Page 134 of The Mercy Makers
Maybe this is the real reason she was here all along. To unleash herself and unleash this old red god, too.
He is the god of apostasy, after all.
Just then, the sanctuary doors slide violently open and Lyric méra Esmail runs in, empty-handed. Behind him come Amaranth, Sidoné, Garnet, and Raia mér Omorose. Seal guards pour inside, too, forming an offensive grid around the edge of the sanctuary.
“Stop!” Lyric cries.
Iriset pushes up and swings around in a fluid motion, dizzy, while the numen disperses into light, bursting like a rainbow, and coalesces again outside the design diamond. When it re-forms, it’s shaped like itself, bright white-silver-pink, and grinning at the Vertex Seal.
But he has no eyes for it. Lyric stares at Iriset instead. “What are you doing here?”
The airy panic in his voice draws her to her feet. Oh, she’s so angry with all the world.
“A Lyric to Bridge the Silence,” says the numen, invoking Lyric’s ridiculous full given name.
“Iriset,” says Raia mér Omorose, trembling. An wraps ans arms around anself.
Her eyes dart to the architect. “Hello, Raia,” she says dangerously.
Amaranth steps onto the first force-thread, and the diamondwavers. Her eyes are on the altar. “This is mine. You should not have come here without me.”
“What is going on?” demands Sidoné.
Iriset moves fast, jumping back onto the altar. “Listen,” she says, arms flung out and fingers splayed. “I have seen the Moon-Eater—Amaranth, he is alive! He is the furious, pulsing heart of the empire.”
“Aharté is the—” begins Lyric, but he stops, staring at his wife, at the frenzy in her sandglass eyes. Their hearts beat desperately together, still—always—connected. He feels her wrath, she feels his dread.
Then the numen is mirané, its hair turned black and waved, its skin the rust-red of the fallen moon. It wears a priest’s robe, but silver-pink like Aharté’s moon. “This is the Holy Design at work, if you like to think of the world that way—and I know you do,” it says. “Here before me is a rising-dominant, a falling-dominant, a flow-dominant, an ecstatic-dominant, and my sunderer! Everything I could need. We are meant to do this, together.”
“Do what?” Garnet and Amaranth ask with the same breath.
“Free the Moon-Eater!”
“No.” Lyric makes his word a command.
Iriset meets his eyes. “Your Glory, the Moon-Eater is imprisoned here, he is trapped and suffering to keep the empire whole. That is the purpose of Amaranth’s ritual, that is the balance between blood and hunger—the binding! It’s the answer to the cruel riddle of your throne.”
Amaranth sets her fists on her hips. “Imprisoned? You cannot just appear here, with wild theories.” Her voice wavers, though, curious and concerned.
“You’ve felt him, Your Glory,” Iriset says seductively. “I know you have, and you have felt him respond to you. Alive.”
“Aharté set this throne,” Lyric says. “She Who Loves Silence and the Holy Syr created the empire in its glorious form. If what you say has even a shred of truth, it is as Aharté wills. We are hers.”
“At what cost?” Iriset snaps.
Garnet shifts his weight and glances at one of the Seal guards who holds a force-dart bow.
“Cost?” asks Lyric. “You know better than any how much I count cost. What would the cost of your choice be?”
Iriset stops. She knows. She’s sensed the entirety of the design, and if the design burns, the destruction will ripple throughout everything. Roads, ribbons, buildings, bridges, shaken and shattered, security and glass domes, force-fans and waterways. Everything that relies upon architecture will be vulnerable and might simply break.
What a change that would be. Even her father and Bittor might feel the reverberations backward through time.
“A sundering,” says the numen. “Righteous and necessary.”
“Brutal,” Iriset cries. She can destroy the empire. Shecan. More than rage blossoms in her chest, more than grief: It is her very unholy pride. Because she can, shemust. Then she says the ancient word the numen taught her. “Sunderer.”
With the flick of his finger, Garnet signals the Seal guard, and it loosens the force-dart at her.
