Like Iriset, Raia is uncomfortable with the imprisonment of the numen, and like Iriset, an wishes to have a real conversationwith the creature, not only about itself but about what it has seen in its long life. Raia brought this up with Menna, the Architect of the Seal, making an official request, and Menna patronizingly explained that Raia has a few years of promotions ahead of an before such would be allowed.
Raia thinks, as an descends the spiral stairs, that perhaps now is ans opportunity to ask a single question or two.
But the numen’s prison door is open, and the numen gone.
For a moment, Raia stands still, staring, trying to comprehend. An thought someone had broken in, but not dreamed someone would be stupid enough to free the creature.
It has to have been another numen—who else could have slipped past all the security netting without leaving a signature or even a scrap of design behind? Nobody Raia has heard of. Unless it’s true that Silk is alive. (An hopes that Silk is alive.)
Instead of slapping the security alert to the wall, an runs back up the spiral stairs and directly across to the opposite hidden arch that leads out of the mirané hall and to the private corridor behind the office of the Vertex Seal. Raia dashes out, sliding to a stop at the back entrance just as Garnet méra Bež appears, speaking to the Vertex Seal.
Raia’s mind streaks white in panic and an forgets what an had been about to say.
“Raia mér Omorose,” Garnet intones, grasping the hilt of his force-blade. “What?”
“Ah, Your Glory, ah…” Raia swallows, makes an abortive gesture to bow and touch ans eyelids to the Vertex Seal, and instead just blurts, “I just saw Garnet—you!—leaving the mirané hall by the front entrance with an attendant. But you are here and… the numen is gone.”
Lyric says, “Amaranth,” like a prayer, and turns, running.
The Moon-Eater’s Mistress is, at that moment, standing in the center of the Bright Star Obelisk Garden under the setting sun, staring at the needle obelisk that Safiyah the Bloody erected for her murdered brother. It’s brilliant white granite with veins of black and chips of crystal that glint against the sky. At the base, a moat lined in burnt-red tiles trickles with water, and straight channels lead away in the four directions. As if blood surrounds it and streaks away every day and every night. Black succulents called Sorrow’s Ecstasy dot the sand between the channels, each section colored after a different force. Blue, white, green, black. Amaranth stands in the black section, the hot particles of sand sliding into her sandals.
Her handmaidens are quiet around her, and Sidoné waits with her force-blade out, though only because Amaranth yelled in pure fury an hour ago, and Sidoné has yet to sheathe her weapon.
Amaranth has been calm for a while, but it’s a cold calm, and she’s unsure if she should try to soothe Sidoné because she senses a storm gathering inside her that soon will shatter this numbness.
She’d been so wrong.
Her (traitorous!) mother dead, and Iriset gone.
Lyric came to her this morning, in dirty robes and a terrible hardness to his face. Already she grieved for Diaa and for Iriset running away instead of coming to her. But Amaranth assumed Iriset had to be alive, for that girl was a slippery survivor. She’d prepared a flustered story for everyone, about Singix having fled in panic, thinking she could trust nobody after Diaa showed her betrayal. The giant spider hadn’t helped, terrifying as it had been, of course, poor princess.
Then her brother strode into her chamber, where she reclined in distressed thought. Her handmaidens scattered at the expressionon the Vertex Seal’s face. He walked close and dragged Amaranth to her feet with unexpected fury. “I spoke with Iriset,” he said, and within the words were layers of hurt and anger so pure, Amaranth understood he would never forgive her.
Their confrontation did not last long, because Lyric needed to take charge of the palace complex, of the entire city, and he commanded her to keep her mouth shut until he was finished cleaning up her apostatical mess.
She obeyed, keeping her mouth shut, and came to this garden to show the palace how loudly she can weep for her mother.
But all she could summon was fury. Mostly at herself, and Iriset. And her damnedmother.
Numb and cold, she studies the needle obelisk meditatively. It is, after all, a monument to a brother’s love. She’s draped in pink, red, and black silk, as is everyone in royal mourning. Her hair tumbles free down her back, heavier somehow than when crusted and wound with jewels and silver wire. She pressed black handprints over her eyes, fingers splayed up like massive lashes, or horns, or the legs of a spider.
(Amaranth did see Iriset’s spider, and she didn’t go inside or avoid stepping on the tiny sparks. She’d followed it to the Silent Chapel and knelt under it, and when her handmaidens stopped begging her to get to safety, one brought her a blanket and pillows. Amaranth lay back and stared at the underbelly of the thing, at the shimmering, rainbow threads of forces. It seemed to be made of starlight, and the same pink-silver as the moon. Her Glory cried silently and could hardly believe the genius who designed the brilliant thing had been hers, but she’d lost her.)
Now Amaranth’s meditation focuses on the things people do in response to loss. A day ago she’d have sworn she knows Lyric well enough to predict, but his noontime official declarationthat Singix Es Sun was killed by the apostate Silk had shocked her—though it’s a bold move, it steals the possibility of nuance from them as they continue their political relations with Ceres, and ruins a few of the threads of plans she’s already set into motion. They should be planning together, all four of them. Garnet won’t look Sidoné in the eye, either.
Amaranth feels bizarre, unsettled, and can’t figure out why. In the empty moments between her furies, she expected grief, numbness, but not to be disconcerted. Not to be dizzy.
There are not many things Amaranth doesn’t know about herself. She’s intimately familiar with her body and its desires, her ambitions in particular. What she’s never realized is how attuned she is to the Moon-Eater. Of course if you ask her, she’ll insist her inner design is practically bound in marriage to his, but in truth she thinks her moment alone with him at his altar is the most they share, and when she leaves his temple she’s only herself. She’s always rather wished it were more. A romance, perhaps. Evocative and pure.
So Amaranth can’t identify the strange feeling gathering in her belly as she stares at the needle obelisk. It’s probably just stress unraveling in a sick little spiral right where her center of force rests, high in the bowl of her hips.
But when a commotion at the eastern garden gate draws her attention and her brother bursts into her presence for the second time that day, scattering Seal guards around him, and with Garnet alert at his heels, Amaranth suddenly knows something is wrong in the Moon-Eater’s Temple.
“Thank Aharté,” Lyric says, coming to her and taking her elbows. “You’re all right.”
Sidoné says, “What happened?”
Garnet answers, “The numen is free, and we feared—”
