Page 5

Before she can help it, Iriset smiles at the descent indicator Raia uses in ans name, which reveals ans preferred gender.

Alternative genders are not forbidden under Silence, but they are certainly discouraged.

Raia smiles back tentatively. Ans mask is only face paint, as is typical of architects and also in fashion with the miran these days.

Architects dislike masks of cloth, leather, or particular ceramics for how they might interfere with intricate design.

But most body paint is mixed to be architecturally neutral.

Raia wears jagged stripes of black—the color of flow—painted down over ans eyelids and narrow cheeks.

Ans hair is straight brown-black and skin Pir-pale.

There is little mirané blood in the shape of ans nose and brow, though ans cheek- and jawbones are very symmetrical and therefore more difficult to draw, but easier to create a craftmask for.

An wears no beard (of course an could not without the aid of apostasy), further marking an apart from the miran, for whom it is in fashion to cut their beards in patterns to match their masks and face paint. An is young to be interrogating Iriset.

She realizes, as she catalogs information, that she’s staring with Silk’s eyes, practiced in memorizing bone patterns and gender-design details, not with the gaze of the modest daughter of a famous thief. She immediately draws the cloth mask across her face.

“Are you Iriset mé Isidor?” Raia mér Omorose continues, as behind an two more people arrive.

The man—judging by his masculine-forward design—has a tightly curled beard and a military mask of white leather flat across his forehead that curves like scythes down over his cheeks, cupping his eyes but not at all obscuring his vision.

His heavy brow lowers into a glare at Iriset.

His skin is mirané brown, lined with fine wrinkles, and he wears the white robe, leather vest, and weapon sash of the city army.

The woman hurries in, cloth-masked and robed in plain linens.

She puts a box on the table and leaves, dragging the door closed behind her.

Raia doesn’t introduce the glowering soldier, but opens the long box and begins laying out items from it.

A design stylus.

A pair of delicate forceps.

One-half of wire moth wings.

Iriset’s own white silk glove, with a dot of dry blood atop the thumb. The one she gave to Bittor.

He would have planted it on Paser or Dalal, Isidor’s other designers, to help one of them take the fall as Silk. Iriset hates the thought of another getting credit for her work nearly as much as she hates the idea of another dying for her.

“Do you know the glove?” Raia asks.

“Where did you get it?” Iriset asks in return. “Where is my father? I want to see him.”

The older soldier snorts. “We got it off Silk, of course.”

“Alive?”

“For now.”

Iriset stares at the spot of blood, wishing she knew who had taken her mask-name and is probably taking her punishment. She can’t ask without giving away the game. “And my father?”

“He’s still alive, too, Iriset,” the architect says, “and if you cooperate it’s more likely you’ll be granted a few moments with him before his trial.”

She inhales with a hiss. “Yes, I know the glove. So?”

“Do you know how she made it?”

Suddenly Iriset thinks of a way to claim some of her design without ruining the sacrifices her father’s people had made for her, without disobeying his command.

“She allowed me to assist sometimes,” she says, leaning toward the glove.

“I spooled the silk for her, and held it because my fingers are small, and that helped her.”

“So you aided in the illegal activities. In apostasy,” the older soldier says, with a satisfied but angry press of his lips.

Raia interrupts, “I’m not interested in that, Iriset. You have not been named as a criminal, nor shall you be if I can stop it. We need your help, though, to understand how Silk did what she did and in order to bring in any of her remaining designs and find ways to work against them.”

“No.”

“I only wish to understand,” Raia says eagerly. “I’ve studied what I can of Silk’s work, and it is genius. What she’s done could help so many people if it was turned away from thieving and illegal practices, and toward the greater purposes of architecture.”

Iriset holds herself still, angry pride in her heart because she knows what her craft could do; she longs for it.

Raia continues, “Imagine the more flexible building materials Silk’s research could help us develop, or security nets. Alarms and fiber glassworks, stronger ropes and suspension architecture for better bridges.”

“Oh.” Surprised into meeting ans excited gaze through the shimmer of her borrowed mask, Iriset realizes an isn’t lying about what an wants.

Raia mér Omorose is a designer like Iriset, who sees possibilities.

How can she use it? Can she trade it for a chance at saving her father’s life, or Bittor’s, or any or all of them?

Pretend the Little Cat’s daughter is Silk’s innocent apprentice, and get what she needs?

The older soldier says, “And you’ll tell us what you know of Isidor Little Cat’s business, names, meetings, everything you remember.”

Iriset snaps her mouth closed. She dislikes her father’s name in his mouth. Little Cat is a sweet diminutive to hide the vicious truth, a palatable euphemism, but when the old soldier says it, the words flow with disgust.

“That’s the deal, child,” the soldier says. “Raia mér Omorose and I come together. He wants your magical knowledge, but I require practical information first.”

Raia flattens ans mouth but does not naysay the soldier.

Iriset forces her eyes to lower and lies, “I do not know any details about my father’s business.”

The soldier, who so rudely has not named himself, comes around the table and she backs away, knocking her heels into the stucco and her shoulder into the lattice window.

He stops himself a breath away, overwhelming Iriset with his size and steely silver smell.

His eyes are half-circles and hold flecks of green among the mirané brown; his long, tightly curled beard nearly brushes her chin.

“If you do not agree, you will remain in prison and be sent to a work camp eventually, do you understand? Your sheltered daughter’s life will not stand up to the camps, and will not help you break limestone or plow the delta. ”

“He is my father,” Iriset says.

“Do you think even a man like the Little Cat would see his daughter so abused for his own sake? Violent criminals and prisoners of war and the petty thieves or innocent who end up there are not separated, child. The Seal laws do not hold well in the camps, where wardens and guards have too much else to do than to make sure no young girls or skinny boys are being raped.”

“Bey!” Raia cries, aghast and hurrying to put anself between them.

The old soldier—Bey—remains expressionless. “She is the Little Cat’s daughter, Raia, and surely cannot be shocked by the mere mention of murder or assault.”

Iriset says, “You do not make me want to betray my father with this theater.”

“Good.” Raia touches her shoulder. “Fear only pushes us to act irrationally,” an says more to Bey.

“The name of the Little Cat will protect me wherever you put me, except from animals like yourself,” she says.

Bey the soldier smiles grimly. “I told you, Raia mér Omorose, that she was one of them.”

The architect ignores him, turning fully to Iriset. “I know you love the design; I saw it shine even through your mask, Iriset. That is what I am interested in: architecture and its secrets. What would we design for love of the work? If you agree, I will find a way to speak with you again.”

Iriset looks past Raia to where Bey shakes his head once for her.

She understands: The architect is not in command here, though perhaps an naively believes an holds the power.

But Iriset understands something else, too, about Bey’s inner design: He will be brutal with the truth, but he will not lie.

If he were willing to lie, he’d have agreed with Raia to manipulate her.

“I agree,” she says to Raia, though she doubts it matters.

Iriset does love the work of design. But the only time she ever designed for love, it was the worst kind of apostasy: She cut into a human body to redesign malignancy.

To heal. To save. Imagine the widespread application of that discovery—twelve years gone!

How many dead might live today had she been allowed to breathe a word of her success?

Given the chance, she could cure apostatical cancer.

Start by pulling apart a miran to compare their design with that of any other of the empire’s ethnicities more susceptible to the mutation.

It might be that miran do not know such diseases because they were designed by the hand of Aharté herself, from her flesh, but Iriset thinks it safer to study and be sure.

Next she might discover the stoppage of flow that causes squared arteries in the older architects, or invent a night-vision applicator based on the design of Bittor’s eyes, or dig into a brain and root out the source of nightmares.

Retro-design the skull sirens to determine how and why their skulls push out through their faces as they mature, and how they survive it.

Interrogate the design-root of consciousness!

Pinpoint the triggers for aging or miscarriage!

She understands why chimeras and certain kinds of human architecture and chemistry are dangerous, but not healing and refinement. Humans are intricate design and is it not our right to understand ourselves?

When someone suggested to her once that merely thinking such thoughts went against Silence, Silk said, “Wasn’t I, after all, designed by the goddess? If Aharté did not wish me to seek transformation, why design me with this desire?”

You see, Iriset was always destined to break the world.