Page 83 of The Mercy Makers
Together Raia, the priests, and Lyric sing a different force-note: sharp, uplifting, descending, and warbling. They draw the forces into the quartz coins, and as the final scraps of the body pass through the resonant crystal, an echo is marked into it, a memory only.
Then it’s over. Nothing remains within the salt-diamond.
Iriset reaches for Amaranth, needing just to hold on to something. And Amaranthknows. Nobody else here but she and Sidoné knows what is real, or what’s happening to Iriset. Her Glory takes her hand and steps out of place to draw Iriset under her arm in an embrace. Amaranth is both soft and sturdy, thrumming with energy from her recent encounter with the Moon-Eater and this ritual. That first morning Iriset went with Amaranth to her holy ministrations, she thought that love was a knot of forces. This feels like a knot of forces, too, and is powerful like love, only it hurts so much.
Iriset supposes pain doesn’t make it any less a part of love. Maybe love is as inherently divisive as it is engaging.
(She grows nearer to the truth every day.)
Iriset is lucky and is not required to talk to her grandparents. It would be false and unkind of her to approach them as Singix. She goes with Lyric as he speaks with the Holy Peace, the white-haired old miran who leads the Silent Chapel. The priest asks to touch their marriage threads, and Iriset offers her hand for the old woman. Lyric glances at her, surprised, then offers the same.
The Holy Peace blesses them for the strength of their binding, and makes a comment about children that doesn’t concern Iriset, lost in thoughts as she is (and given the contraceptive net she personally wove into her own reproductive system). Lyric weaves their fingers together and takes her away. Though when they arrive at the gaping archway leading out of the Silent Chapel, Garnet waits there. By his expression, even Iriset knows he needs the immediate attention of the Vertex Seal.
She pauses, and Lyric holds up his free hand to halt Garnet before turning to her. She lifts her chin and smiles gently. “Even the Holy Peace believes our binding thrives, Your Glory. If you are required, I’ll go with your sister for the morning.”
He doesn’t return her smile, but studies her eyes, his irises twitching so slightly as he glances from one eye to the other and back. “Our binding does thrive,” he murmurs. “Will you join me again for the eclipse?”
“Yes.”
“And after, perhaps, spend the afternoon with me?” A certain vulnerability leaks into his request.
“I would like nothing better.” Iriset infuses truth into the answer and lifts herself lightly onto her toes to brush her lips against his.
Lyric catches her hands and tugs just enough to keep her near. He puts his forehead against hers. “Today is the Day of Self-Mercy, and I am notoriously bad at observing it on a personal level. Having you with me is a mercy that perhaps I can allow myself.”
Reminding herself harshly that he doesn’t speak such romance to her but to the woman he believes her to be, Iriset manages not to melt. She nods against him, and he slips away.
Two Seal guards remain with her, as well as Shahd. Iriset asks the girl, “Did you see where Her Glory went?”
“Her Glory is spending the day in the amphitheater.” Shahd bows and gestures for Iriset to follow.
As they walk across the edge of the Crystal Desert back into the palace complex, Iriset sinks her awareness through her feet, glad her slippers are thin. She can pick up echoes of the security net like this, and slightly detour on the way to Amaranth to check on two anchors at least. Amaranth will give her answers about the execution tomorrow, even if Her Glory doesn’t like to.
The security net hums softly, pinging it the way it…
Iriset stops.
She kneels suddenly, touching the warm crystal with the palm of her hand.
It’s different.
It’s all shifted toward falling, which is not the trajectory-bind they’d worked with before.
Someone changed the design of the Crystal Desert security. Just enough that any paths or design-pockets or keys couldn’t penetrate now, not without a new map, without the new codes. If they changed it here, it will be changed throughout, andtomorrow when the army and investigator-designers activate their new measures for the executions, not only will the map Iriset sent Bittor be useless, there’s no way she can redesign and re-create her distraction swiftly enough.
“Your Glory!” Shahd cries softly, bending to grasp her arm. The Seal guards have formed up around her.
“I’m… well.” Iriset covers Shahd’s hand with her other and stands. It must have been after Singix was murdered.Of coursethey changed the security. How dare Iriset not think sooner! “I am. It is hot so early, and I have not yet been apart so distantly from my new husband.”
“We can return you to him instead, Your Glory.”
“No.” She insists her mouth smile for the attendant. “I must accustom myself. And I am. Please.”
Shahd studies her, and Iriset does her best to tamp down on the reeling anxiety eager to express itself. Finally the mirané girl nods and holds Iriset’s elbow as they continue on around the broad side of the Gallery of Shades, through an outdoor path beneath rare wooden archways curling with tiny tea roses and raspberry vines.
Iriset uses the pace of her walking to count her breaths and lock it all down. She’s so fucked. Bittor will be on his own, without a distraction from her. She’s already tried talking to Lyric about granting the Little Cat mercy, and he won’t change his mind. Should she leave tonight? Slip out while Lyric sleeps and cut her way through to her father? Or lie in wait for the execution when they bring him out? Can she use her hands to get past the Seal guard with bursts of power the way she killed Erxan? Or wait until the execution andthenkill someone? Lyric himself? That would be quite the distraction. But she’d be sacrificing herself to it, and her father would be furiously unforgiving.
Her stomach churns.
