“Holy Peace,” Amaranth says, inclining her head ever so slightly.
Ah, she’s not any Silent priest but their most tranquil, the head of the order. Iriset doesn’t know her name and recalls that divesting oneself of even a name is considered necessary for achieving true Silence. A name disrupts balance just by existing.
(Thereis a thing the Silent priests and the numena agree upon! To the priests a name is a shackle to break, to the numena an angle for interrogating even the most basic principles of the universe, for when we are the ones to put names to those principles, we simultaneously conjure them.
Do you know who named the fifth force?)
“These are your successors?” Amaranth continues boldly, eyeing both younger priests. Their modest priestly robes fall to their knees, and red trousers and slippers cover the rest of them. Only faces and arms are bare. Each has a hood pulled over their short hair, the sheer cowl hanging to the bridge of their noses in a pretense of hiding their eyes. Beside them, Amaranth is naked. She studies them as if intending to eat them.
The Holy Peace’s humor disappears slowly as she watches Amaranth, and Iriset guesses why: Neither the Vertex Seal nor the Mistress is supposed to show preference for who the Silent priests choose to lead them, but somehow Amaranth is making a move.
Now her talk of a target makes more sense. Though Iriset can’t read exactly what Amaranth communicates to the priests, they certainly can. None of them approve, but the mirané priest who barely hid his dislike of Amaranth’s attire trembles once.
“How very handsome you both are,” she says.
“Balance does not require beauty,” says the more pleasant of the two. “Only discipline.”
“Both please the Moon-Eater.”
“And discipline pleases your brother,” the less pleasant one says.
“Oh yes.” Amaranth skims a painted hand down his bare arm. “The balance between us maintains the whole empire. Seal and Mistress, Silence and Hunger.”
The priest manages not to flinch away from her, and Iriset finds a moment to admire his discipline, indeed. Amaranth’s touch is a thing to drown in.
“Her Glory understands discipline,” the Holy Peace says. “To please the god every day.”
“And herself the rest of the time,” says Beremé mé Adora, the head of the mirané council, as she joins them.
Amaranth smiles sharply. “Just because I am not alwayspleasing you, Beremé, it does not follow that I am always pleased. It is a simple matter”—she flicks her glance at the Holy Peace again—“to displease me.”
“Something to take care with, Your Glory,” the Holy Peace answers. “Lest your displeasure find its way to the Moon-Eater.”
“The Moon-Eater accepts everything I offer him,” she says, gaze firmly on the old priest. Bold, daring.
It’s like a confrontation between cousins of the Little Cat’s court. A dominance challenge. She wonders which Amaranth favors, and why. Iriset takes a drink of her honey beer to cover again the disconcerting hum on her tongue. Her movement draws Beremé’s shrewd glance and Iriset instantly regrets it. None of the other handmaidens pulled attention.
“One must be displeased on occasion,” says the unpleasant priest, caught up in the conversation, “if one is to be alive.”
“Surely there is displeasure in death, Brother,” answers the other priest.
“Not for the dead, who return to Aharté’s Holy Silence.”
Amaranth breaks her challenge-stare with the Holy Peace. “Wisely spoken, Brother,” she says, markingBrotherwith an intimacy that’s anything but familial.
The poor priest’s lips part and he says nothing, lowering his eyes fast. The nicer priest raises his eyebrow, clearly suppressing a smile.
Amaranth has won.
She nods to the Holy Peace and moves away. Beremé follows at her side, maneuvering between Her Glory and Sidoné. “Crass, Amaranth,” the sharp-faced mirané prince says, obviously amused. “But somehow still elegant.”
“I thought he might hate me a little if I made him hard while standing next to his Holy Peace.”
“If he hates you and still is appointed to the council, you won’t have done yourself a favor,” Sidoné says.
Amaranth glances at her, and Iriset is positioned perfectly to see the tilt of her brow that suggested Her Glory knows Sidoné only speaks up in order to disagree with Beremé. “But the Holy Peace will have to appoint him fully aware that he’ll make an enemy of the Moon-Eater. She can’t pretend ignorance now. None of them can.”
Beremé says to Sidoné, “And if he hates her openly, even Lyric will notice and take less of his counsel.”
