Page 9 of The Mercy Makers
Behind the Moon-Eater’s Mistress, Sidoné clenches her jaw.
Iriset glances low, hiding her stare, as is polite. “The old soldier, Bey, he said I would have to give him something in return if I was ever to be free. But I won’t betray my father.”
“I will not ask you to.”
“Where is he?” Iriset clutches her hands together. “What is his sentence?”
“In the apostate tower, alone. He has not been sentenced yet, though he will almost certainly be killed during the Days of Mercy.”
Iriset shudders, not with fear, but because she thinks,I will save him first.
“Iriset,” Her Glory says. “Come.”
If not for the null wires, Iriset would feel a draw of falling force, a pull to Her Glory, but she continues to hesitate. There’s a trap here, and if she doesn’t find its edges she’ll walk straight into its heart. She sifts through her memory for anything she’s heard about Her Glory, but only comes up with a few tidbits: barely a year younger than her brother, known to be grand in generosity and all manner of appetite, a tastemaker since she was a child, fond of wearing her hair down and as little jewelry as possible in favor of skin paint and intricate, loose robes. She’s said to be a fitting mistress for the Moon-Eater, being as extravagant as the goddess Aharté is simple.
Imagine what Her Glory would want if she realizes Iriset is Silk. Can Iriset use that? Can she accept this as the Little Cat’s daughter, but enter the palace as his pet apostate? Is it worth the risk?
Iriset knows what her father would say.
This is a chance out of here, this prison wherein she can do nothing. In the palace, though there will be great danger, there also will be great opportunity.
“Yes,” Iriset says to the most powerful woman in the empire.
Hypotheticals make the world go round
Iriset is brought to the palace a day later, cloaked and alone but for a pair of real Seal guards wearing the Moon-Eater’s band, and most importantly, free of the null wires.
Forces press, cling, and spark around her again, and she barely resists the temptation to reach out and touch the errant threads of rising and ecstatic magic that pull free from the palace design like wisps of hair that refuse to settle into a braid.
Her room—and the women who bathe her insist it is hers—is tucked in a curve of a complicated suite of the women’s petal of the palace. A rug woven like a sunrise in pinks and reds and gold spreads thinly across the floor and the walls are lined in flat pillows and long bolsters. One large lattice window overlooks the palace complex and the shimmering quartz field of the Crystal Desert from at least a hundred feet up. The walls are pale curving meltwood, lifting to a low arched ceiling, where at the tip a tiny eight-point star cuts into the roof. Directly below it is a matching cutout in the floor. Too tiny for anything butbreeze and spiders to pass. Iriset has heard rumors the palace was built so that there is no chamber the steady moon—the silver-pink Eye of Aharté—cannot see. Even into the lowest levels, the heart of the palace, an arrow could be threaded directly through moonlight.
Certainly it’s a better prison than her last.
One corner holds a hive of cubbies for belongings, and there’s a trunk full of robes and slippers and masks of several sorts: cloth masks in a rainbow of sheer silks, thin molded leather masks, and even a single ceramic mask with inlaid silver filigree. Iriset is directed to dress in an orange silk robe over trousers encrusted with tiny moon-pink silk flowers. The jacket that ties over her breasts leaves her arms bare and is decorated with strings of white horn beads. Never in her life has she worn such finery. It suited neither of her identities.
She has not seen Amaranth mé Esmail Her Glory or Sidoné mé Dalir since they left her in the cell, but was promised a meal with Her Glory later, once she’s rested and bathed and once Sidoné clears her presence with the Seal guard. Presumably that old soldier Bey will not be happy. But what can he do in the face of Her Glory’s preference? The thought makes Iriset feel rather smug.
Iriset kneels upon one of the flat cushions, analyzing plans of action.
There’s nothing immediate she can do for her father, but several long-term options:
—Befriend Her Glory as a means to reach the Vertex Seal himself and convince him to grant mercy to Isidor, as itwillbe the Days of Mercy only four quads in the future. She’ll have to quickly make herself a perfect friend, indispensable even.
—Weave her way into the confidence of royal architects in order to access materials she needs to fashion tools to rescue Isidor herself. A craftmask, weapons, wall-slicers, anything.
—Discover every means in and out of the apostate tower.
—Contact Bittor (if he’s alive) to align her plans with his. If she can’t get her father out, they should coordinate a rescue for the execution itself, when the soldiers will be forced to bring Isidor to them.
To achieve any of these things, Iriset will have to be like her spinners. A spider in a web, careful, beautiful, skilled. Always wary and always ready.
She worries her bottom lip between her teeth, longing for stylus and vellum, or chalk or charcoal for drawing. If not magical designs to soothe herself, then at least she could sketch the shape of Amaranth’s mouth or Sidoné’s nose, which curves like the sharp sword at her hip. It’s frowned upon to draw human faces, for that leads to studies of human symmetry and structure, which leads in turn to human architecture—exactly the reason everyone covers their faces with masks, and no portraits are made of the miran or small kings or anyone whose facade might be copied for nefarious reasons. It’s all ridiculous, for although the basics of design could be learned by any, and the most rudimentary understanding of architecture might allow a designer to create adequate foundations, the design of a recognizable human face that mirrors life, shifts with emotions, laughs and frowns and cries, is extremely difficult.
Iriset has come close to doing it, of course. The hardest part is the eyes, especially without the intimacy of individual study. The only eyes she currently has sufficient access to areher own, but maybe if she plays the good handmaiden she can study Amaranth’s eyes well enough to make a craftmask of Her Glory. With that she could command near any prize. The only better option would be a craftmask of the Vertex Seal himself.
Iriset’s body goes entirely still at the reckless apostasy of even thinking such a thing.
Her pulse races, rising force drawing blood to her cheeks and nearly making her hair stand on end.
