Idris, better known as Safiyah the Bloody.

Second born, she spent her early years as the Moon-Eater’s Mistress before her brother was assassinated and she ascended as the Vertex Seal.

Perhaps due to her bloodthirsty nature and the violent loss of her brother, Safiyah grasped the reins of power with war-gauntleted hands, drove enemies from Moonshadow, and expanded the empire by four times in her forty-year rule.

It was she who took the army northeast through the Reskik to the upper prairies to conquer Erbus, erecting force-steeples to drive the Cloud Kings north to the mountains.

Safiyah then pushed southwest through the deserts and into dark forests to encircle Mirithia and consume it all the way to the coast and the Ceres Remnants.

Safiyah the Bloody continued her grandfather’s campaign against the canopy cities of the Bow in the far western volcanic ranges.

She brought back riches as well as an endless stream of captives.

She instituted the first assimilation laws to join the strength of her prisoners of war to that of the empire, creating a new working class that paid taxes and prayed to Aharté.

Safiyah’s sweeping legal reform regulated marriage, worship, cohabitation, pleasure, servitude, art, and fashion, bringing it all into line with the Holy Design of She Who Loves Silence.

The old marriage laws of Safiyah’s are the most frequently protested across the seven major cities of the empire, because first-generation citizens are not legally allowed to marry within their ethnic groups, and the law is widely considered to be archaic.

It should be an easy law to overturn, as these days there are hardly any first-generations to begin with anymore.

The small kings of the various precincts of Moonshadow often bring deregulation proposals to the mirané council, but the miran are too invested in their own superiority to allow any to pass.

You see, the marriage laws are foundational to other laws, such as the one stating that children born outside of Aharté-permitted marriages receive a secondary citizenship that refuses them access to many public institutions, such as the Great Schools or tax-free apprenticeship programs. Changing the first-generation assimilation laws would require reformation of the whole marriage legal system and the miran can’t have that.

This is all to say that everyone has an opinion about marriage laws, and during these days leading up to the Vertex Seal’s wedding, a few caricatures of the Vertex Seal’s non-miran intended show up as design graffiti in several market districts.

In some she’s depicted in all her Ceres beauty until the graffiti ghost writing crawls down her skin to reveal burnt-brown mirané beneath.

In others, she births what are intended to be several demons of the Ceres religion.

If Iriset saw the work, she’d be very impressed by the artisan-designer who created it.

The graffiti is destroyed almost as soon as it’s unleashed, but there’s only so much the city army and investigator-designers can do to trace it until somebody invents a method for tracking design signatures.

The unrest would have likely stuck with such minor protestations and entertaining satire except for an incident with one of the Silent cults.

The nice way to describe the cults is to call them belief systems or small organizations that do not comply perfectly with the strictures of the Vertex Seal’s Silence.

They range from secretive philosophy clubs that like to debate predestination to hidden chapels worshipping Old Sarenpet local spirits to Sarians waking up in the pitch of night to light candles for certain constellations.

This particular cult is a very old cult of Aharté, in fact, sublimated into the empire with the colonization of the Osahar during the Apostate Age.

They are devoted to She Who Loves Silence in every way, but they claim that while creating new human design is, of course, apostatical, healing what design already exists cannot possibly offend Aharté.

Too bad that under Lyric méra Esmail His Glory, the only orthodox uses of design for healing are external applications like bandages or warmth-patches.

Even ecstatic stitches are considered too invasive.

It happens that the unborn child of a woman in this cult falls into distress, and her priest designs a belt that balances all the woman’s forces, holding her inner design in perfect alignment to regulate the child’s health.

Both the woman and her priest are arrested, for though the belt is external, such a powerful tool certainly affects the growing inner and outer design of the baby.

Were the child meant to live as a part of the Holy Design, Aharté would save it.

Therefore, to keep it falsely well goes against the Silent pattern.

Someone begins a (true) rumor that the Vertex Seal will grant mercy to the pregnant woman during the Days of Mercy, but until then the woman is imprisoned and doesn’t have access to her belt. She’s ill, her child might die.

Amaranth has complete sympathy for the woman’s actions, but not for her being found out. “If you know the risk, understand the consequences, and believe you must act against the law for the good of your family, I admire that. Family is all. But once you are caught, you are caught.”

At that, Sidoné glances askew at Iriset, who lowers her eyes and chooses not to argue with Her Glory today.

There’s no way for her to win such an argument without examples of forbidden architecture she herself has performed.

And in a certain way she agrees with Amaranth, and her father certainly would.

Being caught means you aren’t quite good enough.

“But the consequences are harsh,” Sidoné says. “Without mercy, she—if she survives birth—will be put in a work camp for years, and her child adopted into a devoted family away from her.”

Amaranth shrugs and pops a strawberry into her mouth. “With so many pieces of the empire always in motion, any disruption or flaw must be destroyed before it can spread.”

“You did not destroy Iriset,” Sidoné says, to Iriset’s chagrin.

“How can you imply our hiha is a flaw?” Her Glory asks with innocent eyelid-fluttering.

Fortunately for Iriset, whose jaw clenches so hard she thinks her teeth will crack—and that she’d have to fix with apostasy—she’s summoned then to the side of Singix for the princess’s afternoon visitations.

Singix continues to be easy to get along with, maintaining a low-key sense of humor about all the graffiti and gossip, and if she knows—which surely she does by now—of Iriset’s criminal background, she doesn’t appear to care.

She treats Iriset as a companion, not a servant, and continues to teach her more vocabulary and more intricate, poetical patterns of formal grammar.

Iriset would like to ask what Singix thinks of her future husband’s likelihood of granting mercy to this apostate mother, as Singix isn’t devoted to Silence, nor expected to be as long as she breaks no tenets.

But first of all, Singix has barely spent any time with Lyric yet, and second of all, Iriset doesn’t know why she suddenly cares about religious philosophy.

It’s just the bullshit maneuverings of the complex imperial laws, and has nothing to do with her.

Silk’s apostasy is blatant and she wouldn’t even ask mercy for herself.

(Little does Iriset know there are already the first threads of a cult developing devoted to Silk and her outrageous, but fascinating, theories published in that brief series of pamphlets. Oops.)

The day before the first eclipse, Iriset and Ambassador Erxan are to escort Singix of the Beautiful Twilight to a concert on the rising side of the crater, where river caves link together to create an echo the musicians have learned to harness.

Iriset is thrilled, as it will be the first time she’s out of the palace complex since she arrived.

She’s nearly buzzing with ecstatic energy up and down her spine, to the point that Singix feels it and grips Iriset’s hand to steady her.

Singix’s skin is cool and so smooth, Iriset thinks abstractly about applications for flow and falling force in a cream to smooth pores or beads of ecstatic to pop and tighten skin.

Not that Singix needs it. Iriset rubs her thumb over Singix’s first knuckle and Singix gasps gently as a gentle peach-blossom-pink blush tints under her eyes. Oh.

Unfortunately, they’re interrupted where they wait outside Ambassador Erxan’s quarters with the news that a protest in the Rivermouth precinct just south of the concert location convinced the Seal guard to cancel the royal appearance.

Disappointment drips in syrupy falling force down Iriset’s digestive system.

Singix asks her to wander the palace grounds with her for the afternoon.

They can practice mirané vocabulary, and perhaps Lyric will be able to join them for a time between meetings.

Singix squeezes Iriset’s hand, and how can Iriset remain dispirited?

(Wandering with Singix is an excellent time to mark hidden spots to set the anchors for the great array she’s designing to distract everyone from her father’s rescue.)

As they walk, trailed by several Seal guards, Singix asks about the situation that snagged up their plans.

Iriset does her best to explain what she can of the philosophical differences between the Osahar cult responsible for this unrest and official Silent doctrine without getting too bitchy about it, or snide about how religion and architecture don’t have to have anything to do with each other.

She wants to say that design is pure, is already perfectly balanced, but introducing orthodoxy just muddles the rules.