Page 54

About mercy and its costs

T he unraveling of Iriset mé Isidor takes place just past dawn, as soon as the Moon-Eater’s Mistress joins them after awakening her god.

There’s no question of Iriset staying away. Not only does she need to make certain the craftmask holds, but her sheer curiosity eclipses any other consideration. Who could resist such temptation as one’s own funeral?

The simple ritual is held in the Silent Chapel, within an octagonal chamber designed for such things.

The walls are plain stucco, anchored with thin silicate crystals that welcome resonance from every force.

No ceiling covers them; instead the sky itself melts brighter blue overhead, and the floor is the solid rock of the crater.

Singix’s body—so perfectly disguised—lies upon the earth, head aligned to the north, within the confines of a diamond of sprinkled salt. She’s wrapped in strips of red cloth woven especially for death, every inch of her covered but for her face, which is painted with force-sigils.

Iriset has a rough time looking at it.

With her are Lyric, Amaranth, Sidoné, Garnet, three Silent priests, two Seal guards, Her Glory’s three remaining handmaidens, Nielle, Diaa of Moonshadow, and Raia mér Omorose.

Iriset wants to stand with Raia, who doesn’t bother to hide the tears filling ans eyes.

An kneels beside the body’s shoulder and touches fingers to the wrapped flesh.

“I’d like one of the echo coins,” an says to nobody in particular.

As one of the priests quietly instructs Raia in the basics of the ritual so an can act for one of them, there’s a quiet disturbance from outside, and another priest enters. She goes directly toward Lyric and murmurs softly to him. He nods, and a moment later Iriset’s grandparents are ushered in.

Her entire body goes rigid. As they bow deeply to the Vertex Seal, touching their eyes over white cloth masks, Iriset tucks her head against Lyric’s shoulder.

She cannot possibly look at them, only clings to her husband, grateful she can act this way without suspicion.

It takes all her concentration to mitigate the harsh expression of ecstatic shock and smooth it into slow, sorrowful flow before Lyric notices something is actually wrong.

Everything is arranged as the priest who brought in Iriset’s grandparents leads out both Seal guards to keep the participant number at sixteen.

Lyric gently hands Iriset to Amaranth while he takes a place among the priests, opposite Raia.

Iriset is not surprised Lyric requires no instruction in the role.

One priest hands around perfectly balanced force-masks for everyone to wear: The unraveling requires absolute balance of design to achieve completion.

Lyric places himself in the east, where rising force dominates.

Everyone arrays themselves in the proper quad structure, like points in overlapping eight-point stars.

Iriset stands with Amaranth in the west, where falling dominates.

Her grandparents are together in the north, for her grandmother has a strong ecstatic force.

Next to her grandmother, her grandfather is holding a bouquet of night-blooming eris flowers.

The kind Iriset used to bring him when she visited.

It never occurred to Iriset that they would—could—be here.

“Everyone born to Silence may return to it,” Lyric says.

He doesn’t speak up, for it’s a small chamber and everyone listens carefully.

“Aharté confirms the patterns, her Holy Design having neither beginning nor end, but only the consummation of perfect Silence. For the point that was Iriset mé Isidor in life, and continues to be in the memories we hold, in the various echoes she marked into the pattern—those we recognize, and those we cannot—this is both end and beginning.”

The words are traditional, and though Iriset has heard them before, hearing the prayer applied to herself is disconcerting to say the least. She stops listening, wondering what point there is to any of it, and she remembers, as she dislikes to remember, that this is not the first false funeral she’s attended.

Then, there’d been no unraveling, but only a memorial, and she cried despite the lack of precipitating death.

Folk of the undermarket had sung discordant songs of sorrow and missing threads, broken patterns.

Iriset finds herself crying, unable to look at her grandparents, thinking of her mother, and of Singix herself, hidden beneath the craftmask unmourned.

Every blink sparks ecstatic energy, and her tears drag falling.

She sways gently and glances up, up, up to the sky, wishing to leap away into the growing brilliance of morning light.

That is the rising force.

Every force makes its presence known as the two priests, Raia, and the Vertex Seal each place a soft coin of smoky quartz around the body.

Then they spread a basic force-web across her—Singix—it—and begin a soft humming song to strengthen the four forces.

The moment of unraveling is touched off by Raia mér Omorose, who also cries. An carefully uses a stylus to begin the vibration through the webbing. The vibration trembles in Iriset’s molars, uncomfortable and intense, but brief.

What once was flesh and bone, soul and force, what once was a human being—Singix of the Beautiful Twilight, sweet, curious, anxious—dissipates into threads of force.

The craftmask dissolves a split second before Singix’s true face does, but it’s in a blur of unraveling, features and bone structure a smear. Relief bends Iriset’s knees, but she makes herself remain upright.

Together Raia, the priests, and Lyric sing a different force-note: sharp, uplifting, descending, and warbling. They draw the forces into the quartz coins, and as the final scraps of the body pass through the resonant crystal, an echo is marked into it, a memory only.

Then it’s over. Nothing remains within the salt-diamond.

Iriset reaches for Amaranth, needing just to hold on to something.

And Amaranth knows . Nobody else here but she and Sidoné knows what is real, or what’s happening to Iriset.

Her Glory takes her hand and steps out of place to draw Iriset under her arm in an embrace.

Amaranth is both soft and sturdy, thrumming with energy from her recent encounter with the Moon-Eater and this ritual.

That first morning Iriset went with Amaranth to her holy ministrations, she thought that love was a knot of forces.

This feels like a knot of forces, too, and is powerful like love, only it hurts so much.

Iriset supposes pain doesn’t make it any less a part of love. Maybe love is as inherently divisive as it is engaging.

(She grows nearer to the truth every day.)

Iriset is lucky and is not required to talk to her grandparents.

It would be false and unkind of her to approach them as Singix.

She goes with Lyric as he speaks with the Holy Peace, the white-haired old miran who leads the Silent Chapel.

The priest asks to touch their marriage threads, and Iriset offers her hand for the old woman.

Lyric glances at her, surprised, then offers the same.

The Holy Peace blesses them for the strength of their binding, and makes a comment about children that doesn’t concern Iriset, lost in thoughts as she is (and given the contraceptive net she personally wove into her own reproductive system).

Lyric weaves their fingers together and takes her away.

Though when they arrive at the gaping archway leading out of the Silent Chapel, Garnet waits there.

By his expression, even Iriset knows he needs the immediate attention of the Vertex Seal.

She pauses, and Lyric holds up his free hand to halt Garnet before turning to her. She lifts her chin and smiles gently. “Even the Holy Peace believes our binding thrives, Your Glory. If you are required, I’ll go with your sister for the morning.”

He doesn’t return her smile, but studies her eyes, his irises twitching so slightly as he glances from one eye to the other and back. “Our binding does thrive,” he murmurs. “Will you join me again for the eclipse?”

“Yes.”

“And after, perhaps, spend the afternoon with me?” A certain vulnerability leaks into his request.

“I would like nothing better.” Iriset infuses truth into the answer and lifts herself lightly onto her toes to brush her lips against his.

Lyric catches her hands and tugs just enough to keep her near. He puts his forehead against hers. “Today is the Day of Self-Mercy, and I am notoriously bad at observing it on a personal level. Having you with me is a mercy that perhaps I can allow myself.”

Reminding herself harshly that he doesn’t speak such romance to her but to the woman he believes her to be, Iriset manages not to melt. She nods against him, and he slips away.

Two Seal guards remain with her, as well as Shahd. Iriset asks the girl, “Did you see where Her Glory went?”

“Her Glory is spending the day in the amphitheater.” Shahd bows and gestures for Iriset to follow.

As they walk across the edge of the Crystal Desert back into the palace complex, Iriset sinks her awareness through her feet, glad her slippers are thin.

She can pick up echoes of the security net like this, and slightly detour on the way to Amaranth to check on two anchors at least. Amaranth will give her answers about the execution tomorrow, even if Her Glory doesn’t like to.

The security net hums softly, pinging it the way it…

Iriset stops.

She kneels suddenly, touching the warm crystal with the palm of her hand.

It’s different.

It’s all shifted toward falling, which is not the trajectory-bind they’d worked with before.