Page 48

Through with around toward

T hose who attend will say that the wedding of the last Vertex Seal was magnificent.

They’ll say the air itself hung breathlessly as Lyric méra Esmail and Singix of the Beautiful Twilight began their marriage walk exactly as the sun slipped behind the moon.

The light shimmered bluish and pinkish, cooling the heat of the summer, and the two walked toward each other to the beat of a force-drum.

Everyone lining their path breathed to the same rhythm.

Force-ribbons arced into the sky, bursting into stars and flowers, into the seven symbols of Ceres virtue, into mirané prayer script for blessings and unity.

Everyone held banners, flowers, pennants, and water jewels that dripped like ice.

The colors were riotous, the breeze heady with flow and ecstatic charges.

People laughed, they called out the names of Lyric and Singix, they rang bells and made an entire cacophony.

Iriset is aware of none of that.

She walks carefully on bare feet, following the bold lines of the narrow rug spooling out before her. It leads her to Lyric.

Tension pricks under her skin and she breathes through it, keeping her pace even, telling herself some nerves are normal for any bride. She’s passed every obstacle thus far, even those that she herself might have said half a year ago were impossible.

This next obstacle, though, is not one of design but of emotion. It’s not a crime—it is betrayal. There are no laws against lying to someone or deceiving a partner. Iriset is unsure whether there are even specific laws against lying to the Vertex Seal.

Going through with this will be a magnificent, unbeatable coup for Silk’s reputation, for human architecture, and apostasy.

All those days ago in the apostate tower, her father refused to be rescued, saying he would not become a villain in his own mind.

Yet that is exactly what Iriset is doing to herself now.

This kind of betrayal is the sort only a villain would choose.

She knows it. She took the name and face of a woman who offered only her compassion, curiosity, love.

She killed for her own gain. Now she will slip into the marriage, life, bed, heart of Lyric méra Esmail.

Just because he deserves a lot for the things he’s done doesn’t make her actions any more pure.

With every mask to hide behind, she cannot hide from herself.

Why is it so easy, then, to take each step, to look through the hazy eyes of her mask and stare at the Vertex Seal, unflinching?

He’s dressed the same as Iriset, barefoot and wearing nothing but a long white shift, a silk necklace to cradle his sandglass box and seed, and a mirané-brown ceramic mask.

His mask matches his skin perfectly.

Lyric moves meditatively: Smooth and purposeful.

Tightly controlled. She remembers the confident shift of his bare muscles in the sunlight as he practiced the combat forms with his soldiers, the casual skim of his fingers down her forearm when he showed her the forms for the force-blade, and Iriset thinks he’s nervous, too.

They meet, hands up, palms together, and their inner designs reach for each other: her flow and ecstatic, his rising and falling.

For a while they breathe together. It’s their prerogative to draw out this moment as long as they like.

When they’re ready—and it happens simultaneously—they reach for each other’s masks and tug the ribbon holding them in place.

Both masks fall away, tumbling to the ground where they shatter exactly as they are meant to.

The tiny ceramic daggers and slivers scatter around their bare feet, and it’s considered a good luck sign if there’s a little bit of blood.

Lyric méra Esmail smiles at her, and her pulse leaps ecstatically. The smile reaches his eyes, and he begins the Four-Force Vow.

As blood beats through my body, so does my world flow through you.

As flowers lift after the sun, so does my world rise with you.

As epiphany sparks, so does my world charge around you.

As the Holy Design yearns for its center, so does my world fall toward you.

Iriset catches her breath. Though she knows the words, she’s never felt them, nor understood them, and in this moment they shimmer in the air with a weight of their own.

Voice soft, for his ears only, Iriset offers the vow back to him.

Then Lyric turns from her, and she unlatches the silk necklace containing his design egg.

He does the same for hers, and then they put on each other’s.

The weight is the same, but Iriset thinks Lyric’s necklace is warmer than hers had been.

It settles over her collarbone with a pleasant tenderness.

She doesn’t care if she’s being overly fanciful.

It doesn’t matter that this wasn’t meant for Iriset mé Isidor. It’s hers now.

And then it’s over. That’s the entirety of the public ritual.

Singing breaks out, in four parts, of course, lifting, twining melodies and countermelodies, with clapping hands and sudden high-pitched cries. With their voices, the miran create a dome of forces to shiver around the couple, containing them, urging them on.

Iriset hums. The note trembles down her chest, vibrating through her bones and into her hand, leaping to Lyric. He glances at her with slight surprise, and Iriset recalls that Singix knew nothing of design-song.

She lets her note fade and squeezes his hand, fluttering her lashes nervously, as Singix was prone to. She glances down but he touches her chin, nudging it up again. Together they walk back along the ribbons to the Hall of Princes, where a feast awaits.

The throne, perched heavily over a chunk of mirané-brown moon rock, sits empty and yet somehow thrumming full of intention, and Lyric takes her to it. He accepts a small coin with four tiny spires from Garnet, who seems to appear from nowhere, ready as always. Lyric presses the coin to his thumb.

Blood appears, and this he smears on the moon rock.

Iriset brings his thumb to her mouth and kisses it.

They’re seated then at a low table before the throne, upon firm pillows that can support them for hours. Today, for this single day, the Vertex Seal and his wife are displayed for any to see. Ironic, Iriset is well aware.

The cavernous Hall of Princes, striped black and white, with its vaulted double dome directly overhead, fills with noise and color as the miran pour in, extravagantly draped in colorful robes and masks of wire, gold, flowers, and even pure force-lines, or crystal.

Iriset quickly loses track of the finery and who wears what.

She sips her fennel liquor and holds her husband’s hand, allowing him to do most of the speaking, and she wonders what Bittor would have worn to her wedding, or her father, and she looks for Raia mér Omorose, who had been her friend, but she can’t find an.

Perhaps an wasn’t invited to Singix’s wedding—or more likely an is holding some of the elaborate designs around the hall for either security or decoration.

Diaa of Moonshadow, Iriset’s new mother-in-law, sweeps around as if she’s the host, mostly ignoring her son and his wife on their wedding day.

Nielle mé Dari is here with her small king husband, wearing a truly appalling mask of what must be intended as an ode to the Ceres virtues based on the seven separate colors and chunky style.

Iriset wishes she could tease the former handmaiden.

The food is delicious, brought out in small bites and shallow cups for quick swallowing.

One course is nothing but perfumes—some effervescent as hot alcohol—another course is salad entirely made of flowers crystallized with specially designed honey.

They crunch and break delicately over the tongue, sweet and hardly there.

So much energy and light swirl around her, plowing the air for her attention, that it’s difficult for Iriset to look at anyone directly until they are close enough to kill her.

Someone wanted Singix dead and here she is, alive and well and almost entirely married.

She attempts to note who is standoffish, but most everyone fawns over the Vertex Seal today, though one or two shoot Iriset a glare, probably just jealousy.

She remembers them anyway. Iriset knows the Seal guards are hunting, too, and Garnet and Sidoné and very likely people Iriset has never even heard of scour the hall for weapons and tricks.

She can only perch on her pillow and pretend nothing bothers her, she isn’t afraid, she doesn’t wonder if every mask conceals an enemy, she knows she isn’t a vivid target, of course not.

Iriset is remarkably good at pretending.

Except one moment, in the middle of it all, she feels a shiver at the nape of her neck and glances behind her.

The numen stares at her, its face half hidden behind the nearby throne. Its ruby-pink eye studies her knowingly, and once she stares back, it lifts a hairless brow, then smiles and gestures as if drinking.

It knows. Somehow, it knows.

Iriset holds its gaze. With the null collar around its withered neck, it can’t reach through design to reveal her. It might speak, though, or scream, and if it finds the right words, she’s finished.

The numen does nothing.

Lyric caresses her knuckle and she glances back at him. His gaze slides past her to it, and before he can speak, she asks, “Is it hungry? Does it eat?”

“You are kind, Singix,” he answers, with a slight censure.

She picks up her small cup of liquor and stands. Many notice, some going quiet as if expecting her to speak. But Iriset moves to the numen and offers it the drink.

The smile falls off its face as it accepts, lifting the cup in salute, and drinks every drop before setting the cup onto the edge of the step where it’s chained.