Page 73 of The Mercy Makers
Force-ribbons arced into the sky, bursting into stars and flowers, into the seven symbols of Ceres virtue, into mirané prayer script for blessings and unity. Everyone held banners, flowers, pennants, and water jewels that dripped like ice. The colors were riotous, the breeze heady with flow and ecstatic charges. People laughed, they called out the names of Lyric and Singix, they rang bells and made an entire cacophony.
Iriset is aware of none of that.
She walks carefully on bare feet, following the bold lines of the narrow rug spooling out before her. It leads her to Lyric.
Tension pricks under her skin and she breathes through it, keeping her pace even, telling herself some nerves are normal for any bride. She’s passed every obstacle thus far, even those that she herself might have said half a year ago were impossible.
This next obstacle, though, is not one of design but of emotion. It’s not a crime—it is betrayal. There are no laws against lying to someone or deceiving a partner. Iriset is unsure whether there are even specific laws against lying to the Vertex Seal.
Going through with this will be a magnificent, unbeatable coup for Silk’s reputation, for human architecture, and apostasy.
All those days ago in the apostate tower, her father refused to be rescued, saying he would not become a villain in his own mind. Yet that is exactly what Iriset is doing to herself now. This kind of betrayal is the sort only a villain would choose. She knows it. She took the name and face of a woman who offered only her compassion, curiosity, love. She killed for her own gain. Now she will slip into the marriage, life, bed, heart of Lyric méra Esmail. Just because he deserves a lot for the things he’s done doesn’t make her actions any more pure.
With every mask to hide behind, she cannot hide from herself.
Why is it so easy, then, to take each step, to look through the hazy eyes of her mask and stare at the Vertex Seal, unflinching?
He’s dressed the same as Iriset, barefoot and wearing nothing but a long white shift, a silk necklace to cradle his sandglass box and seed, and a mirané-brown ceramic mask.
His mask matches his skin perfectly.
Lyric moves meditatively: Smooth and purposeful. Tightly controlled. She remembers the confident shift of his bare muscles in the sunlight as he practiced the combat forms with hissoldiers, the casual skim of his fingers down her forearm when he showed her the forms for the force-blade, and Iriset thinks he’s nervous, too.
They meet, hands up, palms together, and their inner designs reach for each other: her flow and ecstatic, his rising and falling.
For a while they breathe together. It’s their prerogative to draw out this moment as long as they like. When they’re ready—and it happens simultaneously—they reach for each other’s masks and tug the ribbon holding them in place. Both masks fall away, tumbling to the ground where they shatter exactly as they are meant to.
The tiny ceramic daggers and slivers scatter around their bare feet, and it’s considered a good luck sign if there’s a little bit of blood.
Lyric méra Esmail smiles at her, and her pulse leaps ecstatically. The smile reaches his eyes, and he begins the Four-Force Vow.
As blood beats through my body, so does my world flow through you.
As flowers lift after the sun, so does my world rise with you.
As epiphany sparks, so does my world charge around you.
As the Holy Design yearns for its center, so does my world fall toward you.
Iriset catches her breath. Though she knows the words, she’s never felt them, nor understood them, and in this moment they shimmer in the air with a weight of their own.
Voice soft, for his ears only, Iriset offers the vow back to him.
Then Lyric turns from her, and she unlatches the silk necklace containing his design egg. He does the same for hers, and then they put on each other’s. The weight is the same, but Iriset thinks Lyric’s necklace is warmer than hers had been. It settles over her collarbone with a pleasant tenderness. She doesn’t care if she’s being overly fanciful. It doesn’t matter that this wasn’t meant for Iriset mé Isidor. It’s hers now.
And then it’s over. That’s the entirety of the public ritual.
Singing breaks out, in four parts, of course, lifting, twining melodies and countermelodies, with clapping hands and sudden high-pitched cries. With their voices, the miran create a dome of forces to shiver around the couple, containing them, urging them on.
Iriset hums. The note trembles down her chest, vibrating through her bones and into her hand, leaping to Lyric. He glances at her with slight surprise, and Iriset recalls that Singix knew nothing of design-song.
She lets her note fade and squeezes his hand, fluttering her lashes nervously, as Singix was prone to. She glances down but he touches her chin, nudging it up again. Together they walk back along the ribbons to the Hall of Princes, where a feast awaits.
The throne, perched heavily over a chunk of mirané-brown moon rock, sits empty and yet somehow thrumming full of intention, and Lyric takes her to it. He accepts a small coin with four tiny spires from Garnet, who seems to appear from nowhere, ready as always. Lyric presses the coin to his thumb.
Blood appears, and this he smears on the moon rock.
Iriset brings his thumb to her mouth and kisses it.
