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Husband and wife

S ometimes Silence snaps into place, a balance of perfect equality, tense and elegant and powerful in shape, in note, in purity.

The first time Iriset experiences such a moment is there in the back room of a wine shop, with her lifelong friend dead at her feet and her husband staring at her over the body.

Their eyes lock and their hearts beat in unison—while time passes around them, they’re still.

The entire world threads through the lines of force that dance between them, within them.

Iriset’s only rational thought is realizing that tide of desperation had not originated in her: It had been Lyric.

He’d been coming for her, desperate to find her, and traced the path of his inner design directly to her despite the deterioration of the marriage knot.

Then, Bittor is dead.

Bittor

is

She can’t look away from her husband.

dead

Lyric stares as if seeing through a void into another world. As the force-blade lowers, his left hand rises to touch the shining lacquer plate armor over his chest, over his heart.

His face cracks open then, and he says with raw ache, “You’re alive.”

“Lyric,” she whispers. This is what she’s dreaded. This face, this moment. And Bittor—

“No,” Lyric commands, and the hard mask of a Silent priest, of a Vertex Seal making an impossible, brutal choice, resumes itself against the lines of his face, his hard-pressed lips, and turns his beloved freckles into a splatter of ashes.

There’s paint smeared against them, delicate pink like his mother had—

“The army is here, you aren’t safe,” he says, reaching for her. He takes her wrist—

Iriset gasps as the opal in her chest shatters.

Her breastbone aches with empty resonance, then nothing, then she’s choking but Lyric drags her over Bittor’s slumped body.

She stumbles, her hand a rigid claw where he touches her.

Lyric doesn’t look back but keeps moving across the shop and outside.

She twists as he pulls at her, desperate for a final glimpse of Bittor’s sprawl of hair, his—

Lyric does not let go.

Even when they reach the street and Iriset drops wretchedly to her knees to hack and vomit up the pieces of the opal. She’s racked with pain but dangles from that wrist bruising by the weight of Lyric’s grip.

He says nothing as she spits. As she wipes her mouth with a shaking left hand. Her hair falls around her face, mostly Osahar brown and tangled, thick waves muffling the shriek of the precinct alarum and the pounding of an army approaching.

“Get up,” Lyric says, and she does, pulling against him.

Lyric drags her onward.

People cluster in hushed conversation and others rush about closing cafés and barring doors, others flinging doors wide open and lining their families in the yard for faster compliance.

Some stand and watch them run past. Lyric’s hand is a manacle around Iriset’s wrist. She has no idea where he’s leading her, she can’t quite track their turns or feel the tendrils of force to know; this is her neighborhood, she should recognize a corner by the storefronts alone, or the flavor of the ribbon embedded under the street mud.

But there’s nothing. No force-lights glow along the ribbons or at street corners; arched doorways and curving windows shine not at all.

The sun has set and Iriset staggers, realizing the Saltbath has been nulled.

No—if that were true, bridges would collapse, and besides, there’s no collar or null wire large enough.

The army’s combat-designers must have put down their stakes and cut the precinct off with a counter-design.

Not a null, but some design to interrupt the charge in force-lights.

Probably a massively coordinated disrupter, which is how individual force-lights, or fans, or many daily designs are turned off, with a small wedge that slides down to slice through the flow tying the design together.

There must be several key joints in the neighborhood’s energy net that, if disrupted, can shut down the light in the entire Saltbath.

Iriset immediately thinks of three places to begin.

She thinks about it because she can’t think about Bittor dead—

The blood drying on her chin—

She can’t think that Lyric hates her—hates her yet still drags her through the streets to safety—or imprisonment. No , she can’t go back.

“Where are you—” she tries.

Lyric ignores her, slowing to a brisk walk. She thinks they’re going east, but can’t reach for the energy of any of the Four Steeples that anchor the city to tell her which she’s headed toward. Ecstatic Steeple Shadow is nearest to Saltbath, but she can’t—

They turn onto a curving street of squat petal apartments like desert roses, and here folk who’ve wandered to their balconies or across the fourth-story bridgeways have old-fashioned drip candles and speak in muttering worry to neighbors below.

Iriset notices their shadows in flashes as Lyric leads her on and on.

Toward the palace, surely, but then he tears right, north maybe, for some reason.

Suddenly she hears the clatter of a hundred boots, and sharp commands.

Force-flares shoot into the sky and catch in a lighting grid a block over. The army.

Iriset scrambles to stay with Lyric, her hand tingling and cold past where he grips her wrist. Her chest is hot and cold, hot and cold, and hurting with every beat of her heart. Bittor—Bittor, he is—

People are everywhere then, in the streets pushing and crying out, yelling for answers.

She has to keep it together. Somehow.

Around a corner they run into a line of soldiers in their beacon-white uniforms, lacquered armor glinting in the smaller light-grid this branch set over their progress.

The army is searching the houses to either side of this narrow street, with a row of lookouts standing alert.

Lyric, never a criminal, jerks to a stop and turns away so fast it’s obviously suspicious. There’s a yell and they’re pursued.

Iriset has no idea why Lyric doesn’t stand his ground, announce himself. He has Silk! Bittor is dead! Only maybe he doesn’t realize it; Lyric never once looked away from her face to the man he’d skewered, crumpled on the floor between them.

Just as she opens her mouth to yell at him, she feels a zing of force-pressure, so fast and subtle she’d never notice it if the air were as alive with force as it should be, if her body weren’t so raw.

Iriset rams herself into Lyric’s shoulder, knocking them both to the side just as a force-dart flashes past where Lyric’s body would have been.

He catches himself, meets her huge sandglass eyes with shock, and lets go of her to stand up.

Iriset hugs her stomach and pants as Lyric turns to the quartet of soldiers nearly upon them.

In the dark she doesn’t see what he does, but his force-blade goes dull just before Lyric charges.

The soldiers aren’t expecting it, and that gives him enough advantage to take the first one out with one punch to the solar plexus.

The man doubles over and Lyric hits him with the pommel right in the temple and is on the next soldier before the first hits the ground.

Lyric jumps, catches the next with his elbow, and jerks the man down, using the momentum to swing his legs around and kick a third with enough power he staggers back.

Iriset’s mouth hangs open as she watches the Vertex Seal wipe the street with the four soldiers, using his whole body, a dull force-blade, and concentrated surges of force.

All she can think of is Garnet saying He’s modest about Lyric’s fighting skills.

He doesn’t kill any of them, but in moments they’re either collapsed or hunched and moaning.

Lyric comes back for her, breathing hard but nothing more, and takes her wrist again without saying a thing.

An explosion blows several streets away, and Lyric lifts his face to the sky, marks something, and pulls her on. Someone didn’t get the warning to cooperate, to watch. They’re fighting back. But Pel’s daughter might still be running out here, too. And Pel is—will find Dalal. They—

Iriset sucks in a huge breath and tries valiantly to pull her thoughts together.

It was stupid instinct to save Lyric from the dart, stupid.

It won’t make a difference to him. And she should’ve run when Lyric fought those soldiers!

She needs to get away, he’ll turn her in, he’ll imprison her or just decide to save everyone the trouble and cut her down himself.

That might get his reputation back, if he personally cuts away the stain of Silk from his house.

They duck through a line of frozen ribbon skiffs, head down a dark alley and away from the lamps and force-lights that hover over the army.

Lyric stops suddenly at the base of a tower supporting a bridge.

She looks up at the sweeping arcs of suspension cables designed to channel water to the massive vines curling around it, lending the architecture strength and force.

Its broad leaves are curled for the night, and the whole thing is only a graceful black shape against the sky, blotting out Aharté’s bulbous half-moon.

The Winged Obsidian Bridge, at the edge of Saltbath.

This base tower doesn’t only support the bridge but is crowned with a hub high enough to collect errant force-winds, and in addition to the suspension cables, it connects in one direction to a spiraling cone of apartments and, in another, a honeycomb of shops.

The crack of a force-blade snaps at her attention and she looks as Lyric uses it to slice through the design locking the mechanical entrance, before pulling her inside.

Iriset grasps in the dark to touch the wall, feeling forces zing, but there’s no light except for the mild crackle of Lyric’s sword.

He shoves the door closed again, but can’t lock it.

Slowly, he turns.