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“Stability and balance. And self-sustaining design is beautiful in Aharté’s Silence, because Silence is tensile strength, perpetual motion, not mere stillness.

Um. The pause between breaths. And so if a design falters it will do so in that moment, by not breathing again.

” Iriset is unsure she conveys her meaning properly.

But it’s nice to try with Singix, who has no stake in apostasy or Silk or the Little Cat’s daughter.

“The skull sirens, the sheer moths, the rep-cats, none of them require an architect to survive, to thrive. A successful design is balanced, it does not take force from others without giving back in turn. That is the ultimate goal of design. To create something that thrums with balance, the… tension of perfection.”

“You would strive toward apostasy, then, if only to prove that it is not so by making it perfectly.” Singix’s soft voice doesn’t suggest she seeks to entrap Iriset, but only tease with smart curiosity.

Iriset lowers her gaze modestly. Here she cannot be Silk, after all. “I only am still learning to be a designer, Princess. But I believe because we have the power to affect the design that we should. We must. Aharté wants us to, or would have stripped the ability from us.”

Singix nods. “If you are successful with a design, Aharté approves of it, or you could not do it.”

“Oh, I am not a philosopher. You should ask your husband-to-be, for by all accounts, he is.”

“My brother,” declares Amaranth as she emerges from the mouth of stairs cut into the tiled floor, “would have rather been born second to my first, and have been a priest.”

Behind her, Sidoné says, “And you, then, would be the Vertex Seal.”

“And engaged to beautiful Singix.” Her Glory smiles flirtatiously at the princess.

Singix’s lashes flutter, but she says calmly, “But Aharté made you both as you are, and thus we must all be satisfied.”

Amaranth laughs. “I always seek new ways of satisfying myself, for that is how I best serve my Moon-Eater. Iriset there does not settle, either, does she?”

Iriset touches her fingers to her eyelids in acknowledgment, then turns to lean over the rail.

She sticks one hand out; the wind strings through her fingers.

She revels in the feel of her cloth mask rippling on her cheeks and nose, at the wind strong enough she could almost—almost—grasp it.

They fly in the castles of the Cloud Kings, but such architecture doesn’t function within the bounds of the empire.

The answer to flight within the empire is in the ribbons, in threads of spider silk, in rising and ecstatic force, Iriset is certain. She needs more time.

No, she doesn’t settle.

If she were going to do so anywhere, she wishes it could be here. But there is a whole world outside this crater, and people leave Moonshadow all the time. She’ll go soon, and take her father with her.

First she needs to get her distraction array in place.

From the Bright Star tower Iriset can clearly see enough of the palace and grounds to create a map in her mind’s eye.

It matches the security map she’s begun sketching in order to embed it into the sea glass.

When she finishes that, she’ll draw a copy and mark up the four quarters of the palace complex to choose anchor locations for their balance, convenience, and the overlay of the security net.

She’ll need to slip out of her room tonight to begin tying little open-loop knots in the net, starting in the center probably, and spool outward over the next few nights.

If she can’t steal enough silicate chips, the whole design will need to be streamlined, though Iriset would rather not sacrifice grandiosity for lack of materials.

“It is a stunning view,” Amaranth says. “But look who I found wandering the gardens.”

“Hello, darlings!”

Iriset spins, nearly braining herself on the pillar. It’s Nielle mé Dari, wrapped in vivid yellow with an orange crescent mask spiked with what are almost certainly cactus needles in a sharp halo.

Behind Nielle on the stairway, Ziyan mé Tal and Anis mé Ario nudge out, carrying a tray of rose ice and plates of finger food refreshments, including a subtle honey wine. “I thought,” Amaranth says, “we can all camp out here since it’s so brutally hot.”

Ziyan and Anis set out the trays along the southern edge of the circular pool, and Iriset hops to Singix’s side to run interference with Nielle.

The former handmaiden is staring at the princess, mirané fingers covering parted lips.

Iriset introduces them and Nielle says, “Forgive me, Your Glory, but you are unbelievably gorgeous. I’m so glad they aren’t making you wear a mask. ”

“Nielle,” Amaranth chides, but laughing.

Nielle shrugs and touches her eyelids respectfully.

Singix sinks onto a pillow. “My thanks. I am feeling rather wilted, and happy it does not show.”

“A wilted orchid is still an orchid,” Nielle says, plopping down.

“How is your marriage?” Iriset asks, giving in to her own natural bluntness with Nielle, who will appreciate it.

She wishes she could touch Nielle’s wrist or throat or mouth and push in little pops of ecstatic force to trace the new lines born in Nielle’s inner design thanks to the exchange of design eggs.

Iriset has not known many people before and after their Silent Marriage ritual, certainly not well enough to investigate the design-effect.

Nielle grins. It brightens her expression, rearranging her face into something at least interesting. “I’ve only been able to leave for a day—that marriage knot is no joke!”

“Marriage knot?” Singix murmurs.

“It’s the most intense part of the ritual,” Nielle dismisses, then her eyes widen. “Oh, but nothing to worry about.”

“Nothing to worry about,” Iriset agrees softly, touching Singix’s wrist.

Anis comes over with cups of honey wine and the bowl of rose ice. She kneels and shares it all out. Then she pulls a lacquered box from her pocket and offers to teach Singix a variation on shuffling shells.

As they listen to the basic rules, Ziyan tunes her lap harp, and then softly plays. She adds in a murmured melody, delightedly attempting to harmonize with the skull sirens.

After some time of gentle play and relaxing rose ice, Singix asks after the crisis in the city. “The Vertex Seal was taken away rather abruptly. I hope all is well.”

“I’ve just left the privilege council, and we’ve sent in the city army,” Amaranth says, lounging upon a frothy silk pillow with a shallow bowl of wine in hand. “And no one is dead.”

“Yet,” Sidoné adds quietly, tapping her teeth.

Ziyan says, “I am glad it is not my father’s precinct this time.”

“It often is?” Singix frowns.

“There is always unrest somewhere.”

Iriset curls her fingers around three thin shell coins. Perhaps the unrest is woven into Moonshadow’s design. Perhaps it’s necessary spikes of ecstatic force to balance the flow of expansion.

Amaranth adds, as if thinking along the same lines, “The empire is home to very many people and communities. It’s natural for there to be tension. We only must keep the tensions balanced. For the good of all.”

“Ah, striving toward perfect design,” Singix says, glancing at Iriset.

“If the miran press that tension too firmly, in the same place, it will snap,” Iriset says, eyes on the coins in her hand.

Her Glory laughs once. “So our Little Cat’s daughter still has her teeth.”

“The more complex a design grows, the more flexibility it needs, that’s all. And miran are not known for flexibility.” Iriset tosses the shell coins and Anis’s long-fingered hand snatches the two spinning, and flips the third up her sleeve.

“And your father provided such flexibility?”

“Like a honeycomb arch. In our city’s Holy Design, the Vertex Seal is an anchor, as is the Moon-Eater.

The mirané council. Everything that creates law, that provides structure is an anchor.

The Great Steeples anchor the four forces in Moonshadow, as these four small pillars around us anchor the design of this dome overhead.

The laws themselves, the beliefs and actions of the people are the lines between anchors.

The threads of force. The connective joints, and the web itself.

But honeycomb arches”—Iriset points up—“make this structure possible. You cannot put a circular or octagonal dome upon a four-post anchor with balance or stability unless you have something that flexes between the rigid shapes. Squinches transition from square to circle. That is what my father does: makes stability possible by providing a possibility of communication between anchors and lines, between the system and its people.”

It’s an inelegant metaphor, but in that moment Iriset believes it with all her core.

Amaranth says, “So by removing the Little Cat, we’ve put Moonshadow at risk.”

Iriset bites her lip, then says, “Yes.”

“There was unrest such as this when your father ruled his undermarket empire. He had little influence over cultist activity.”

“Yes,” Iriset says again. “But in a design so complex as Moonshadow—as the empire—removal of one thread or honeycomb arch or anchor ripples outward, and while it might not cause the entire structure to collapse, the shifting balance will be unpredictable, knots will form. If one of the Great Steeples suddenly fell, most of the city would fall. Or if you took one steeple and stuck it elsewhere, hidden, unable to do what it…” She stops.

Amaranth laughs again, this time as if she’s caught Iriset in a perfect cage.

“All the more reason for the army to put down this little rebellion hard and fast, before those ripples expand. And better, then, to not allow men such as your father to grow so powerful in the first place that their downfall will ripple dramatically. That must be the best way to maintain stability, and in stability, progress and momentum.”

“Of course, keep the miran firmly in power,” Iriset says as sweetly as she can. “That is the way of the empire. Crush disruptions, cut out knots in the design. Any break in the gears must be destroyed.”

There’s something of an alliraptor in Amaranth’s eyes as she stares at Iriset. “Seditious, kitten.”

Iriset shuts up. She doesn’t even care about the mirané stranglehold on the city.

She cares about her father, and the freedom to do her work.

The ways of the miran create the space for apostasy in the first place.

Sure, a different system might mean her work wasn’t heretical, but a different system might not provide so much easy access to theory and tools and need for what she does in the first place.

Her father didn’t want to rebel, and neither does she.

She just can’t keep herself from arguing.

(She thinks about those old rebel songs Dalal and Bittor sang, though. The ones about hope. Until now she only needed hope once before, and it did make her stronger, smarter, better.)

“You like it, Your Glory,” Nielle says with a laugh. It breaks the tension, and Iriset meets Amaranth’s gaze for a moment, then looks away.

“Maybe I do,” Amaranth admits. “But we’re making Singix uncomfortable.”

The princess demurs. “I cannot follow the shades of your argument, Your Glory… That is all.”

Anis says, “We hear you watched His Glory in line with the army. Was he all you hoped for?”

Singix’s eyes widen at the bold talk.

“Garnet,” Iriset puts in, her turn to distract, “is extremely masculine in his form and beauty.”

“Isn’t he,” Anis says with a groan. Sidoné laughs again.

Her Glory reaches for her body-twin and pokes her in the ribs.

Ziyan says, “He is not so lovely as our glorious Ama.”

“That’s right,” Amaranth says slowly and seductively. The pull of Her Glory’s falling force curls around Iriset’s lower spine.

“I am pleased with the beauty of the Vertex Seal,” Singix says suddenly, and quickly, as if having gathered her courage, it needed to express itself hard and fast.

Amaranth looks directly at Singix. “He has never been with anyone, so you must be gentle with him when the time comes.”

“Never?” Iriset can’t help the outburst.

“His is a taxing job, and any favor he bestowed would mean more than a kiss, so he must be overcautious. Besides,” Her Glory snorts lightly, “my brother’s body is a temple for Aharté, and denial is apparently a form of Silence.”

“Discipline,” Iriset murmurs, thinking back to the confrontation between Amaranth and the Holy Peace.

Amaranth nods meaningfully. She wants a priest more like her on the privilege council.

Sidoné says, “Tragic, that both children of the great lover Diaa of Moonshadow are celibate. Until marriage, at least.”

Iriset lifts her eyebrows; she doesn’t believe it of Amaranth. She’s seen the way Her Glory touches Beremé mé Adora, and Sidoné.

“If I took lovers…” Her Glory’s voice smooths out, lulling and drawing of its own accord, without the encouragement of falling force.

“I could use those favors for the good of the empire and manipulate in ways my brother does not have the core to do. And I would take all the pleasure shared and regift it to the Moon-Eater. Like a harvest.”

“A harvest from which all the empire would benefit.” Anis sighs.

Amaranth reaches across the shaded tiles and brushes her finger along Anis’s jaw, not quite chiding nor quite a promise.