Page 33

Luckily, Iriset knows not to say such things out loud, besides which, she hasn’t learned the Ceres word for orthodoxy yet.

The sun slips behind the moon, nearly all of its brightness obscured, dimming the afternoon heat enough that the women take the opportunity to traipse through the Little River corridor with its crisp, cool breeze to the Heaven’s Clock Courtyard where Seal guards and soldiers of the Vertex Seal exercise together.

Iriset has only attended such practice sessions once, having little excuse to do so.

But that once left an indelible mark in her memory because of the complex patterns the soldiers created with their offensive and defensive dancing.

This is something she suspects Singix will enjoy watching, and it might help her understand how Silence is woven into everything in the Holy City.

There’s a bit of a scuffle when she and Singix arrive and take their place upon cushioned benches reserved for audience.

A few of the lines of soldiers rearrange themselves to continue, and the master-of-arms stamps his staff to the marble slab ground to create a new rhythm.

The soldiers—in rust-red trousers and nothing else unless they require a breastband—punch, block, and sweep their short, curved swords in an elaborate line dance.

Every thirty-two beats the lines change, shifting into star patterns, popping four out at a time to face one another in fast battles.

Allowing herself to relax into the sexy pattern of it all, Iriset’s eyes drift, nearly unfocused.

She parts her lips to taste the beats of ecstatic force, even as flow vibrates through the stone ground to her slippered feet, and she feels her own falling force pulsing in her core.

Her ears ring with the staccato cries of the soldiers, the hum of their efforts.

The sky glows bright blue, intensely hot but clear.

Iriset wonders if she could use some sort of structure to mimic the formations of the soldiers to amplify her own work in disrupting security fields.

A rearranging net, or pulse-anchored crystals, perhaps.

If the anchors can pulse in rhythm, or even sequence, then—

Singix’s hand finds hers, and the princess slides their fingers together. “Iriset,” she whispers, leaning her ghost-tattooed face nearer. “Is that Lyric?”

Startled, Iriset looks straight at him, as if his name alone attracts her gaze.

It is. The Vertex Seal in line with other soldiers, his mirané-brown skin glistening and his hair pulled back with a few braids.

He’s slenderer than most of the soldiers, tight with muscles but not large with them.

As he moves, those muscles work under his skin, and the underlying connective architecture shifts in perfect design.

Iriset remembers what her hand felt like cradled in his, and she experiences a moment where all else falls away but the image of him naked, and his careful power focused on her. Rising force heats her entire body in a sudden flush. She’s especially hot in the mouth of her hips.

Beside her, Singix’s breathing grows shallow. Her fingers twitch against Iriset’s, and Iriset instantly adds the princess to her fantasy, complete with that peach-blossom flush slipping down her neck to her breasts. Iriset doesn’t even know which one of them she’d want first.

“We must go,” Singix whispers, pulling away, then turns her back.

Standing, Iriset touches Singix’s elbow. “Are you well, Princess?”

Under the curlicues of ghost writing at Singix’s hairline, the princess’s skin gleams with a sheen of sweat. Iriset blithely wonders what it tastes like. “I am,” Singix whispers. “I should not see him… so… before we are—we are married.”

“Oh.” Iriset smiles a little, hunting up simple words in Ceres to convey her meaning. “No people here will be angry. You do nothing bad.”

Singix nods quickly. Her long lashes flutter.

From her arm, Iriset feels sparks of ecstatic energy and knows the princess is as turned on as she herself.

She tucks her fingers into the crook of Singix’s arm and squeezes.

Because they’re of a height, Iriset can easily murmur into the other woman’s ear, “It is good for marriage, to have lust.”

“Iriset!” Widened, round eyes turn to her, and Singix scolds, “Erxan should not teach you a word like that.”

“Lust? It is needed for art.”

“Say desire . It means more. And is more proper.”

Iriset grins, bites her bottom lip, and drags it through her teeth. “It sounds too beautiful for what I wanted to say.”

Distress wars with humor, and maybe just a touch of scandalized yearning, in the scrunched expression Singix wears. Then the Vertex Seal calls the princess’s name and Singix stiffens under Iriset’s touch.

Together they turn.

Lyric méra Esmail His Glory walks toward them from the practice field, sun shining on bare shoulders.

He tosses his short sword to an attending soldier, accepts a linen robe from another, and shrugs quickly into it.

His bright mirané eyes are smiling, and he picks up his pace for the final few steps.

The robe flaps open over his chest and stomach.

“Welcome, Princess,” he says to Singix in heavily accented Ceres.

“I can order you a canopy if you’d like to stay. ”

“Your Glory,” she replies. “It is—it is over-warm as the sun emerges again, too much even for shade.”

“It is.” Lyric nods and glances around: There’s Garnet bringing water, as undressed as His Glory had been, only Garnet has a shoulder harness strapped across his chest and his hair twisted back in furrows against his skull.

Sweat drips down his rich tan sternum, glinting off finely curled black hairs just over the belt of his pants.

Iriset fights a slightly hysterical giggle and touches her fingers to her eyelids as the royal people share greetings. For once she’s grateful for the tradition: If she can’t see them, she might survive this afternoon with her dignity intact.

“We practice before the worst heat of the day,” Lyric says, as if he can think of no better opening.

“I did not know you were a warrior,” Singix replies, switching to mirané as she demurely takes water from Lyric’s own hand.

Lyric obliges the language change. “Hardly that. But I must hold my body to the same standard I hold my mind and any Holy Design of Aharté.”

Garnet says in his deep voice, “He is modest. I would not tolerate my Vertex Seal unable to keep up with me physically.”

Oh Silence, Iriset wishes she had never heard that.

The princess, though, seems not to follow Iriset’s lustful imagination. She hums understanding. Quiet falls, but for the echoing pulse of the lined soldiers who continue their practice.

To speed up their escape, Iriset says, gaze on Lyric’s chin, “We were going to order rose ice to the Bright Star tower to cool ourselves and spend the hottest hours in its breeze. If you would like to join the princess, Your Glory.”

“I—”

Before he can answer, Garnet tenses, puts a hand on His Glory’s shoulder in warning.

“Beremé,” Garnet says.

Striding urgently toward them is the sharp, thin Beremé mé Adora, followed by a handful of other mirané secretaries, with General Bey méra Matsimet on her heels.

“Your Glory,” Beremé says, hardly brushing her fingers to her eyelids and ignoring both Singix and Iriset entirely. “There’s been an incident with the cultists. Ongoing, the army-investigators are there, and Bey’s precinct forces, but we need emergency restrictions.”

Lyric says, “Convene the privilege council, I’ll be there. General, do what you must to stop any immediate violence. You have my authority.” The Vertex Seal turns to Singix and continues in Ceres. “My pardon, Princess.”

Singix lowers herself into a Ceres curtsy, hands folded in respect. She remains bent as Lyric leaves with Beremé; Garnet shoots Iriset a meaningful look, and she realizes he trusts her to manage the princess.

It feels strange to be trusted even for an instant, for something so small.

Skull sirens nest at the pinnacle of the Bright Star tower.

Up the round sides of the tower, windcatchers gape wide to gather all the breezes, channeling the air down into the palace corridors.

But the platform at the top is a lovely lookout, covered in a honeycomb dome painted cloud-blue and the rail is a star-lattice carved from thin white marble.

In the center flows a circular pool and its lip forms a bench atop which plush blue pillows wait.

The top of the dome is cut out with an eight-point star as wide as Iriset’s head, and through it the silver-pink moon overhead can be seen.

The skull sirens built their silk-scrap-and-rose-petal nests into the bases of three arches on the east side.

The delicate, strange birds sing to one another from bony beaks, and the glint of their hooded eyes can hardly be seen.

Singix Es Sun steps carefully onto the lip of the pool to study them, her lovely face pulled with interest and vague distaste.

“What tiny nightmare creatures,” Singix murmurs.

Surprised, Iriset says, “I find them lovely.”

“Are they not… apostatical?”

“Yes, but their design must have pleased Aharté, or the Holy Syr would have destroyed them.”

“Ah, yes. Therefore some apostatical designs can be… forgiven?”

Iriset leans against the rail, facing Singix, her back to the whole of the palace complex. “I don’t know that the designer of the skull sirens pleased Aharté, only the design itself.”

“Apostasy itself is innocent, but the apostatical are guilty of betraying your god.”

Impressed by the princess’s sharp wit and vocabulary, Iriset answers, “If a design is successful, I suppose it earns its innocence.”

“What makes design successful?”