Page 43

Instead, a nearly perfect Singix Es Sun watches her.

High, broad cheeks, long nose, perfectly flushed lips, sweeping brows that cut pure black against this pearly skin.

The ghost lettering glints almost exactly right.

It doesn’t shine fully yet. Iriset parts her lips and her teeth are her own, her tongue her own, but who will notice a thing like that?

It’s the unsparing, ruthless work of real human architecture to reshape bone.

This is merely a mask, shifting muscle, skin, cartilage. The rest will come later.

“Oh, Iriset,” whispers Amaranth. Her face appears beside Singix’s in the mirror. “Shockingly good. I… I feel very conflicted suddenly.”

“You should,” accuses Sidoné from across the room, but her tone is gentle.

For her eyes she’s drawn a pupil and iris with a layered rose pattern of facets, based on her own eyes, and put the shading in as best she’s able.

It will only work if none have memorized the exact details of Singix’s eyes, but only need to see what they expect: vividly brown irises, rich and varied in their sun-brown, like a field of earth that only changed with rain and drought—the shading of satisfaction or thirst.

It helps Iriset to think of it poetically, like an artist. Like Singix would. She knows in her liver that Ambassador Erxan is wrong: Doing art makes you more of an expert in it.

The pain of masking her eyes momentarily blinds her and makes her cry.

It’s good, for the illusion. She lets the tears burn, dripping down her cheeks.

Iriset waits beside a low divan, sitting and then standing in anxious jerking motions. Her gaze slides to the cold body of Singix Es Sun, wearing Iriset’s face and her robe. It’s the death of Iriset mé Isidor tonight, and Iriset finds it extremely easy to act distressed.

Her father will hear of it. Bittor. Everyone she’s met.

They’ll all think she’s dead . Can she still help rescue Isidor?

She hadn’t thought of that when she agreed.

Thank the red god she’s already sent the plans.

Bittor will find a way to free her father without her distraction.

He must. She looks at Amaranth to reach for the comfort of having had no choice.

Amaranth would have blackmailed her regardless.

And she knew. How did Amaranth know? Why did she keep it a secret?

Had she always known about Silk or was it only a perfectly timed guess?

Then Garnet méra Be? thrusts open the door, stopping to stare first at Amaranth and then at the peaceful, dull body.

Sidoné is behind him, and slipping in with them is the Vertex Seal himself.

Iriset catches her breath.

Lyric’s hair is mussed from sleep, his face unpainted, and a shadow of morning stubble darkens the skin around his mouth. He’s only in loose trousers and sleeping robe.

“Oh Silence,” he says quietly. The nearest to a curse he ever comes.

“Lyric,” Amaranth says, surprised.

While Garnet closes the suite door quietly, Iriset clutches her fists together over her heart. This is going to be so much worse than she imagined.

“What happened?” Garnet asks.

Amaranth says, “She ate a poisoned candy—one of those there, marked with Ceres. A gift to the intended of the Vertex Seal. She ate it, at Singix’s offering, and moments later was simply dead.”

“Take the candies,” Lyric instructs, though Sidoné already has the long box in hand and offers them to Garnet. His Glory slowly, as if moving through a sandstorm, lowers to one knee beside Singix’s shoulder. “I…” he says.

“An assassination attempt,” Garnet says darkly, looking at Iriset. She bows her head. But can’t take her eyes off Lyric.

The Vertex Seal’s face is bent in tragic lines. “My poor little arguer,” he says.

“What?” Amaranth demands.

“I had—I had asked her to remain with us, with you, sister,” Lyric says quietly. “She had such a certainty in her soul. A core of integrity, despite what she’d been made to be.”

Amaranth glares briefly at Iriset and says, “Perhaps your future wife requires your comfort.”

The last thing Iriset wants at the moment is the intense attention of the Vertex Seal. But Lyric stands, a tender grimace turning his mouth, and he comes to her. “Princess Singix, this must have affected you badly. I am so sorry for the failure of my security to keep you safe.”

“I…” Iriset clears her throat and, glad for the roughness in her voice, whispers in carefully turned mirané, “I grieve for her as well, Your Glory. She saved my life.”

Lyric smiles grimly and holds one hand out, palm up.

It’s for Iriset to place hers against his.

She keeps her ghost-writing-free hands hidden within her deep sleeves and shakes her head, allowing herself to shiver openly.

She silently breathes away the ecstatic pops still heating her blood.

Singix was full of flow; Iriset will need to learn to center that even, rhythmic force.

“Of course,” he murmurs. “You should sit, Princess. Your own handmaidens will be sent for.”

“No,” Iriset whispers. “I will sit, but please no more attention for me, Your Glory. Do what you must for the poor girl. Find who hurt her.”

The Vertex Seal nods and drops his hand. He asks Garnet to send for the proper investigators and General Bey.

Sidoné brings Iriset water, and Iriset turns her back onto the room to sip it.

She leans against the wall, eyes closed, just listening and breathing.

Exhaustion threatens to numb her thoughts, but she needs to chase it back: If Amaranth sells this and wins Iriset space today to be alone, she needs to continue working for several more hours before she can risk sleep.

Iriset counts the remaining items on her architectural agenda, prioritizing them: body skin color, ghost letters, hair, then finessing the edges of her mask, then beginning the work to reshape a few more muscles.

She’ll make a layered diagram—like a double dome that holds more weight and shape than a single—for her nose and cheeks and brow bone.

The chin needs less work, but Singix’s jaw is—was—less squared.

Iriset is lucky that the design could be done mostly with slight additions to her bone structure and musculature, not erasures.

Those latter were more painful and Iriset has never undone them before.

General Bey arrives while Iriset contemplates the possibility of inventing a new sort of mask, one that’s semipermanent but can be stripped off at once. The focus helps her remain calm.

The older man’s presence draws her attention again. She catches herself reaching up to pull a cloth mask she doesn’t have over her eyes, and quickly tucks her hand away again.

Bey stands over Singix’s body. Someone placed a blanket over her, and Garnet now flicks it aside to show the face of Iriset mé Isidor.

A slight gasp alerts Iriset to the presence of sharp-boned Beremé mé Adora, the prince of the mirané council, and maybe Amaranth’s not-so-secret lover, who told Amaranth to bring Iriset here for some unknown reason.

With her is Menna mé Garai, the chief architect of the palace, likely the most dangerous person in the room now, who might see the edges of the masks.

“It was inevitable a life such as hers would lead to such an ending,” Bey says in his gruff, judgmental way.

Iriset’s legs tremble.

“And yet who expected her death to so perfectly serve the empire?” Amaranth says.

“Gentle Aharté,” Beremé murmurs, and Menna makes a gesture with her elegant mirané-brown fingers meant to request the blessing of She Who Loves Silence.

Lyric says, “Yes. She served, in the end. The Moon-Eater’s Mistress is as skilled as always at seeing the hidden value and virtue within a person’s soul. I will personally preside at the unraveling ritual for Iriset mé Isidor.”

At that, so tenderly spoken, Iriset cannot remain upright. She bends her knees, allowing herself to sink slowly to the floor.

“Princess,” says Sidoné, moving to her side. She grips Iriset’s shoulder.

“Perhaps,” Amaranth says, “we may remove ourselves, and this body, if you have seen what you need to see?”

Giving in, Iriset allows Sidoné to escort her through the arched doorway into Singix’s bedchamber.

There’s no more she can do for the scene in the sitting room.

Either the ruse will work, or not. She says, “Let me sleep for two hours, no more. I need it too badly, but then I must work again, and I will need those additional things I listed. And—none of Singix’s people can come in here. ”

Sidoné presses her lips together. Her eyes are faceted so dark brown and nearly black. Iriset murmurs, “It would be very difficult to copy your eyes.”

“Good.” The glare turns somewhat fond, and Sidoné touches Iriset’s brow, drawing her calloused fingers gently down her face. “Sleep. I will wake you, either to your work or our mutual execution.”