Page 7

Hypotheticals make the world go round

I riset is brought to the palace a day later, cloaked and alone but for a pair of real Seal guards wearing the Moon-Eater’s band, and most importantly, free of the null wires.

Forces press, cling, and spark around her again, and she barely resists the temptation to reach out and touch the errant threads of rising and ecstatic magic that pull free from the palace design like wisps of hair that refuse to settle into a braid.

Her room—and the women who bathe her insist it is hers—is tucked in a curve of a complicated suite of the women’s petal of the palace.

A rug woven like a sunrise in pinks and reds and gold spreads thinly across the floor and the walls are lined in flat pillows and long bolsters.

One large lattice window overlooks the palace complex and the shimmering quartz field of the Crystal Desert from at least a hundred feet up.

The walls are pale curving meltwood, lifting to a low arched ceiling, where at the tip a tiny eight-point star cuts into the roof.

Directly below it is a matching cutout in the floor.

Too tiny for anything but breeze and spiders to pass.

Iriset has heard rumors the palace was built so that there is no chamber the steady moon—the silver-pink Eye of Aharté—cannot see.

Even into the lowest levels, the heart of the palace, an arrow could be threaded directly through moonlight.

Certainly it’s a better prison than her last.

One corner holds a hive of cubbies for belongings, and there’s a trunk full of robes and slippers and masks of several sorts: cloth masks in a rainbow of sheer silks, thin molded leather masks, and even a single ceramic mask with inlaid silver filigree.

Iriset is directed to dress in an orange silk robe over trousers encrusted with tiny moon-pink silk flowers.

The jacket that ties over her breasts leaves her arms bare and is decorated with strings of white horn beads.

Never in her life has she worn such finery. It suited neither of her identities.

She has not seen Amaranth mé Esmail Her Glory or Sidoné mé Dalir since they left her in the cell, but was promised a meal with Her Glory later, once she’s rested and bathed and once Sidoné clears her presence with the Seal guard.

Presumably that old soldier Bey will not be happy.

But what can he do in the face of Her Glory’s preference?

The thought makes Iriset feel rather smug.

Iriset kneels upon one of the flat cushions, analyzing plans of action.

There’s nothing immediate she can do for her father, but several long-term options:

—Befriend Her Glory as a means to reach the Vertex Seal himself and convince him to grant mercy to Isidor, as it will be the Days of Mercy only four quads in the future. She’ll have to quickly make herself a perfect friend, indispensable even.

—Weave her way into the confidence of royal architects in order to access materials she needs to fashion tools to rescue Isidor herself. A craftmask, weapons, wall-slicers, anything.

—Discover every means in and out of the apostate tower.

—Contact Bittor (if he’s alive) to align her plans with his. If she can’t get her father out, they should coordinate a rescue for the execution itself, when the soldiers will be forced to bring Isidor to them.

To achieve any of these things, Iriset will have to be like her spinners. A spider in a web, careful, beautiful, skilled. Always wary and always ready.

She worries her bottom lip between her teeth, longing for stylus and vellum, or chalk or charcoal for drawing.

If not magical designs to soothe herself, then at least she could sketch the shape of Amaranth’s mouth or Sidoné’s nose, which curves like the sharp sword at her hip.

It’s frowned upon to draw human faces, for that leads to studies of human symmetry and structure, which leads in turn to human architecture—exactly the reason everyone covers their faces with masks, and no portraits are made of the miran or small kings or anyone whose facade might be copied for nefarious reasons.

It’s all ridiculous, for although the basics of design could be learned by any, and the most rudimentary understanding of architecture might allow a designer to create adequate foundations, the design of a recognizable human face that mirrors life, shifts with emotions, laughs and frowns and cries, is extremely difficult.

Iriset has come close to doing it, of course.

The hardest part is the eyes, especially without the intimacy of individual study.

The only eyes she currently has sufficient access to are her own, but maybe if she plays the good handmaiden she can study Amaranth’s eyes well enough to make a craftmask of Her Glory.

With that she could command near any prize.

The only better option would be a craftmask of the Vertex Seal himself.

Iriset’s body goes entirely still at the reckless apostasy of even thinking such a thing.

Her pulse races, rising force drawing blood to her cheeks and nearly making her hair stand on end.

Iriset’s thoughts are interrupted by commotion outside, just before the thin lacquered wood door to the chamber sweeps open.

A man stands there, glaring.

Wary of playing her role, Iriset touches her fingertips to her eyelids politely, but otherwise doesn’t move, knowing from a lifetime in the Little Cat’s court to let a mystery present itself before she overplays her best guess.

“You are the daughter of the Little Cat?”

Lowering her hands, Iriset studies him in quick glances.

The man presents extremely masculine-forward, stereotypically so, and is several years her elder, with curly black hair falling around his face to his chin, his short beard shaved into a repeating star pattern, and eyes glittering mirané brown.

He has the sharp, symmetrical bones and wide-planed cheeks of the miran, but his rich tan skin is likely to come from Sarenpet blood.

Red paint stripes across his temples and eyes, just like Sidoné’s, and he wears a plain black robe and trousers, flexible boots, and two curving force-blades at his hips.

Those swords hum with contained force and it’s all Iriset can do not to reach for one to inspect it—she’s never held a living blade before!

But she stops at the way his teeth bare in distaste.

She answers, “Yes. Iriset mé Isidor.”

“I am Garnet méra Be?,” he says, confirming his gender, “and I will study your face before you are allowed from this room.”

It’s rude and intimate of him to demand such a thing. “Do you serve Her Glory as Sidoné does?”

“No.” He crouches before Iriset with the controlled power of a griffon. “I serve His Glory, the Vertex Seal.”

She doesn’t drop her gaze, meeting Garnet’s with all the insult she feels. She senses she ought to show no weakness to this man.

Garnet examines her, flicking his eyes across the planes of her face, takes in her heavy knotted hair, her modestly tied vest, her cold hands clutched together upon her thighs.

She guesses he memorizes her features and hands, everything he can use to identify her if she ever nears him or Lyric méra Esmail His Glory.

Iriset has no paint to shift her cheekbones, nor kohl to change the shape of her eyes, no lip stain, and has not decorated herself at all, for she’s not been given the opportunity; besides, she wouldn’t have.

Better to present herself like a plain spider, eager to please but knowing herself.

A maskless face, open and honest. Spiders don’t pretend to be other than what they are.

Let Her Glory choose the form Iriset will take. That will tell Iriset plenty.

Finally, and with simple formality, Garnet says, “While Amaranth’s handmaiden you will go every morning to Her Glory’s side and there be masked in the paint or cloth or ceramic of the day, to Amaranth’s will, and in line with her other handmaidens.

If you are not with her, you are allowed a plain attendant’s cloth mask, in palace orange, red, or white. ”

Iriset pinches her left thumb to her left forefinger, creating a circuit for the ecstatic force rushing through her blood.

“You will agree,” Garnet says, “or you will return to the prison.”

“I do not think you can take me back without Her Glory allowing it,” she argues gently.

“But her brother can, and he will if I insist.”

Her position is tenuous already. If Garnet méra Be? holds so tight to the ear of the Vertex Seal, it will do Iriset better to win him to her side.

Though she hasn’t the least idea how to accomplish it: Within his inner design she senses a determined flow.

He knows exactly who he is, and his loyalty never wavers.

His choice whether to trust Iriset or not will come from her actions.

From her own balance and proof of loyalty. And so she nods.

“Good.” Garnet stands, and Iriset does, too, as smoothly as possible.

Her eyes are near level with his nose, and he doesn’t step away.

Instead of lowering her gaze, Iriset boldly tilts her chin up to continue meeting his.

He smells like most men she’s known: hair oil, sweat, leather, but something extra tickles her nose and reminds her of the stuffed eagle in Isidor’s office.

Burned and ruined now.

Iriset closes her eyes suddenly, aggrieved, and turns away, upset with guilt that she forgot the destruction of her father’s tower even for so small a moment. Distracted by the new game, she’s forgetting it is not a game. It’s her father’s life. And her own.

“Iriset mé Isidor.”

She glances over her shoulder. Garnet stands half out the door, giving her a dangerous, black look.

“My mother works with the royal griffons and she has told me that once you are forced to threaten a young griffon, you have already misstepped with the creature, either through its temperament or your own. I would not like to misstep now.”