A few tracts are signed by people long erased from imperial history, known in their time for soaring ambition and wild invention: Eliri Who Touched the Sun, Fortin Rare, Ariel Osahar, and even one supposed name of the Moon-Eater. So Iriset makes notes in the margins of ancient books, talking back to these geniuses, and boldly signs her notes, too. She’s giddy to think that someday somebody will find this research and know that Silk had been here.
Fifteen days before the anniversary of her mother’s funeral, while passing through the Winter Sunset Courtyard on her way to join Amaranth, Iriset slows down as a sickly pink-white color catches her eye.
The numen crouches in the sun, bare feet on the seashell gravel, long fingers splayed to hold it in balance while its face turns up to the bright sky. It wears those faded gray trousers, and its short robe is discarded against a glazed-brick flower box. There’s no sign of the null-wire collar, except for a darkening around its throat like a raw mark, and similar at its wrists and ankles.
Four Seal guards surround it, in a twelve-pace circle.
(In the forbidden library, Iriset came across a collection of books about numena. They were small and in perfect condition, written in looping silver letters of a very old mirané dialect she could hardly understand. Iriset took one to a chair and cradled it against her lap, paging through, admiring the art and tiny words.
They were fairy stories. Tales for children about creatures made of air and light that can take any form, but usually lovely youths to steal children away, seduce princes, or sometimes cause deadly pranks. None of the stories mentioned black diamond eyes, or anything to do with why a numen might have tried to kill a Moon-Eater’s Mistress a hundred years ago.)
“Numen,” Iriset says, staring at it under the sun. If they let it out sometimes without the null wires, maybe she won’t have to break into its prison to help it.
It snaps its head down to look at her with those black diamond-shard eyes.
Despite the disapproving hum from one of her own guards, Iriset moves nearer. “Do you like the sun?” she asks it.
The numen tilts its ugly head in a shrug.
“Have you had a picnic? Shahd, will you give me some of the grapes in your basket, and a flagon of rose wine?” Iriset holds her gaze on the numen, watching its blank expression for any sign of—well, anything.
Nothing. But it doesn’t look away from her.
Ecstatic pops in her chest as she wonders what it sees. She’s in one of the thin leather masks she designed herself. It braces against her forehead in undulating black and ties into her hair, then hundreds of silk strands dyed green, blue, and black fall down over her eyes, parting over her nose to be swept aside like perfectly arcing cheekbones. When she moves, the silk shivers like iridescent butterfly wings. It occludes her vision rather a lot.
Shahd makes to walk around Iriset and bravely offers the refreshment to the numen, but Iriset stops her and takes the cold flagon in her own hand, and the cup of dark grapes. She steps forward again. “Numen,” she says, “do you have a name?”
“Stop, Princess,” it says in a broken-glass voice.
Startled, she does, without thinking.
One of the Seal guards moves to Iriset and touches his painted eyelids. “The creature is correct, Your Glory. Allow me to bring your gift to it.”
Singix has no reason to disregard the Seal guard and so Iriset submits. But when he takes the grapes and wine, Iriset pushes her mask up into her hair so that the dripping waves of silk brush her forehead and let her eyes free. She watches as the numen accepts the food and drink, carefully not allowing its skin to touch the Seal guard’s mirané-brown hands. It plucks a grape and opens its thin lips to bite the dark flesh with alliraptor-like teeth.
Shahd shudders beside Iriset.
Without saying more, Iriset leaves, her small entourage hurrying after. When she arrives at Amaranth’s side, she tells the small group, “The numen was loose in the Winter Sunset Courtyard, free of its collar.”
A mirané prince, Elit mé Orsir, who is in her sixth decadeand staunchly pro-Silence, waves a hand from the low sofa upon which she lounges beside Amaranth. “Free of its collar, but not loose. They lay a null wire into the garden gravel, and so it is as trapped as always within that circle.”
Iriset’s body seizes tight. A null wire in the garden gravel.
Stop, Princess, the numen said just before she stepped into the nulled circle. She’d have lost her craftmask, the crawling design that changed her skin and hair, and been stripped bare back to her own apostatical face.
It had saved her.
Iriset barely hears the conversation next for the ringing in her ears. Shahd directs her to a cushion, arranges her gown and mask, and by then a shallow stone bowl of chilled wine is in her hand, and Amaranth is introducing her to a familiar Silent priest.
“Here is Holy Brother Seth, Princess,” Amaranth says, touching her fingertips to his wrist. “Just appointed as the new Silent voice on the privilege council, perhaps soon to sacrifice even his name.”
Iriset nods, careful not to bow or touch her eyelids as a woman of lesser position might. The priest is mirané, typical in hair and eyes and shape of his face, but real humor shows in his charming smile. Oh! Iriset hides her recognition, but this is the more pleasant of the two priests she met with Amaranth and the Holy Peace the night Her Glory debuted her scarf-dress. Amaranth had won. She’d gotten the priest she wanted appointed to Lyric’s council. No wonder Elit mé Orsir is here, too.
“Are you well, Princess?” the priest asks.
“Shaken by her encounter with the numen, I imagine,” says Elit.
“I am,” Iriset murmurs, and carefully sips her wine.
