Page 87 of The Mercy Makers
All sunsets for the rest of time will be fundamentally different simply because the Little Cat will be dead. Every future sunset diminished. The entire world diminished. Knowing it, expecting it, watching the devastation approach is so much worse than the shock, the blunt adrenaline of murder.
She sighs. Lyric runs his hand down her arm. “Singix?”
Unpleasant anger stirs at the name. Even worse, longing. But Iriset has always been a woman of physicality. She learned to feel forces against her lips and the small of her back, didn’t she? She knows Silence and balance require both the domination and surrender of one’s own flesh, blood, and bones.
And so she turns and kisses the Vertex Seal, kissing him like she knows what she’s doing, thoughtless to any bashful pretext. She kisses him like she could destroy him with it, save her father’s life with it, or discover a new force behind his teeth.
His Glory is helpless.
She has her way with him on the floor of the greeting room, quickly pulling aside clothing as she pushes him down and cheats with a few pulls on his rising force so that he’s harder faster. He gasps the wrong name and Iriset refuses to speak with voice, leaving communication to nails and tongues, heartbeat and gathering pleasure. Her own intensity rips at her delicate design and she holds it together with gritted teeth and determination. Her skin ripples, and she doesn’t care. Iriset is nothing but forces; Lyric, too.
Thanks in part to the marriage knot, in part to her own skill, they come apart together.
When Lyric sprawls back onto the floor, still under her, still inside, there is a relaxed, joyful smile on his face.
Iriset shifts in his lap, feeling the stickiness between them, and squeezes her muscles around him. His smile widens. He is so beautiful, and Iriset thinks about putting a hand over his heart and stopping it.
She imagines ripping off her craftmask with his cock still inside her, holding him down as she transforms back to herself.Look what you’re fucking, Lyric méra Esmail. Are you an apostate now, too?And then she’ll draw his rising force again and again, relentlessly. She’ll drag them both back to orgasms until he feels the crawling design on his own skin, until he swears under her own name, Iriset, Iriset,Iriset.
She sits back on his lap, head lolling as if with afterglow, but it’s despair.
Lyric squeezes her hips. “Bath?”
Shaking her head, Iriset curls down against him, pressing her cheek to his chest. They’re a mess, tangled clothing and sweat and come, and Iriset knows however this all ends, however shemakesit end, it will break her heart, too.
The Day of Final Mercy
The Little Cat is executed on the Mercy Pavilion erected every year for the Day of Final Mercy. It’s a performance, you see, an ostentatious display of power.
Every year several are sentenced to die, and every year the Vertex Seal calls mercy for one name. Rarely does the choice surprise anyone, for it’s negotiated and argued quads beforehand among the mirané council. But that year, thereisa surprise.
Two, really, since Iriset has never seen the royal griffons personally before. Only their silhouettes as they fly against the dome of the menagerie. It is said that these queens of the sky were designed by the Moon-Eater himself, from a leopard, a prairie eagle, and his own moon-red flesh.
But at the end of the Apostate Age, with the Holy Syr’s blessing and the approval of the first Vertex Seal, priests of Aharté determined that whatever creatures the apostate architects had created would be left alone to live or die according to Aharté’s will. Those that died would pass into legend, but those that could feed themselves could reproduce without intercession,would not be destroyed. Most of the megafauna could not manage their size without additional design, and were put down with pity; the largest feather dragons were hunted for their destructive natures; the delicate unicorns fled, too intelligent to be captured, and it is possible some live in the wilds beyond the empire; those creatures made with especially bold, terrible magic like the singing trees or spliced dogs could not reproduce at all, and when they died, their kind died with them.
The griffons, though, were perfect.
At the execution of the Little Cat are four griffons: a massive queen called Seti, her vivid mirané-brown wings broad and outswept as she perches on a heavy trellis built over the royal stage, her mass and wings shading Iriset and Lyric. Another adult female clutches her own trellis, her gorgeous wings mottled with brown, mirané brown, and black markings. With her are a pair of juvenile twins. They’re all thin and elegant, with lanky legs and wide paws. Their sleek mirané-brown fur is patterned with white spots and sweeping stripes that curve around their huge slit-pupil eyes like kohl. Long tails curl over their backs, or swipe in avid interest as the griffons keep watch.
Bež, the griffon-keeper and Garnet’s mother, stands at the pointed end of the half-circle stage, whip and long silk leashes at her hips and around her neck. Scars on her brow are painted bold red and she wears a headdress of feathers that’s like a mask, only it does not occlude her vision at all. She smells like raw meat.
Iriset keeps glancing up at the griffon queen, annoyed that they exist. If she had called the little bobcat kitten she designed wings for a griffon, would it have been such a crime? Her constant glances must read as nerves, for Lyric touches the back of Iriset’s hand and says, “You are safe, beloved.”
He maintains poise easily, it seems, his faith in Bež and her control over the griffons simple and resolute. Iriset smells that musty-feather smell of the griffons, and hopes their cat-eyes are a sign of good luck for whatever Bittor does today.
Her stomach is loose and sloshy. Iriset grips the rail of the half-circle royal pavilion, gasping at the sparks of ecstatic force that pinch her palms. A force-shield so thin and perfect she’d not seen it surrounds their stage, to protect the Vertex Seal and his party. It’s to be expected here, in case someone decides to toss trash or flowers, but Iriset hopes there’s nothing like it around the execution pillars. All night, while her husband slept, Iriset worked: She chose one of Singix’s embroidered chest pieces and wove a force-shield through the back that will act as armor. She took a pencil and two quills from Lyric’s desk and imbued them with charge-designs she can activate—she’s toyed with tiny prototype ecstatic blades in the past. Mostly for picking locks and thievery, but they should do for shocking Seal guards back, slicing through force-blades if she’s lucky. They could cut through this shield around the pavilion, certainly. The weapons are fixed to her arms under her wide sleeves with friction-buttons.
Iriset is as ready as she knows how to be for whatever will happen. She can’t be a palace-wide distraction, and since Bittor must think she’s dead, he won’t count on it anymore. Whatever his new plan is, if she can help, she will.
He must have a plan. He must be coming.
Iriset looks out over the crowd toward the Mercy Pavilion. It seems to have been grown overnight out of the Crystal Desert, shining in striae of pink salt and white-silver quartz, with veins of iron deposits striping violently through in forks and slices like lightning. Four pillars evenly spaced in a square rise from the smooth, flat surface of the pavilion. Each for a criminal.
People, mostly miran wearing red death masks under shaded palanquins or palm umbrellas hovering over their heads, fill the space between the Vertex Seal’s stage and the pavilion. The chatter and anticipation are ecstatic in the hot air. Toward the edges, groups of non-miran gather together, just as eager.
It’s not bloodthirsty of them, exactly, for these executions include no blood. It’s closer to curiosity that brings them here, not to witness death but to witness the Glorious Unraveling that is how the criminals die. Such architecture is—in Iriset’s opinion—human architecture, as it changes life, reworks living flesh. But officially it’s only a weapon, like a force-blade. Besides, unraveling is the way the Holy Syr executed the Moon-Eater four hundred years ago, and so it is blessed by She Who Loves Silence. Even if it’s human architecture, technically, no gift from Aharté can be apostasy.
Semantics and doctrine, Iriset thinks bitterly, wishing Ceres fashion allowed for a mask to hide her expression. She wishes to argue with Lyric that all these who approve of this method of execution but claim innocence of apostasy are hypocrites. She wishes she were herself, to sneer in his face that his empire is unworthy of the moral heights to which he aspires.
