Page 51

Euphemisms

A ttendants arrive early to begin their day.

Lyric climbs quietly out of bed and brushes his fingers along Iriset’s cheek as her eyes flicker open.

Together—everything for the following few days will be done together—they stretch and accept coffee and morning tonics.

They’re bathed and fed a simple breakfast. Lyric asks if she’d like to exercise and Iriset says she’ll only make them both sweaty again if they’re allowed.

He clearly meant would she like to walk or lift weights or join him in a combat formation, and after she makes her sexual insinuation, Iriset lowers her eyes and manages to put on the appearance of shyness with her hands against her warm cheeks. Two of the attendants hide smiles.

It’s the Day of the Crowning Sun, the turning point of the year, and Lyric is needed for an elaborate ritual that will last most of the day.

Iriset will be at his side for its entirety.

They are dressed in simple robes that match in style, though Iriset’s is a brighter red than the rust color of Aharté’s priests that her husband prefers.

The attendant who assists her is Shahd, as she had requested, and Iriset is careful to hide her delight at a familiar face.

Shahd has no reason to stand out from the others yet.

Then Garnet appears with Menna mé Garai, the Architect of the Seal, and Iriset has a moment of panic she carefully hides under a patina of polite bashfulness.

Garnet tells Lyric in his low rumbling voice that his mother wishes to join them for the evening meal, and Amaranth and Sidoné as well.

Sidoné will have to be content with Garnet’s company, the body-twin says, and Lyric deal alone with his mother and sister and wife.

It’s said with humor and Lyric nods as if Garnet makes such choices for him all the time.

While Garnet speaks, Menna approaches with a long box of design paint. She bows and Lyric glances at Iriset. “Today will you match my face in symbol, wife?”

She agrees, and the Architect of the Seal uses a thin brush to slide lines of black and white against their cheeks. It’s a simple pattern, incorporating the basic sigils of the four forces.

The art tickles Iriset’s cheek, but Menna doesn’t notice the craftmask.

Of course she doesn’t, Iriset chides herself, struggling to keep from clenching her jaw.

Menna didn’t notice the craftmask three nights ago when she’d been most vulnerable; she won’t now.

Not even the Silent priests noticed! Iriset is the exquisite, soft Singix Es Sun, and nobody is looking for anything beneath her beauty.

While she’s being painted, Lyric and Garnet step aside for a quiet, private conference.

The larger man looms over her husband, but with an air of protectiveness that Iriset recognizes from her father’s court: Garnet will die to keep Lyric from harm.

It goes beyond friendship and brotherhood, beyond his assigned role as body-twin.

If her crimes are revealed, even if somehow she convinces Lyric to spare her, Garnet méra Be? will kill her for hurting his brother.

The moment of pinnacle eclipse, when the sun is a brilliant crescent of fire capping the moon, is the moment of communion, when everything that the empire is—every person alive and dead, every memory and hope for the future, every building and stone, every force-ribbon and reaching, hungry military front—comes together for the singular purpose of balanced Silence under the command of the Vertex Seal. It’s the holiest moment in the year.

When the sun reaches its vertex, the ruler of the empire reseals power itself into place.

Who knows if Aharté even pays attention?

For hours before the eclipse, priests lead groups of carefully curated representatives through patterns of movements and meditation, aligning massive lines of design through the human bodies.

As the sun begins its pinnacle slip, everyone falls quiet, waiting for the tiny ring of a crystal to hone their voices sharper.

Shadows cast by tiny obelisks and spiral pennants bend into slices, crescent upon crescent layering as the sun passes behind the moon.

A hum begins at the edges of the crowd, creeping nearer and nearer to the center at a perfectly measured pace until the sun itself arrives at its peak.

Lyric waits for the precise moment beside the throne, in the Hall of Princes, where upon the carved back of the chair is etched this line: one claimed with blood and paired with hunger, always binding .

His is the blood, cut from his arm and cupped into a shallow bowl.

He kneels before the moon rock and, when it’s time, presses a handprint to the surface.

Iriset watches as the blood is absorbed.

Impossible, but she sees it.

The hunger belongs to the Moon-Eater’s Mistress, who wakes her god during the eclipse and feeds him from her body. When the blood and the hunger meet beneath the crown of sunlight, the entire crater embracing Moonshadow City trembles from steeple to steeple.

It breathes.

Probably that is the only truly necessary point of the ritual, the part that binds the massive design into place.

But the rest of the rite is important for people, for demonstrating the significance of individuals and neighborhoods: Representatives from every part of the Holy Empire, blessed with the songs and blood of their homes, link hands and breathe, give fire and sighs, spit, and blood into the ritual.

For hours it builds to the crescendo, for hours it fades, bubbling and sinking like alcohol into the lifeblood of the empire.

Family feasts and neighborhood parties follow, folk drowsy with the heat and echoing chimes.

No businesses open, and even the army relaxes its grip—it was a good time for the undermarket, called the Sweet Night in the Little Cat’s court, because though it’s the shortest night of the year, it often produces the sweetest results.

There’s balance to that, too: The Crowning Sun ritual reaffirms the structures of the empire, and so of course it creates pockets of shadow in which the undermarket can thrive.

Iriset has never attended the ritual before, though she’s been to several after-parties in the Saltbath precinct, both with her father’s court and with her grandparents.

Watching it from the center, she can see the whole thing so very clearly.

Aside from the resealing of blood and hunger, it’s a sham.

A performance. Pretense. A great big mask to fit over the whole empire, like saying She passed away when you mean she died.

The empire is balanced? The empire eliminates outliers, the marginalized or mighty, anyone or thing that disturbs equilibrium.

The empire is holy? The empire makes laws and enforces faith by burning to the earth any counterbelief, creating a One God Aharté by destroying her rivals.

The empire welcomes new citizens? It drags children from parents and forces them to change their names, their clothes, and beliefs.

It rewards assimilation like it’s the only way to be happy.

This is why there is no room for genius or change here.

No room for difference. Apostasy is the worst of crimes because it seeks power outside of the Holy Design.

Maintaining these rituals—the Crowning Sun, the Days of Mercy, the Glorious Vow, all of them—reinforces the Holy Design.

It literally reseals the design put in place by the Holy Syr that runs from throne to steeples and across the force-ribbons to the edges of the empire.

But it also pins the design back down in everyone’s minds. Makes a holy rite of erasure.

Iriset is a little impressed.

But now that she’s used her apostasy to infiltrate the center of the Holy Design, she wonders if she can find a way to change the Holy Design itself—or tear it all apart. That would matter. That would be a fitting tribute to the princess whose life she’s stolen.

If it’s possible for intellectual exercise alone to push a person into full-out rebellion, she’s nearly all the way there.

Iriset is exhausted once the rituals finish, though she did little but stand or kneel at her husband’s side.

They retire to their rooms to drink water and rest. Lyric holds her hand, eyes lit with passion—not for her but for his god. The empire has withstood another year, and if he can make it so, it will withstand another. Despite his misgivings.

Lyric believes her to be his partner in that endeavor now.

The more time they spend together, the stronger their binding will be.

That’s conventional wisdom surrounding the marriage rite, but as Iriset lies there, aware of her inner design as she never was before—aware so fundamentally that she thinks she just might be able to stop her own heart from beating if she tries or, with a twist of will, squeeze the alcohol out of her bloodstream, or stop her stomach from broadcasting its hunger—Iriset realizes that the binding is already complete.

The egg did its job entirely when she and Lyric kissed, weaving their designs together so well that Iriset could go around the world this instant and still feel the shape of his pulse.

That’s going to be a problem.

Only consent or death can break the marriage knot. Lyric will never agree to dissolving it without knowing the truth. There can only be death or confession, if Iriset wishes to be free. Unless, of course, she finds a way to undo it herself.

She wonders if Amaranth intends to kill her. It must be part of at least some of her plans.

Iriset closes her eyes and tries, for once, to stop thinking about problems she can’t solve today.

Dinner is served in an adjoining suite and Diaa of Moonshadow already waits when Iriset and Lyric arrive.