Page 7 of The Mercy Makers
Raia flattens ans mouth but does not naysay the soldier.
Iriset forces her eyes to lower and lies, “I do not know any details about my father’s business.”
The soldier, who so rudely has not named himself, comes around the table and she backs away, knocking her heels into the stucco and her shoulder into the lattice window. He stops himself a breath away, overwhelming Iriset with his size and steely silver smell. His eyes are half-circles and hold flecks of green among the mirané brown; his long, tightly curled beard nearly brushes her chin. “If you do not agree, you will remain in prison and be sent to a work camp eventually, do you understand? Your sheltered daughter’s life will not stand up to the camps, and will not help you break limestone or plow the delta.”
“He is my father,” Iriset says.
“Do you think even a man like the Little Cat would see hisdaughter so abused for his own sake? Violent criminals and prisoners of war and the petty thieves or innocent who end up there are not separated, child. The Seal laws do not hold well in the camps, where wardens and guards have too much else to do than to make sure no young girls or skinny boys are being raped.”
“Bey!” Raia cries, aghast and hurrying to put anself between them.
The old soldier—Bey—remains expressionless. “She is the Little Cat’s daughter, Raia, and surely cannot be shocked by the mere mention of murder or assault.”
Iriset says, “You do not make me want to betray my father with this theater.”
“Good.” Raia touches her shoulder. “Fear only pushes us to act irrationally,” an says more to Bey.
“The name of the Little Cat will protect me wherever you put me, except from animals like yourself,” she says.
Bey the soldier smiles grimly. “I told you, Raia mér Omorose, that she was one of them.”
The architect ignores him, turning fully to Iriset. “I know you love the design; I saw it shine even through your mask, Iriset. That is what I am interested in: architecture and its secrets. What would we design for love of the work? If you agree, I will find a way to speak with you again.”
Iriset looks past Raia to where Bey shakes his head once for her. She understands: The architect is not in command here, though perhaps an naively believes an holds the power. But Iriset understands something else, too, about Bey’s inner design: He will be brutal with the truth, but he will not lie. If he were willing to lie, he’d have agreed with Raia to manipulate her.
“I agree,” she says to Raia, though she doubts it matters.
Iriset does love the work of design. But the only time she ever designedforlove, it was the worst kind of apostasy: She cut into a human body to redesign malignancy. To heal. To save. Imagine the widespread application of that discovery—twelve years gone! How many dead might live today had she been allowed to breathe a word of her success? Given the chance, she could cure apostatical cancer. Start by pulling apart a miran to compare their design with that of any other of the empire’s ethnicities more susceptible to the mutation. It might be that miran do not know such diseases because they were designed by the hand of Aharté herself, from her flesh, but Iriset thinks it safer to study and be sure. Next she might discover the stoppage of flow that causes squared arteries in the older architects, or invent a night-vision applicator based on the design of Bittor’s eyes, or dig into a brain and root out the source of nightmares. Retro-design the skull sirens to determine how and why their skulls push out through their faces as they mature, and how they survive it. Interrogate the design-root of consciousness! Pinpoint the triggers for aging or miscarriage!
She understands why chimeras and certain kinds of human architecture and chemistry are dangerous, but not healing and refinement. Humans are intricate design and is it not our right to understand ourselves?
When someone suggested to her once that merely thinking such thoughts went against Silence, Silk said, “Wasn’t I, after all, designed by the goddess? If Aharté did not wish me to seek transformation, why design me with this desire?”
You see, Iriset was always destined to break the world.
The Little Cat’s apostate
In a different cell of the same apostate prison, a young woman grits bloody teeth. Her lips peel back into a grimacing smile, and she peers through pain-narrowed brown eyes at General Bey méra Matsimet. Behind the city army general, Raia mér Omorose claps hands over ans mouth and backs up.
The young woman throws her head back, and any designer worth their silicate would perceive the sharp staccato of ecstatic force tearing up her throat—they might even catch it in time to stop it, had they the proper tools. Or, any designer worth their silicate and not distracted by horror the way Raia is. It takes an too long to feel the pop, and by the time an throws anself forward, it’s too late.
The young woman laughs, a choking raven call, devoid of voice.
“Do you think this will save you?” Bey asks, bored and disgusted.
The young woman—Silk, she said,is only my mask-name,right before snapping her jaw shut and activating whatever hidden design just burned her voice out—slumps suddenly, the design taking its toll on her internal forces. She tilts on her stool, and Bey keeps Raia back from catching her. She hits the dirt floor with a bony thud, one arm bent awkwardly under her. Black hair splays in oily twists.
Raia’s hands drop to ans sides. An hates this. Silk is a genius, and ought to be treated as such. Invited to the palace with appropriate precautions, null manacles, and offered good food and the benefits of state-sanctioned design. The Vertex Seal has kept the numen alive and imprisoned for a hundred years; they could certainly manage a young human genius.
“Let’s go, Raia,” General Bey says, dismissing the passed-out apostate. “You architects will have to figure out a way to undo her scorch.”
But Raia knows they will not. It’s human architecture to alter, affect, or transform life, and the Vertex Seal won’t allow such design, not for any reason. He would say justice gained through apostasy is no justice at all.
When the Little Cat asked Silk to create a design to destroy a voice and hide the design in a pill or button or lace rosette or something tiny and easily activated, she barely gave a thought as to why. She simply muttered that destroying was so much easier than creating, and couldn’t he give her a real challenge instead? Then she did it.
She put it in a prickly pear candy, because the sugar crystal could maintain the structure of the design almost as well as quartz. Candy was better than a button, she told her father,because candy would deliver the design directly to its target in predictable slippery streaks. Isidor was skeptical, but Silk shrugged in nonchalant confidence. She still never asked why.
When it matters, the candy functions exactly as designed, even with a null collar against the user’s neck, for the null collar only affects what it touches, and it does not touch the candy or the larynx.
