Page 6

The Little Cat’s apostate

I n a different cell of the same apostate prison, a young woman grits bloody teeth. Her lips peel back into a grimacing smile, and she peers through pain-narrowed brown eyes at General Bey méra Matsimet. Behind the city army general, Raia mér Omorose claps hands over ans mouth and backs up.

The young woman throws her head back, and any designer worth their silicate would perceive the sharp staccato of ecstatic force tearing up her throat—they might even catch it in time to stop it, had they the proper tools.

Or, any designer worth their silicate and not distracted by horror the way Raia is.

It takes an too long to feel the pop, and by the time an throws anself forward, it’s too late.

The young woman laughs, a choking raven call, devoid of voice.

“Do you think this will save you?” Bey asks, bored and disgusted.

The young woman— Silk , she said, is only my mask-name , right before snapping her jaw shut and activating whatever hidden design just burned her voice out—slumps suddenly, the design taking its toll on her internal forces.

She tilts on her stool, and Bey keeps Raia back from catching her.

She hits the dirt floor with a bony thud, one arm bent awkwardly under her. Black hair splays in oily twists.

Raia’s hands drop to ans sides. An hates this.

Silk is a genius, and ought to be treated as such.

Invited to the palace with appropriate precautions, null manacles, and offered good food and the benefits of state-sanctioned design.

The Vertex Seal has kept the numen alive and imprisoned for a hundred years; they could certainly manage a young human genius.

“Let’s go, Raia,” General Bey says, dismissing the passed-out apostate. “You architects will have to figure out a way to undo her scorch.”

But Raia knows they will not. It’s human architecture to alter, affect, or transform life, and the Vertex Seal won’t allow such design, not for any reason. He would say justice gained through apostasy is no justice at all.

When the Little Cat asked Silk to create a design to destroy a voice and hide the design in a pill or button or lace rosette or something tiny and easily activated, she barely gave a thought as to why.

She simply muttered that destroying was so much easier than creating, and couldn’t he give her a real challenge instead? Then she did it.

She put it in a prickly pear candy, because the sugar crystal could maintain the structure of the design almost as well as quartz.

Candy was better than a button, she told her father, because candy would deliver the design directly to its target in predictable slippery streaks.

Isidor was skeptical, but Silk shrugged in nonchalant confidence. She still never asked why.

When it matters, the candy functions exactly as designed, even with a null collar against the user’s neck, for the null collar only affects what it touches, and it does not touch the candy or the larynx.

Three days later, the door to Iriset’s cell clangs loudly as the lock is inexpertly undone, and she blinks from the shelf, exhausted and hungry and lulled into a dull, meditative slump.

Instead of her usual guard, two soldiers march in, slamming the cell door shut behind them.

They stare at her: The weaponless one is so obviously feminine-forward, for the rust-red uniform jacket of the Vertex Seal’s guard does not hide her large breasts and hips, or her languid pose.

The other is a woman, too, by appearance, roughly the same height, but a woman who knows how to stand like a soldier and wear a Seal guard uniform fit to her hard body.

The first woman reaches up and with a relieved sigh unwinds the full-faced Seal guard mask from her face and hair, letting massive amounts of black curls fall. “Oh,” she groans, “that weight was giving me a neck-ache.” Her voice is light but sounds like a purr.

Iriset presses back into the wall, digging her fingers hard against the stucco.

The second woman doesn’t remove her mask, which covers her head and face but for a slit over her dark brown eyes. She says, the sneer quite audible, “It will have to go back up when we leave this pit.”

“You’re the Little Cat’s daughter,” the first woman says, brushing curls away from her handsome face.

Her bright eyes are rimmed with black that spreads in thick lines to her temples, obscuring the shape of her cheeks, and black glints on her ripe-looking mouth.

When she smiles, her white teeth gleam. Her mirané-brown skin glows with youth and health.

This is a noble woman, soft and generously built. She does not belong here.

Her companion tugs her Seal guard mask down off her face then, revealing a long nose and oval lips of Bow ancestry, but mirané-brown skin. A thick stripe of red paint masks across her eyes like blood. “We’re not here to play, Iriset mé Isidor.”

Iriset swallows, to find her voice after days of silence. When she speaks, it scratches like a sandstorm. “Who are you?”

The first woman—the soft, luscious miran—laughs. “I am your deliverer, daughter of thieves.”

“And I am her body-twin,” the other says. “Sidoné mé Dalir. Cover your eyes for the Moon-Eater’s Mistress, Amaranth mé Esmail Her Glory.”

Immediately Iriset slips onto her knees and presses her hands to the floor, lowering her head as she reins in shock.

For all that her father is the Little Cat, and she prides herself her Osahar and Cloud King ancestors, she comes from no holy bloodline, while this, this is the most holy.

Amaranth is the sister of the Vertex Seal himself.

And the lover of the Moon-Eater. She congresses with a god.

“Your Glory,” Iriset says, desperate to be free of the null wires so she can sense force again. With her complete faculties she’s good at reading motivation, but so hampered how will she figure out what Her Glory wants in time to negotiate in her favor?

“Yes, hiha,” Her Glory says, and Iriset hears the rustle of cloth as Amaranth kneels and touches Iriset’s head. “I have come to make you an offer.”

Sidoné mé Dalir scoffs, but otherwise the prison cell falls silent again as Iriset thinks furiously what to say.

Her Glory patiently strokes Iriset’s tangled brown hair, and Iriset is appalled at how dirty she is, how disadvantaged by her borrowed mask uselessly folded on the shelf, her bare feet and her stink.

“What offer, Your Glory?” she asks finally, when it becomes apparent she must.

“You are the daughter of the great thief known as the Little Cat, yes?”

Nodding scrapes the tip of Iriset’s nose lightly against the rough floor.

“I would have you come to the palace and be one of my handmaidens.”

A crackle of ecstatic force pops in Iriset’s ears. She blows it out in a balancing flow.

Amaranth mé Esmail laughs, throaty and slow, then leans away. “I would not, I think, have a handmaiden who refuses to look at me.”

Iriset pushes up from the floor, carefully, until she sits on her heels and folds her hands in a lying semblance of peace in her lap.

She drags her gaze up Her Glory’s body, then meets Amaranth’s bright mirané-brown eyes.

The spark in them belies the lazy way Her Glory carries her weight, belies the laconically lifted thick black eyebrow.

It’s a spark of challenge, and Iriset likes it.

“Why me?” She expects a lying response, but it must be asked.

Behind Her Glory, Sidoné mé Dalir shifts from one hip to the other and clenches the hilt of her curved sword as if to echo the question.

Amaranth smiles over her shoulder at her body-twin, then turns the smile upon Iriset once more.

“You are a novelty, daughter of thieves. And as pretty as was reported to us, though that is a bit shadowed by your time here in our least hospitable of rooms. Too bad you are no miran, but I like to surround myself with beautiful novelties, and my Moon-Eater appreciates my taste.”

It’s disconcerting—bordering on rude—how intently Her Glory studies Iriset.

But Her Glory can stare if she wishes to stare, and never be accused of impoliteness.

Iriset stares back, but makes herself blink timidly, for she’s not Silk, she’s only her father’s sheltered daughter.

“I’m only my father’s sheltered daughter,” she says softly. “Hardly a novelty.”

The Moon-Eater’s Mistress scoffs. “You underestimate yourself. The Little Cat and his pet apostate are the talk of the Holy City. Even the highest princes of the mirané council are interested in all their associates. And wouldn’t it be interesting if you can be tamed?

The child of a villain and associate of the great apostate Silk? ”

Iriset hums. She lets her gaze flicker over Amaranth’s gorgeous visage.

“My dearest friend on the mirané council doesn’t think you’ll agree,” Amaranth says enticingly.

“Prove her wrong. Even if you won’t like to be tamed, think of the luxury, the potential futures in store for you at my side.

You could… well. Do anything eventually.

When you’ve proved yourself at my side. Come with me, hiha. ”

“You could command me,” Iriset says.

“I am not looking for a slave. My handmaidens are my companions. My friends. They have power.” Amaranth raises her lush eyebrows. “I am strong enough to offer trust first.”

Behind the Moon-Eater’s Mistress, Sidoné clenches her jaw.

Iriset glances low, hiding her stare, as is polite. “The old soldier, Bey, he said I would have to give him something in return if I was ever to be free. But I won’t betray my father.”

“I will not ask you to.”

“Where is he?” Iriset clutches her hands together. “What is his sentence?”

“In the apostate tower, alone. He has not been sentenced yet, though he will almost certainly be killed during the Days of Mercy.”

Iriset shudders, not with fear, but because she thinks, I will save him first.

“Iriset,” Her Glory says. “Come.”

If not for the null wires, Iriset would feel a draw of falling force, a pull to Her Glory, but she continues to hesitate.

There’s a trap here, and if she doesn’t find its edges she’ll walk straight into its heart.

She sifts through her memory for anything she’s heard about Her Glory, but only comes up with a few tidbits: barely a year younger than her brother, known to be grand in generosity and all manner of appetite, a tastemaker since she was a child, fond of wearing her hair down and as little jewelry as possible in favor of skin paint and intricate, loose robes.

She’s said to be a fitting mistress for the Moon-Eater, being as extravagant as the goddess Aharté is simple.

Imagine what Her Glory would want if she realizes Iriset is Silk. Can Iriset use that? Can she accept this as the Little Cat’s daughter, but enter the palace as his pet apostate? Is it worth the risk?

Iriset knows what her father would say.

This is a chance out of here, this prison wherein she can do nothing. In the palace, though there will be great danger, there also will be great opportunity.

“Yes,” Iriset says to the most powerful woman in the empire.