Page 96 of The Mercy Makers
Bittor took it as permission to touch, so he did, but carefully.And still, “A lot of hair feels like this. I know a mirané boy whose hair is just like ours.”
Iriset rolled her eyes hard enough it rolled her whole head back as she laughed at him. “You’re obviously not mirané, and besides, it’s not one of those things but all those things. Texture, color, bone structure. And I have a theory that a lot of Osahar are inclined to strong ecstatic force. But if you won’t believe me, that’s your problem. Give me your hand.”
He did believe her. And gave her his hand. He regretted it immediately when she shone a bright force-light in his eyes just to watch the slit pupils constrict, but he never pulled away.
When Bittor hears the rumor that the Little Cat’s daughter was murdered in the palace of the Vertex Seal, he’s in the hidden backroom of a wine shop with Dalal mé Roné and her little four-year-old son, Ooris, whose father was a mirané one-night lay and the blood bred true. They, along with the surviving members of the Little Cat’s court who haven’t fled, use a series of drops and old tunnels to stay in contact and reorganize with sympathizers in Saltbath. It’s lunchtime and Ooris is helping the owner of this particular wine shop, Pel, roll out dough for frying—to a certain definition of helping, of course. Dalal busies herself with a design stylus, extracting the security map Iriset smuggled them from the crystal infrastructure.
Pel’s brown-faced daughter bursts into the secret room, giving off nervous, jerky waves of flow. She doesn’t even slide the door all the way closed before she says, “There was an assassination attempt on the Ceres princess! But Iriset mé Isidor stopped it somehow, and—and it killed her.”
Bittor, on his feet with a hand on his retractable baton the moment they’re interrupted, flinches. “What did you say?”
“The Little Cat’s daughter—”
“Is this a rumor or a fact?” demands Dalal, also on her feet. Her son starts to cry, staring between his suddenly frightening mother and Bittor’s blanching face.
The girl shakes her head. “Everyone is saying it, the bulletin graffiti, too. I didn’t see it on the official scripts, but it only happened at dawn this morning.”
She goes on, but Bittor doesn’t hear more than a word or two through the noise of rising and falling in his skull. Suddenly he’s sitting down, and he can’t feel the tips of his fingers. Staring at his hands, he tries to snap—she always said, Iriset always said, snapping was ecstatic and could jump-start almost anything, especially if your dominant force was ecstatic. His fingers are too numb; he makes the motions but feels nothing.
Dalal’s hands cover his, curling his fingers up, and she holds tight. They sink off the benches and onto their knees on the ground. Ooris pats Bittor’s face, wiping at tears. He blinks and more fall, but he barely feels grief. It’s all physiological so far, Iriset would say. His body reacting before his brain catches up.
He hears a song, a broken melody, and realizes little Ooris is trying to sing. The melody is something to focus on, and his hearing returns in a rush.
Ooris pats his face again, still singing a song Bittor recognizes. One of the old rebel songs Dalal’s grandmother sang. “That’s a good song,” he says hoarsely.
“Mama taught me,” the little mirané boy says. “Are you better?”
“No,” Bittor admits, gaze lifting to Dalal. He might never be better again. But he knows what to do next.
In Moonshadow City, graffiti is used for a lot of things. Art, sure; tagging, of course. But also advertisements both simple and elaborate, and passing messages that might be official, rumored, or illicit. It’s not unusual for all three kinds to be layered into a charged graffiti design. Any artist can paint a tag onto the side of a pylon or a skiff, but artisan-designers can make them come to life.
Or at least give them the illusion of motion, create a looping series of actions to tell a quick story or transform from one thing into another. These can be affixed to pylons or skiffs or any surface. But they can also hang in the air itself, drawing energy from the forces crisscrossing the city from steeple to steeple.
In the Morning Market there are always several rows of force-graffiti listing changes in prices and what fruit is available today or how many of yesterday’s cactus buns are left for half price. On artisan lanes, designers compete directly, showing up the galleries across the street or sabotaging new graffiti with tiny ecstatic viruses. Graffiti posters explode in happy little fireworks, showering safe, bright confetti onto sweepstakes winners or to celebrate a wedding or the birth of a child. Often graffiti pops up satirizing this or that small king or mirané prince. The Moon-Eater’s Mistress is a popular subject, and her brother but less so, and while their mother, Diaa, frequently complains that Lyric ought to outlaw the use of their persons in jokes, it isn’t their specific faces used, so neither of them are interested in censorship. Amaranth rather likes it when one of her handmaidens or Beremé brings her examples. Technically, the force-flowers the palace architects designed to decorate the sky during the welcoming procession for Singix Es Sun were developed from graffiti techniques.
Graffiti is rather ubiquitous in Moonshadow City, in other words.
It’s a perfect tool to disseminate information and have a bit of fun. Even when he’s devastated, Bittor can’t help but be drawn to plans that are a little bit fun.
The graffiti fireworks he and Dalal design for the Day of Final Mercy are a dangerous sort of fun, but Iriset always loved her apostasy, so in her honor they lean in hard. The distraction works, and he skips and steps across the network of security like it’s a tight trampoline, has his force-dart ready to cut through almost any armor, except the princess meets his furious gaze and he thinks she says his name.
He falters, and everything else falls apart.
She looks at him like she knows him, and it’s not one thing: not her pear-blossom skin or the anguish in her pursed lips or the shape of her skull or her sleek hair or the shocking lack of any kind of mask.
It’s all those things.
Bittor doesn’tknow. But he hopes.
And when the Days of Mercy end, the fragments of the Little Cat’s court are ready with baskets full of salt coins holding brand-new graffiti, to scatter around the city.
Unrest
The security for Singix Es Sun is tight. Besides her secretary, Huya, and her personal attendant, Shahd, Garnet assigns twice as many Seal guards as usual to orchestrate Iriset’s leaving the palace to visit the home of the small king of the Ecstatic Steeple Shadow precinct.
It takes so long for it all to be arranged that Iriset assumes a little petty revenge on the part of the Moon-Eater’s Mistress.
In the meantime, she plays her role to avoid suspicion. Since none of the design tools Sidoné sourced for her the night she became Singix made it back into her possession after the wedding, Iriset must start from scratch building or acquiring before she can get to the real work. So Iriset allows Huya to set up meals and tea with mirané princes, accepts future invitations to visit other small kings and enjoy various high-class entertainments in the city. She takes Shahd on long, meandering walks in between appointments as if learning the palace complex—but really remapping the security nets for herself. Though not strictly necessary as she can’t use an the same way as before, Iriset wants to see Raia mér Omorose again, and commissions an aviary tobe installed in the arched ceiling of her greeting chamber, populated by a small flock of skull sirens and bright green-and-yellow finches. The finches are a sharp counterpoint to the cries of the sirens, and when they sing at sunset or titter with the dawn, it’s more pleasant than chimes. Raia designs a ribbon for the birds to follow out through the lattice in the spiral stairway, for fresh air and room to spread their wings, and a net of forces to catch the birds’ droppings and whisk them away. Though an doesn’t know they’re friends, Iriset finds comfort in Raia’s company. It’s a struggle to keep her opinions of ans design to herself, even though they’re mostly complimentary. When she reveals herself at the end of all this, she hopes Raia will be on her side.
