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As Diaa speaks, she walks Iriset to the door and shoos away Shahd and the hovering Huya.

Her own attendants wait outside, as well as a Seal guard, and Iriset watches, extremely impressed, as Diaa efficiently and lightheartedly dismisses everyone in favor of only those who belong to her household because she has some delicate things to discuss with her successor.

Then Diaa of Moonshadow whisks Iriset away and sneaks her out of the palace.

Iriset is most definitely paying attention.

She’d recognized quads ago that Diaa had built a specific power base for herself that allows her to go where she wishes and say what she wants, but witnessing it in action like this shows Iriset that she’s really not all that subtle herself.

She keeps quiet, only voicing an almost-protest once, when she realizes Diaa is taking her through a hidden passage toward a private skiff, but her heart isn’t in it when she asks, “What of the rebels?”

“The graffiti?” Diaa laughs, handing her a wire half-mask to occlude everything but her mouth.

“My dear Singix, there are always rebels, and always graffiti, and for now I am grateful that it isn’t featuring either of my children.

Besides, that Silk apostate is dead, the Little Cat is dead, so this is merely the dying gasp of a fallen tribe. ”

Diaa is definitely too smart to truly believe that, but Iriset will take advantage of both of them pretending it’s true.

They slip free without fanfare, and Diaa takes her daughter-in-Silence to an exclusive auction in the Opal precinct, where everyone has anonymous full-face masks—Diaa provides one for Iriset—and the bids are made with small placards designed to glow when a price is raised.

Diaa acquires a basket of cocoa nuts and dried berries from the Bow for a shocking price, and that’s that.

They stop for cordials at a fancy shop on the roof of a luxury apartment spiral, surrounded by glass windmills fracturing sunlight into rainbows.

Diaa gives Iriset a silk pouch with some of the nuts and berries.

Diaa leans in like they’re gossiping: “The cocoa can be ground and baked, and one of my attendants is a genius at cookies; I’ll bring you some.

It also makes a lustrous hair dye, though not for your tone, I imagine.

” She pinches the ends of one of Iriset’s long braids.

“But I’ve heard you’re learning mask making, and I’ve noticed that some masks rather smell of glue.

Cocoa smells marvelous to me. And the berries always come with the cocoa—I believe the merchants think they keep the cocoa fresh.

They’re not useful for dye, but they add a tart sweetness to tea. ”

Iriset thanks her genuinely, wonders what changed Diaa’s mind, hopes it’s not those pesky rumors of how, ah, compatible she and Lyric are, and drinks her cordial.

They do not get caught.

Two days later General Lapis mé Matsimet returns home, and at the welcoming banquet Iriset greets the general in the ugly mask of the demon of obedience.

Lapis laughs to see it, asking if it’s a hint at what Singix of the Beautiful Twilight plans for her reign as the consort of the Vertex Seal.

Iriset returns the smile, wondering if it’s true that Lapis would benefit from wanting Singix dead and this marriage a failure. But she only says, “Naturally.”

The general has been most recently at the eastern front, where the empire presses against Huvar, but she swept south to the coast where the islands are before returning home.

She knows the gods and demons of virtue and has brought letters from Singix’s family for her.

Though Iriset hadn’t intended it, Lapis likes her instantly, and shoos even her burly twin brother, General Bey, away, rearranging seating placards at the throne table in order to plop down beside Iriset, though as the honored guest she should be with Lyric.

The Vertex Seal accepts the general’s seating arrangement then with an amused, distant smile, and says he himself prefers Singix’s company to all others, and thus can’t argue with Lapis’s desire.

Lapis wears a formal white army summer uniform, her chest covered in the mirané-brown ropes of both status and accomplishment.

Instead of a mask, her mouth is tinted a darker blue that spreads past her actual lips to make her mouth seem larger.

The same effect surrounds her eyes in black, giving her a dangerously eager look, like a hungry, staring corpse.

There is a gruesome scar on her bare left shoulder that begins in teeth marks at the top and courses down toward her elbow in furrows of hardened, darker tissue.

“A sarly staff did that, in the Bow,” Lapis says when she notes Iriset staring. “I got all my movement and muscle back, but it pulls like a motherfucker.”

Iriset twitches her lip at the curse, and says softly, “I am surprised you do not paint it.”

Lapis’s large mouth tilts in a speculative frown. “Good idea! Aharté pink and Seal red, maybe, like a holy wound.”

This banquet is held in the mirané dining hall, at a massive low table shaped like a square that, once everyone has arrived, lifts off the floor upon force-stages.

People sit along both the outer and inner edges, with the most honored at the throne side in the west. White, red, black and pink bulbs of light hover in the air, the colors in honor of the imperial army and Lapis specifically, and smoky images of singing alliraptors snake between the lights, grinning happily as they hum soft, discordant melodies.

(Iriset wonders if the numen is ever brought to this room, or if it eats at all.)

While Lyric rules the western table, across the square in the east Amaranth holds her own court, surrounded by miran and military elite, including the commander of the Seal guard, Iumeri Selk, a warrior with Bow-black skin who wears ibis feathers in his hair and flirts constantly with Sidoné, though both of them are too close generationally to their conquered grandparents to be allowed to marry.

Sidoné told Iriset she thinks Iumeri flirts with her exactly for that reason, and when she’s having a bad day she flirts back, though she’ll never marry a man, not even for politics.

When wine the exact silver-pink of Aharté’s moon, infused with ecstatic to make it bubble and fizz, is served, Lapis stands with perfectly balanced strength and calls, “A toast!”

Bey says, “This is a banquet in your honor, sister. Ought we not be toasting to you?”

Laughter spreads, and Lapis touches the fingers of one hand to her left eye. “Yes, I will accept a toast to my name, though it perhaps should wait until I’ve managed to solve all your city-born rebellions for you.”

That’s met with gasps and laughter both, and Bey glowers. “Your methods will not be welcome in Moonshadow, sister, for you cannot raze in a city.”

“A good force-quake might dissolve all the cult graffiti,” she drawls, “and remind people to whom they owe allegiance. It’s never a bad idea to be bold in such a reminder.”

“And how should we be certain a force-quake wouldn’t disrupt the bridges and ribbons while it erases graffiti?”

The banter feels rehearsed, like the Mirror Generals intend this argument to be public, perhaps to teach the miran something, or place the foundation of an argument they’ll later make.

Iriset is eager to answer anyway: A good architect can pinpoint certain frequencies in flow and rising, and therefore target the stick of graffiti but not the clutch of a bridge.

Menna, the Architect of the Seal, lifts her voice and says much the same. “However,” she adds, “such a thing might not be done over the entire city—a specific neighborhood or precinct only.”

“That would not do, for is the graffiti not popping up in every precinct?” Lapis widens her blackened eyes almost comically.

“Indeed,” Bey says, “though there are patterns to it, in timing and revelation. We believe the instigator is centered in the Saltbath. After the first incident, the next three were equidistant from a point near the south canyon of Saltbath.”

Amaranth calls, “Isn’t the Saltbath where the Little Cat was captured?”

“It is,” General Bey says. “I believe, again, given the timing and the nature of the art, one of the ringleaders is likely to be Bittor méra Tesmose, granted mercy these two quads ago.”

Iriset lowers her eyes immediately at hearing his name, lest any reaction be noted.

“This discord is well spread,” Beremé mé Adora says.

A silver-and-black mask pinches her sharp nose, dyed-leather vines crawling up between her brows to arc across her forehead in twisting spikes and spirals, spreading over her temples like buffalo horns.

Her eyes are unmasked, piercing and mirané brown.

“And unconnected to any known cults. Interestingly, I heard, General, that much of the graffiti depicts a non-mirané woman embracing an alliraptor.”

“Embracing,” Lapis says, pretending to be scandalized. The general remains standing between the seated Iriset and Lyric.

“Oh my,” Iriset murmurs.

“Is it not what you witnessed, Singix?” calls Amaranth.

Lifting her face, she tells the Moon-Eater’s Mistress, “It was spectacular, Your Glory. The woman sat with the creature and tamed it, and she kissed its scales and it… unraveled.” Iriset says the word almost like a question, as if maybe it’s the wrong choice, though she knows it is not.

Several bodies away, Diaa of Moonshadow sets her cup of wine down stiffly. “That Silk person was no Holy Syr.”

“In memory it may be that she becomes more dangerous than she was alive,” the Vertex Seal says.

He wears no mask, and the only paint on his face is silver dots placed among the black freckles on his cheek and temple to appear like bright little shadows.

If only he realized it had been that very Silk who told him he need wear no mask, who had admired his freckles.

“Apostasy,” Menna declares.