Page 82 of The Mercy Makers
His arm tightens around her again. “That is what Amaranth wants. I see the power in such thinking. But I also believe Iriset mé Isidor would say our marriage maintains justice, only. Does not create it. Because do we not expect our children to be mirané? You will become one of us, not the other way. It is still conquest, even if it is peaceful.”
Bitterness tinges his voice, and Iriset still doesn’t know what to say.
“She was right,” he whispers.
Twisting in his lap, she tries to meet his gaze, to catch the mirané-brown sparks around his irises, but Lyric stares unseeing at the words scrawled upon his vellum. He says, “I do not know how to see good in other people, how to trust in the goodness. I only let myself expect the worst. How else can I rule, how else can I bind the empire together for the benefit of the greatest number of people? People do not naturally turn toward justice.”
Iriset swallows her ecstatic force, swallows the cry she wishes to make, to shake him, slap him, bite at his lips until he breaksopen and is brave. She swallows it because this entire conversation has nothing to do with her lies, with this perfect craftmask. What does she know about justice and bravery, anyway? She’s a prideful apostate, and never before cared about anything but herself and her family. Yet Lyric méra Esmail His Glory, the Vertex Seal, ishauntedby that single night they argued together in the Color Can Be Loud Garden.
Shehaunts him.
And if she convinces him now to be brave, to strive to be better, what will happen when he learns the truth? She knows already it will be shattering. What will Lyric become when she breaks his faith?
“I’ll show you something good,” she whispers, desperate for it to be true. She stands from his lap, holding his hand. “If you come to bed.”
With a weary smile, Lyric follows.
About mercy and its costs
The unraveling of Iriset mé Isidor takes place just past dawn, as soon as the Moon-Eater’s Mistress joins them after awakening her god.
There’s no question of Iriset staying away. Not only does she need to make certain the craftmask holds, but her sheer curiosity eclipses any other consideration. Who could resist such temptation as one’s own funeral?
The simple ritual is held in the Silent Chapel, within an octagonal chamber designed for such things. The walls are plain stucco, anchored with thin silicate crystals that welcome resonance from every force. No ceiling covers them; instead the sky itself melts brighter blue overhead, and the floor is the solid rock of the crater.
Singix’s body—so perfectly disguised—lies upon the earth, head aligned to the north, within the confines of a diamond of sprinkled salt. She’s wrapped in strips of red cloth woven especially for death, every inch of her covered but for her face, which is painted with force-sigils.
Iriset has a rough time looking at it.
With her are Lyric, Amaranth, Sidoné, Garnet, three Silent priests, two Seal guards, Her Glory’s three remaining handmaidens, Nielle, Diaa of Moonshadow, and Raia mér Omorose. Iriset wants to stand with Raia, who doesn’t bother to hide the tears filling ans eyes. An kneels beside the body’s shoulder and touches fingers to the wrapped flesh. “I’d like one of the echo coins,” an says to nobody in particular.
As one of the priests quietly instructs Raia in the basics of the ritual so an can act for one of them, there’s a quiet disturbance from outside, and another priest enters. She goes directly toward Lyric and murmurs softly to him. He nods, and a moment later Iriset’s grandparents are ushered in.
Her entire body goes rigid. As they bow deeply to the Vertex Seal, touching their eyes over white cloth masks, Iriset tucks her head against Lyric’s shoulder. She cannot possibly look at them, only clings to her husband, grateful she can act this way without suspicion. It takes all her concentration to mitigate the harsh expression of ecstatic shock and smooth it into slow, sorrowful flow before Lyric notices something is actually wrong.
Everything is arranged as the priest who brought in Iriset’s grandparents leads out both Seal guards to keep the participant number at sixteen. Lyric gently hands Iriset to Amaranth while he takes a place among the priests, opposite Raia. Iriset is not surprised Lyric requires no instruction in the role. One priest hands around perfectly balanced force-masks for everyone to wear: The unraveling requires absolute balance of design to achieve completion.
Lyric places himself in the east, where rising force dominates. Everyone arrays themselves in the proper quad structure, like points in overlapping eight-point stars. Iriset stands withAmaranth in the west, where falling dominates. Her grandparents are together in the north, for her grandmother has a strong ecstatic force. Next to her grandmother, her grandfather is holding a bouquet of night-blooming eris flowers. The kind Iriset used to bring him when she visited.
It never occurred to Iriset that they would—could—be here.
“Everyone born to Silence may return to it,” Lyric says. He doesn’t speak up, for it’s a small chamber and everyone listens carefully. “Aharté confirms the patterns, her Holy Design having neither beginning nor end, but only the consummation of perfect Silence. For the point that was Iriset mé Isidor in life, and continues to be in the memories we hold, in the various echoes she marked into the pattern—those we recognize, and those we cannot—this is both end and beginning.”
The words are traditional, and though Iriset has heard them before, hearing the prayer applied to herself is disconcerting to say the least. She stops listening, wondering what point there is to any of it, and she remembers, as she dislikes to remember, that this is not the first false funeral she’s attended. Then, there’d been no unraveling, but only a memorial, and she cried despite the lack of precipitating death. Folk of the undermarket had sung discordant songs of sorrow and missing threads, broken patterns.
Iriset finds herself crying, unable to look at her grandparents, thinking of her mother, and of Singix herself, hidden beneath the craftmask unmourned. Every blink sparks ecstatic energy, and her tears drag falling. She sways gently and glances up, up, up to the sky, wishing to leap away into the growing brilliance of morning light.
That is the rising force.
Every force makes its presence known as the two priests,Raia, and the Vertex Seal each place a soft coin of smoky quartz around the body.
Then they spread a basic force-web across her—Singix—it—and begin a soft humming song to strengthen the four forces.
The moment of unraveling is touched off by Raia mér Omorose, who also cries. An carefully uses a stylus to begin the vibration through the webbing. The vibration trembles in Iriset’s molars, uncomfortable and intense, but brief.
What once was flesh and bone, soul and force, what once was a human being—Singix of the Beautiful Twilight, sweet, curious, anxious—dissipates into threads of force.
The craftmask dissolves a split second before Singix’s true face does, but it’s in a blur of unraveling, features and bone structure a smear. Relief bends Iriset’s knees, but she makes herself remain upright.
