Page 67

Lapis raises her cup again. “To Aharté and the Glorious Vow.”

Iriset dislikes the toast but does her part.

Once everyone shares a sip of wine and passes their cups to the person on their left, Hehet méra Davith says, “I noticed something curious about the copies of the graffiti presented to the council,” and there are a few murmurs of protest from miran who wish the subject turned.

“Do tell,” Lapis encourages.

“There is one repeated motif wherein the woman—Silk, presumably—uses what must be a design stylus to draw wings on the alliraptor as if to give it flight. In this one, the woman wears no cloth mask, but bears quite a resemblance to Iriset mé Isidor.”

Iriset widens her eyes, glad there’s no need to hide her surprise. How did Amaranth not think Iriset needed to know this detail? It’s unbelievably frustrating that she and Bittor can’t coordinate! She looks to Lyric, who does not appear surprised, but only grim.

“Even more evidence to tie the rebellion to the Little Cat and Bittor méra Tesmose,” General Bey says, as if that’s all that matters.

Amaranth finally speaks up again. “I wonder if any of you have seen the most recent graffiti from today, princes?”

“From the Design precinct, Your Glory?” Iumeri Selk, the Seal guard commander, asks.

“That’s right,” she almost purrs, and Iriset braces herself for whatever Amaranth is about to say.

“It depicts Silk—very much like Iriset—together with a man, maybe Bittor méra Tesmose himself. They smile with teeth like an alliraptor, then they kiss, and a star map appears around them, then Silk devours the man. Isn’t that odd? ”

Most of those gathered murmur and frown, but Iriset stares down at her fizzing wine. This is a message for her. Finally! Bittor realized a way to reach out to her.

Iriset remembers that star map. She’d been playing with it because her mother had asked her father once if the Cloud Kings knew what the stars were made of, because their castles were so much nearer.

Isidor couldn’t answer, because he’d left his family when he was so young, but the stars became a connection between them.

Iriset designed a star map out of the four forces, a pretty display that could be charged like a force-lamp and set to glow.

It was intended as a gift for her father the year Iriset turned sixteen.

“Perhaps he wants everyone to know his relationship with Silk, that he is her voice in the city? That they act as one?” Amaranth muses for the entire hall.

Iriset is grateful for her full-face mask.

She hides her hands under the table and grips her knees.

She understands the message. The trigger for the star map had been set into a necklace of knotted yarn and hematite, and she was wearing it the first time she kissed Bittor.

She’d kissed him out of grief and the desperate need to be distracted, cheered up, before she faced her father.

The kiss had triggered the design. As stars burst around them, Iriset had cried harder, thinking her mother wouldn’t approve of her little girl making out with a thief from the undermarket.

But Bittor had reacted to the map with awe.

That day, the first time she kissed Bittor, had been the fifth anniversary of her mother’s funeral. An anniversary that will come around again in eighteen days.

Beremé says, “Perhaps, General Bey, we should revisit the option of a force-quake at the next meeting of princes. Though it could disrupt travel and trade throughout Moonshadow City, it might be good for the miran, merchants, and small kings to feel personally how disruptive such civil rebellion is to the empire. If it hurts the Holy Design, it hurts all of us.”

The small king married to Nielle, Sian méra Sayar, throws up his hands but before he can argue, Hehet méra Davith raises his voice to suggest Beremé is merely joking, in a rather disdainful tone.

“It might convince some of the populace to turn them in,” says Iumeri Selk from beside Sidoné.

General Bey snorts. “He isn’t hurting anyone, or inciting any riots, and so it is difficult to coerce cooperation.”

Iriset struggles to keep the bitter smile from her lips as she remembers General Bey’s methods of coercion.

Lyric says, “I have confidence in my generals, as should the princes. Together, we will settle this in the most balanced means.”

His statement forces a slight silence, and then Diaa of Moonshadow asks Lapis if she’s considering taking any husband, which distracts everyone into a different sort of arguing.

But not Iriset. She has a deadline now.

Alone in their chambers that night, Lyric catches Iriset’s hand and tugs her toward him. His jaw is tight with tension and he studies her. They’re washed of paint and the sweat of the day, oiled and robed in loose linen, ready to relax into bed.

“Lyric?” she murmurs.

“You were upset at the banquet tonight.” He says it as an invitation to confide.

Iriset lowers her gaze, thinking fast, and leans her forehead against his jaw. “Do you really believe this graffiti rebellion is related to me? To the poison?”

“To the—no, not at all, sweetheart.” Lyric touches his fingers to her chin, lifting her face. “Though if they are linking Iriset’s likeness to themselves through their art, perhaps this Bittor méra Tesmose is angered that she died under our care. That may be why he initially attacked.”

“When he tried to kill you,” she whispers.

“And you stepped between us,” Lyric whispers back. “Perhaps you are one of his targets now.”

“It’s only art,” she assures.

Lyric huffs softly, with humor.

Iriset goes in for the kill. “It seems there is always rebellion brewing in the Holy City.”

Lyric’s smile falls away. “Always?”

With a little shrug, she walks around the bed to hold a hand to a little skull siren perched on the scales of the alliraptor bed.

It followed them up from the aviary downstairs.

Though it cocks its head, she has no seed, and so it merely ruffles its crest and hops along the alliraptor’s back.

“Since I arrived, there has always been something, and treated casually enough it seems to be common.”

“There are criminals everywhere,” he says dismissively. “Even those nearest to us.”

Swallowing, Iriset says, “But—this is rebellion. Not crimes like murders and thievery. The cult of Singers when I arrived, and this new rebellion, are a different sort of crime, are they not?”

He nods reluctantly. “Crimes against the empire, against She Who Loves Silence, not against individual people. State crimes, I suppose they might be called. But, Singix, some people chafe at laws, at community itself—they will never be satisfied with what is necessary to govern such a vast state, with such different folk within.”

“It is the nature of the empire, then? It requires rebellion, for balance?” Iriset can barely keep her voice gentle, so near to herself, to what she would say if she were here.

She likes being herself with him so much.

Too much. She wants to tear into him—tell him he has only eighteen days left of her.

Better make the most of it, Lyric. You’ll never have the likes of me again.

Lyric opens his mouth, then stops. He sits upon the edge of the bed and puts his elbows on his knees, cupping his chin in his hands.

As Iriset watches, his gaze seems to unfocus, as if he thinks so deeply his vision blurs.

“It is the nature of Silence in our mortal, flawed grip,” he says finally.

His shoulders heave in a sigh. “Balance requires some specific acts, specific placement of regulation, both literally—physically, like the force-steeples—and spiritually. The empire was built on these acts and regulations, and if they are not maintained, the entire structure will collapse.”

“What if the structure is weak in places? Or rotten in its very center?”

The Vertex Seal glances sharply at her. “What are you thinking, Singix?”

She shakes her head quickly, coming around to sit beside him. She is not Iriset, his royal arguer. Not yet. “I apologize. I meant nothing critical of you, but I am worried for you.” Iriset touches the side of his leg. “Is that not my prerogative now? To worry about my husband?”

It mollifies him. He covers her hand. “The center of the empire is strong, and good, because at the center is pure Aharté, and Silence. Human beings are not pure, and in our time the miran and my ancestor Vertex Seals may have pushed too hard in one place, or in one direction, marring balance, causing harm to the structure, allowing weakness to take hold. And others latch on to those places. Extremism, some of the laws of assimilation, the occasional corruption of small kings—those such things open the doors to apostasy and rebellion. But it is the extremism, corruption, and outdated laws that should be changed, cleaned out, for the rest of the body to survive.”

“Rebellion points to weaknesses in the system, but not that the system itself is weak?”

The look Lyric gives her then, thoughtful and veering toward suspicion, causes a chill falling to drain through her skin.

She’s said too much, analyzed too much. He says firmly, “Rebellion points to the faithless. To people who want selfishly for themselves, not for the greater good of Silence. The current protest is not suggesting Isidor Salisidor was innocent, or that the army or myself have done something wrong. What is it that this Bittor méra Tesmose is protesting with his apostatical graffiti, except Aharté’s Silence itself? ”

Exactly , Iriset thinks.

Though Iriset also thinks it’s possible Bittor is using the graffiti to consolidate power, to regrow parts of the Little Cat’s undermarket that were cut away or atrophied.

Whether he believes in his message or not, he still chose rebellion.

He must have crafted the graffiti to honor her.

How often had Bittor listened to Silk spell intricate arguments for why human architecture should not be a crime?

She’s never had faith in Aharté, and didn’t hide her faithlessness from her friend and lover.

He’s doing this for her. Centering her. She can’t wait to answer him.

In eighteen days she’ll be ready to shift the heart of this empire from the inside, even if only to destabilize it, to prove that it’s always been unstable. Apostasy only exists if you believe in god. Lyric believes in Silence, and Bittor may believe in rebellion, but Iriset believes in herself.

In her quiet, Lyric squeezes her hand. “And, Singix, what is the alternative? The empire is not perfect. How can it be, with flawed rulers and flawed citizens? But it is better than the chaotic hell that was the Apostate Age. Someday everyone will see the goodness in balance, in Aharté’s Silence.

That is what I hope for, what I work for.

I know it is a real thing, a goal that can be met, because I am bound to it, as is my sister.

The Holy Design moves through us and with us.

” He lifts her hand to his chest. “You must feel it, too, when our hearts beat together?”

“I do,” she whispers, a lie, because faith is not what she feels in moments like these.

She feels the effects of the marriage knot, a miracle of human architecture despite what the Silent priests claim.

She feels the inevitable break between them: the promise of triumph and the cold, brutal look in his eyes when he sees what she’s done.

When she shows him Aharté’s will is not as strong as her own.

Late that night, while the Vertex Seal sleeps, Iriset slips down into their study, rifles through her accumulation of leather and beads, glue and ceramic with which to make elaborate mirané masks, finds paper and charcoal, and she begins again to draw Lyric’s face.