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Every kind of courage

I t takes Iriset seven additional hours to complete her initial design.

Three of those hours are spent on her hair alone.

She has to weave single-strand silk into her hair for a framework, and activate it in stages to straighten, thicken, darken, and soften the strands.

Even so, there remains a gentle wave that she decides she can claim has always been present but that Singix’s maids remove with hot irons and cream.

For her skin she uses a crawling design related to her cascading distraction design, anchored in four places.

The change burns but settles quickly, and Iriset’s small birthmark against her left ribs and the mole on her neck and the scars on her wrist, right hip, and at her knees remain.

Singix had a birthmark above her right knee. Nobody will know the difference.

In all her years working for the Little Cat, Silk has never undertaken such a project.

The nearest to this she has come was creating body redesigns to change the gender-forward appearance of two clients to their specifications, removing a distinctive birthmark from a thief, returning about two-thirds vision to a young woman blinded in an accident, and of course investigating apostatical cancer.

Sidoné placed Seal guards with orders that the princess requested not to be disturbed by anyone, including Ambassador Erxan or any of her handmaidens.

But Iriset knows no plans are foolproof, and someone might get past the Seal guards.

Food is brought by Sidoné herself, along with the requested accoutrements, and an update regarding the investigation.

All evidence was removed from the front sitting room, and the box of candies traced to the mirané hall, where princes had been welcome to leave gifts.

Every gift passed through an architectural web and every gift was tasted and tested to the best of the Seal guards’ ability, yet this poison had gotten through.

Either the murderer is extremely lucky, or the murderer is extremely powerful.

Sidoné seemed relieved and admits that while a lucky enemy could be from anywhere, a powerful enemy should be easier to isolate.

It’s someone with access to the residential petals of the palace, who could slip poisoned candy into Singix’s possession after the tests and webs. That’s a narrow list.

Iriset thinks of how easily Shahd moves around the palace, leaving to put messages in the Little Cat’s drops, taking care of Iriset’s secrets, and she knows it doesn’t narrow the list very much.

They’re still investigating the Ceres party themselves and making a list of everyone who disapproved of the marriage.

It might have been almost anyone, and they’re still out there.

Nauseated from intense focus and anxiety, Iriset eats little of what Sidoné brings.

But she needs the fuel. If she faints, someone will discover her.

If she stops working, she’ll vomit from the stress of thinking what her father will go through, and Bittor, when they hear of her death. Her grandparents.

Despite her years of practice, nerves put a tremor she cannot afford into her hands.

To counter it, she spends too long balancing her inner forces, and has barely finished applying the patches drawn in careful imitation of ghost writing to her hands when the outer door of her chambers opens and her name is gently called.

It’s the voice of the Vertex Seal.

Of course he can command his way past the Seal guard or Sidoné.

“Wait, please,” she begs, thrusting her tools and scraps under the low-hanging bed. She pulls on a heavy robe over her naked body and walks barefoot to the bedchamber door and opens it.

Lyric waits in the center of the sitting room, holding a tray covered in food and a squat carafe.

Unlike this morning, he’s fully dressed in the usual dark red priest-like robe, with his hair combed into soft curls.

Still he wears no face paint or mask at all.

Iriset is dead, and he holds to her recommendation.

She hugs herself. “Your Glory.”

“Princess. Singix. I recognize the unusual intimacy of my presence here, alone, and if you prefer, I will leave. Or I will send for one of your attendants to chaperone. I hope, though, that you might allow me to stay. May I?”

At her signal, he sets the tray down upon a low table with a coal brazier built in. He waits for her to tuck herself onto the pillow beside it before joining her.

This room, where so much happened in the last day and night, is dark wood designed similarly to Iriset’s—someone else’s now—but the stucco walls have been painted a vivid, heavenly blue.

It gives the room the feeling of being underwater, or perhaps in a cave made of sapphires.

The ceiling is a low, shallow dome striped in blue and black.

Rugs woven in spirals dot the floor, as do luscious pillows and low benches built into the northern wall beneath a long rectangle of lattice that opens over one of the inner courtyards.

It’s hers now. Hers if everyone believes she’s Singix of the Beautiful Twilight. The only mark of Ceres in the room is a small icon of a pregnant god reclined upon a many-petaled flower beside the door. Iriset recognizes her from conversations with Ambassador Erxan.

Tapp. The god of courage. Between the sun and the memory of the sun , Iriset thinks, hearing it in Singix’s gentle voice.

She’s going to need every form of courage, small and large.

With that in mind, Iriset meets Lyric’s gaze and looks immediately away.

He says, “Sorrow has etched an even fuller beauty into your countenance, Princess.”

Iriset shuts her stolen eyes as a wave of shame and anticipation flushes her cheeks.

She wonders how the physiological reaction shows through her mask.

Does it darken these changed cheeks with that same pretty pink glow she so admired in Singix?

Her own desert-peach skin would have grown duskier with the blush.

“I do not know to thank you or not,” she whispers, careful with her language.

Shaping the words as near to Singix’s accent as she can; whispers hide all manner of vocal fluctuations.

“I need no thanks, but only for you to take care. Eat. There is a variety. I was unsure what to request for you.” He doesn’t gesture but keeps his hands calmly against his thighs.

The tray holds several kinds of bread, thinly sliced root vegetables and bite-sized squash dumplings, cured meat, an egg broth with tiny floating green herbs, and sweet oats.

There’s water, and the squat carafe. Iriset picks up a triangle of cornbread she thinks has fennel seed baked in, and tastes it.

Lyric rolls a slice of meat around a carrot and pops it into his mouth.

They eat. Iriset is finally ravenous and focuses on chewing slowly. The broth is delicious but too hot for this weather. Everything else is cold. She sips her water, and then Lyric pours two cups of golden liquor from the carafe. The cups are the size and colors of a nightjar’s striped egg.

“To Iriset,” Lyric says. “I am grateful for her sacrifice, and will remember her name to our children.”

Iriset can’t respond for the nausea that tingles in her stomach suddenly; she drinks the liquor. It’s so airy and hard it seems to effervesce in her mouth and throat. Tears spring to her eyes. She gasps.

Lyric drinks and then takes her hand, the one with the empty cup. He cradles it in his and waits for her to regain herself.

“What is it?” she asks, rasping just a little.

“Honeybite.”

She lifts her brows. She knows, but Singix probably did not.

“A generic word for any strong home-brewed liquor,” he says.

“This is the Seal guard specialty. They make it in their barracks, where only force-blades should be stored. They claim the energy from the blades sharpens the flavor.” The Vertex Seal smiles slightly.

“I rarely partake, because our bodies are perfectly designed by She Who Loves Silence, and I prefer not to alter her creation.”

“But?” Iriset murmurs.

“But we grow imperfectly, and the effects of the world upon us sometimes need softening. A little will do no permanent damage.”

Iriset licks her bottom lip and nods. Her hand remains cradled in his, and a shiver of ecstatic force tingles from her knuckles to his palm.

“Singix,” he says carefully, as if she’s wild and needs to be tamed.

“Your Glory,” she replies, curling her fingers around the cup.

Lyric plucks the cup away and asks, “Will you allow me to teach you a balancing meditation? It might help you sleep, or at least to relax. That was a spark of ecstatic force I felt—and for it to be so bold in an untrained body suggests your inner balance is upset.”

Cursing internally, Iriset hesitates. Flow. Singix’s dominant force was flow, and of course Lyric would notice otherwise. He does have training from the Silent priests. And Iriset herself showed him, only a few nights ago, how to be even more aware.

“Please,” she says.

The Vertex Seal shifts so that he faces her directly upon the floor pillow.

He crosses his legs and asks her to do the same.

It proves difficult to maintain her modesty, but the dress she wears has a full skirt and she manages.

Lyric explains in simple words what he’ll do and expect from her: It’s exactly the meditation Iriset taught him in the Color Can Be Loud Garden.

Suddenly, she’s blinking back tears.

“Princess,” he says, horrified. “I apologize for—for whatever has caused you this new grief.”