Page 54 of The Mercy Makers
Iriset loses her own balance for a moment, in a surge of ecstatic force. She presses the book flat to her lap. “I’ve read it,” she says. Everyone in Moonshadow reads Safiyah’s declarations. “What did you do?”
He doesn’t glance at her but continues watching his hands. “The Osahar cultists—they call themselves Singers of Silence, did you know?—I sent them a message. So many here in Moonshadow escaped into the undermarket, into the tunnels andsecret alleys tucked inside the city design, the army could not take enough of them. We would have to devastate the entire precinct to root them all out, with much collateral damage. But there is an enclave of them across the river, one day on horse northeast. My army will raze it. If the Moonshadow Singers do not turn over their leaders, every eighth person in their enclave will be killed, by lottery, with no exceptions for age.”
“During the Days of Mercy,” she breathes. Horror liquefies in her stomach. She can barely feel the book of declarations in her suddenly cold hands.
“I hope they give me the chance to be merciful.” Lyric’s voice is so thin, taut with despair.
Iriset doesn’t know if he deserves to feel so much.
“Why?” she asks, still whispering, as if to speak any of this aloud will make it real. “Why do something that you know will hurt so badly? When it hurts you? You know it’s wrong.”
“No matter what I do, some will be hurt. I exist to ensure the empire thrives. I must make my choice based on the good of most, the survival of our ways that have served for centuries.”
“The mirané ways.”
“No,” Lyric says vehemently. It echoes in her chest and the lilies shudder away. Then his volume falls again to a murmur: “Aharté’s way is for all the empire. That Rising Steeple Shadow precinct has very few miran living there, and my council knew it; some argued for wider devastation. Dig out the Singers, never mind collateral damage. Use it—teach everyone this lesson, not only the cultists. But there are better ways to teach lessons—I won’t murder for a lesson. Only to stop a greater massacre.”
Iriset has no idea what to say. She doesn’t know what’s better or worse. Strategic, harsh, targeted action, or broader violence that might take a turn for more damage, more death. Inarchitecture, she would target any flaw, excise it for the good of the whole, rather than pull down an entire design. But people aren’t flaws.
She remembers her metaphor earlier, when she said to Amaranth that in a design so complex as the empire, removal of any aspect causes ripples to the full design that cannot always be predicted. And Her Glory said, all the better reason to destroy rebellion before it grows.
Thinking of Amaranth, Iriset says, “Are you certain those two were the only options? Targeted cruelty or extensive violence?”
Lyric says, “There are even worse options.”
“Safiyah would have razed the precinctandthe settlement.”
The Vertex Seal nods, and even in profile Iriset reads the weariness in his brief smile. “But there is no shade to brutality.”
She swallows, grips the book, and then lightly brushes her fingers against the knuckles of his left hand.
They say no more for a while again, and Iriset tries not to think, tries not to elaborate on this insight into His Glory’s core. How can a man like this grant mercy to her father?
As Iriset pulls her horror back into balance, she quietly offers to show Lyric the balancing technique. “It is a simple principle, but many do not think of Silence as balanced design.”
He agrees, and she faces him on the bench, straddling it. He mirrors her.
“You are strongest in rising force,” Iriset says. “I am naturally ecstatic, but we all know all, and so in this hand”—she points at his left hand, his core hand—“think of rising, of growing, of convection, transformation to a better self. I will match it with falling force.” Iriset flexes her right hand, holding it palm up. Lyric holds his over hers, their palms apart by a breath. “I willcharge ecstatic in my left hand, and in your right you will hold flow, or rather, let it channel through you.”
Lyric nods, and they hold their hands in balance, breathing slowly as Iriset leads him through a straightforward meditation.
“Once you feel balanced, you can let go of me and find ecstatic and falling inside yourself. Hold it all in balance.”
In the darkness, with the lilies straining for them, the two breathe and find a design that shares equally between their hands. When he has it a little, Iriset whispers, “Now on your own.”
Lyric’s hands find hers instead and he presses their palms together. “Can we just remain like this? One step at a time. I feel peace and would rather it not waver for a while longer.”
Though her palms tingle, though she feels the gentle touch of his knees against hers, and the bench between her thighs, though she wants to flee, Iriset nods. She closes her eyes and concentrates on the circle of their design. He smells of anise oil, warm and thick.
Their breath aligns. So do their pulses. Slow, steady, fluttering heartbeat with slow, steady, fluttering heartbeat.
“Did you know the moon used to move?” Lyric asks.
Iriset looks. His head tilts back again, as it had when he first arrived in the Color Can Be Loud Garden, expression awash in grief. He looks up at the fixed moon, but Iriset can’t tear her gaze from his face. This angle shows her new planes: the exact line of his chin and jaw, the curve of his cheekbones, his dark nostrils, and a fringe of black lashes. She thought once to make a craftmask of his face, but gave up for the lack of opportunity to study him closely.
He says, “In writings from the Apostate Age, they mention the motion of the moon, and its regular cycle of darkness tofullness, and writings from outside the empire write of great calamities and changes in seasons when the moon froze over our city. When the moon is a bright full coin, this garden is colored in silver-pink light. Aharté’s kiss, they called it then.”
As his lips move, Iriset imagines them against her neck.
