Iriset’s knees weaken. It was her fault.
Instead of fighting it, she lets her body bow, sinking slowly to the floor as despair sours her stomach.
Raia kneels beside her, not touching. “I am sorry, Iriset. I imagine what I would feel were my mother or father facing execution. You do him credit, to seem so strong. You do all the Saltbath credit, and your extended family.”
“Don’t be kind to me,” she murmurs, wondering vaguely if her grandparents are all right. If they’re attempting to submit petitions on her behalf. They might, though they should know better. If it went well it would still take quads to work through the overtly complex bureaucracy of the Holy City to free the Little Cat’s daughter. If it went poorly, they might be arrested, too. Better if they leave it alone.
Maybe Amaranth will find out for her, or Sidoné, if Shahd can’t. Or won’t. Iriset looks back at the scrap of sheer silk. It just flops there, still in ans hand and pressed against ans knee. Iriset reaches out and skims her finger against its softness. Would Raia offer it to her, a memento? Unlikely.
“It’s so perfect,” an says, releasing the silk. “She is such an innovator. I have examined her glove, too, and what little was recovered.”
“Is that how you earned your new office?” Iriset asks sharply.
“Discovering the means to locate Silk was how. The rest is my duty.”
Iriset slides the silk into her lap, spreading it against the dark green linen of her trousers. The silk takes up a green shade. When she flattens her hand over it, her palm tingles with remembered resonance. She whispers, “Has she given anything to you?”
“I am not participating in her interrogation any longer.”
A tremor of discomfort accompanies ans words, and shame makes Iriset vicious: “No stomach for torture?”
“She used a trick to ruin her voice,” Raia says. “Something she swallowed.”
Iriset stares. The candy. She’d thought it was for some scheme of the Little Cat’s. Blackmail or something—no. She hadn’t thought at all.
“Will she break her own fingers before she writes anything down?” Raia asks so softly, there’s no voice left in an, either.
Iriset shakes her head. But maybe. She, at least, invented no such tool. Dalal or Paser would have to hurt themselves the old-fashioned way. Iriset hates this, hates her torture applied to someone else. Hates the cold, sickening relief to be spared it. There’s no way for her to ask if the Vertex Seal ordered the torture of Dalal or Paser without giving away that neither is Silk. As long as the Vertex Seal believes he has the apostate, she’s safe enough with Amaranth. “And my father?” she asks instead, though it’s hardly better. “Is he being hurt?”
“I do not know, Iriset. But if you consider how many he has hurt in his turn, perhaps you will have some understanding of the army’s perspective.”
“Do not lecture me about my father from the heart of the Holy City. The empire itself relies on harm, on the suffering of others, Raia mér Omorose. It is the nature of empire to consume.”
The designer’s eyes widen into circles at her outburst.
Iriset clenches her jaw, pressing her mouth and eyes shut, irate at her loss of control. Isidor the Little Cat had said that to her, more than once.It is the nature of empire to consume.To him it was a fact, an excuse to consume in turn. The Moon-Eater, unraveled, is only hunger, and the Moon-Eater’s Mistressfeeds him. The Little Cat feeds the undermarket. Normal, natural, the Holy Design of things.
But on the floor of a royal architect’s study, the words sound to Iriset more like a rallying cry. A rebellion.
It’s not illegal to criticize the Vertex Seal, but Iriset’s position is too precarious for harsh opinions. She takes a deep, shaking breath. “I’m sorry,” she murmurs. “Her Glory said they will execute him during the Days of Mercy.”
“So…” Raia pauses and begins again. “So I have heard as well. But, Iriset, there is nothing you can do against the will of Aharté.”
She clenches her fist around the silk scrap, crushing it. “You mean this all is the Holy Design,” she says, and doesn’t hint at the bitterness she feels. The words remind her of her mother: Many people say apostatical cancer is part of Aharté’s pattern, too. Iriset hated nothing worse than that excuse when her mother was dying.
Raia says, “You understand design, and the foundations of architecture. The Little Cat eventually would need to be balanced, somehow. And, Iriset, Iamsorry for your suffering.”
It doesn’t matter if Iriset believes an—she pretends to. “Teach me,” she says, as if it will convince her to forgive an. “You wanted my knowledge, from Silk, in prison. And now I don’t need you to free me, but I would work with you as you suggested: give what I know of Silk’s methods in return for your instruction.”
She glances up. Ans eyes seem darker with concern, or responsibility, as an promises, “I will ask that you be allowed to work with me some days.”
“Will you tell me why you’re designing a triangle?” She glances at the project an’d pinned down as she arrived.
“I am experimenting with forms of stability that do not require all four forces to hold. It would be a strong grounding form that did not include rising force, but ecstatic kept flow alive, with falling holding it in shape.”
Iriset smiles slightly. “You surmised that from the silk. She used ecstatic to create a connection between the mask and the face of the wearer.”
Raia nods, and begins to point out the exact weave of ans design.
