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They work for an hour in pleasant companionship, Iriset asking all sorts of questions about the tools and where Nielle acquires them, and Nielle blithely answering.

Iriset mentions that this might be a fine hobby for a foreign princess to take up and in return is gifted with enough tools to nearly complete a starter set.

Nielle bumps their shoulders together and says, “And I’m making this one just for you. ”

Glancing at the mask, Iriset lifts her brows in a question.

“You’ll see,” Nielle teased.

When it is time for Iriset to depart and Huya comes to fetch her, Nielle hands Iriset a small box of beginner mask-making supplies, then with a flourish presents the real gift. Nielle offers the full-face mask, looking boldly into Singix’s eyes. Iriset glances at the creation.

The mask is deep green ceramic, edged at the brow in white fur. Ugly black thread is sewn across the eyeholes like slicing scars, with red glass beads rather like blood splattered around. It’s appalling, nothing that suits the perfect loveliness of Singix of the Beautiful Twilight. Iriset loves it.

She says so, then promises to wear it the next time there’s a gathering of small kings at the palace.

“It’s Leq’ina,” Nielle says, frowning.

Iriset knows the name of the Ceres demon of obedience—each of their virtues is ruled by a god and a demon—and she raises her chin.

“I know,” she says. “Leq’ina icons often depict him with a full mane of white hair.

I will acquire a silver veil and bead it with glass and pearls to accentuate the likeness. ”

Nielle seems mollified. Good, because that’s everything Iriset knows about the demon of obedience.

Shahd waits by the skiff already, and when she helps Iriset climb up, she squeezes her hand twice to let her know the notes were delivered. Iriset hopes Bittor can do something to get her grandparents to safety, and that he can coordinate with her on the timing of her new array.

They take an alternate route back to the Crystal Desert, down along the border between Lodestone and Saltbath toward the Silent precinct.

This time of year, most businesses shut down for an hour or so after noon to escape the worst heat of the day and allow force-fans to recharge.

The royal skiff slides them through the larger streets without much traffic or audience.

Iriset is feeling pleased with herself, smug even, at how good she’s getting at this game. Though it’s frustrating that she must go through the process of gathering design tools again as Singix when she already did it as herself.

A sudden brake jerks her gently forward on the bench.

She grabs for the safety handle against the side of the cabin as Shahd leans forward to inquire after the driver’s reason for such an abrupt stop.

But Huya snaps his fingers and uses a ring-trigger to activate the skiff’s external force-shield.

It crackles in a smooth web of ecstatic flow, and the Seal guard in with them puts a hand on the hilt of his force-blade.

Outside, the eight other Seal guards move: Four step off the skates to realign themselves with the four still riding the sides of the skiff.

They’re ready to move into one of the intricate combat dances to raise power.

Nothing attacks. Iriset frowns, a little wiggle of uncertainty in her chest.

“Let’s go,” the Seal guard inside says. “Slow and steady, keep in a pear-blossom eight-nine form.”

But the skiff doesn’t move. They’ve just passed into the Silent precinct, driving along a broad bridge-avenue ribbon above the middle-class residential neighborhoods.

Tall houses are built tightly together, some of them over shop fronts, others with small balcony gardens.

Beneath the ribbon at street level, canvas shades and umbrellas are a quiet, flickering rainbow.

Everything is strangely still, even the handful of children on the elaborate playground at the end of the bridge.

“Why aren’t you driving?” asks Huya.

The driver, a middle-aged miran with ambiguous gender-forward features whose name Iriset didn’t catch so she doesn’t know what to assign them, shakes their head. “There’s a disruption in the ribbon ahead, nothing for our slides to hook into. We can go back?”

“Do it,” the Seal guard in charge commands. “Ilay, Asmet, tie off the skiff to those rising platforms.”

In case the bridge gives out. Iriset grips the safety handle tight enough to whiten her knuckles.

Before the driver manages to reverse the force-loops, Iriset feels the ripple of a large blast of rising force, and the air in front of the skiff flashes in vivid silver-gold lines. A crawling graffiti.

The skiff backs up, but the graffiti is huge: An alliraptor lifts up from the road, opens its jaw, and silently roars, then a woman appears behind it.

She crouches and pets its head. The alliraptor curls its scaly tail around her and they sit together.

She kisses it, then strokes it, and the alliraptor unravels into fine threads of blood-red and mirané-red, re-forming into a spider looming over the woman.

Silk is Syr , the graffiti announces.

Oh, fuck, Iriset thinks, craning her neck to see as the graffiti hangs there, and then to either side of it, more graffiti bursts to life: Silk lives , one says; another says, Moon to crater , invoking Bittor’s rebellious words from the Day of Final Mercy.

Six other locations across Moonshadow City experience similar displays at the exact same moment in the early afternoon.

That’s seven total, a very unbalanced number meant to discomfort the illustrious Silence of the city.

Nobody is hurt, it was only graffiti. (Though some youths in the Fountain precinct use the distraction to shoplift several pocketfuls of rare snail shell buttons.) But everyone is talking about it, and nobody believes it was a coincidence that Singix Es Sun was a direct witness to the largest graffiti.

When he sees Iriset, Lyric immediately cups her face in his hands and studies her carefully. “I’m restricting you to the palace for now.”

Jerking back, Iriset lets herself gasp in shock and disagreement. “Why? Does it not make you seem weak to keep me hidden away? Shouldn’t we show we are not afraid?”

He doesn’t let go of her face as he says firmly, “I am not concerned with seeming weak or seeming strong: I’m only concerned with being so.”

Iriset feels herself flushing under his palms and covers his hands with her own, slotting her fingers between his.

The gentle command of his tone makes her want to shove her tongue as deep in his mouth as possible.

It’s a struggle not to. His affection threads inside her like thin little worms, digging at the roots of her anger.

The only way to combat her very requited feelings and keep her mind sharp is to act like it’s just sex.

See, Iriset is well aware of the problematic nature of her lust for her husband.

“Lyric,” she murmurs. “You promised me I was not your subordinate.”

His eyelids flinch twice in obvious surprise. He is unused to his wife challenging him at all.

Lyric drops one hand from her face but leaves the other, sliding it down to cup her jaw.

“Then allow me to prioritize your safety for a quad or two so that the city army has a chance to eliminate this trouble,” he says, settling his thumb against the corner of her mouth.

She turns to kiss it, preferring to bite or suck, but they are standing in a cavernous entryway of the Hall of Princes.

If she were Iriset mé Isidor, she would push harder, point out the reasons she should get to do what she wants, that she can protect herself.

If she were Iriset, she’d ask the Vertex Seal why, if he’s so worried about her safety, he hasn’t started decimating his own court until he discovers who tried to kill Singix, discovers who managed to kill his “little arguer.” But the role she’s playing doesn’t allow demands, and she needs more time to prepare before she strips the disguise away.

So Iriset only schools her face into sorrow, a pretty little pout if she’s being honest.

“And, Singix,” Lyric coaxes. “I am afraid.”

When he uses that tone with his perfect, beautiful, undemanding foreign wife, what can she do but agree?