Iriset tucked her head under his jaw. He allowed it. She tried again. “Iriset has to be innocent. I need someone to blame.”
“That’s better. Do you know why?”
“Even the Little Cat is afraid of apostasy,” she said dully, accurate and scathing in the way of children.
When Iriset was seventeen, the Little Cat held a winter feast. Iriset did not attend.
It was the third night after the Night of Deep Hunger, when the tilt of the world makes the moon go dark, and the people of Moonshadow City celebrate the Moon-Eater, that old red god whose hunger for She Who Loves Silence was so great he ate his own moon like an apple. Bitten to the core, it fell from the sky.
The Little Cat’s court had grown over the years, thanks to money from roving gambling dens, favors paid and favors owed, and not to mention the occasional murder-for-hire or excellent score. He smuggled already, too, but before Silk he only could use the methods used by every other ambitious undermarketcat. On this third night after the Night of Deep Hunger, the Little Cat offered a feast to his most loyal, to his associates and helpers and their husbands and cousins. This year it took place in a catacomb disguised to look deserted by all but the dead. Disguised with design, of course.
But just before midnight someone put one delicate crystal stylus to the design net and tore it down.
This person walked through the low stone hallways, following the shade-torches and graffiti, past crouching thieves and revelers in full-face masks. None stopped them, for everyone was invited if they could find the door.
The Little Cat held court at a table of polished geode, with less impressive tables scattered about the largest of this catacomb’s chambers. Force-lights clung to the carved red-rock ceiling, illuminating people in apple masks and cactus masks, masks like the starry sky and masks of feathers and alliraptor skin and plain canvas masks painted with the favored foods of the old red god. They ate, they drank, and they moved in subtle patterns around the Little Cat, who sat alone in his dark blue robes and a mask with yellow rays like the sun.
The stranger slid along the red stone, dragging streaks of black silk and purple muslin. This person had taken pains to disguise any form, hiding in the comfort of androgyny, dark hair knotted at the nape and a terrifying mask covering their features from crown of the head and dripping over the chin.
Shaped of black-glazed ceramic, the mask gleamed with shards of smoky quartz glued into six faceted eyes arrayed around the actual eyeholes, which were covered by sheer black silk.
The spider walked into the Little Cat’s feast, and the room fell quiet.
“What do you want?” the Little Cat asked, flicking a hand to clear the space.
The spider knelt. When she spoke it was in a feminine-forward voice, enticing and plain. “I have come to bargain my design skills with the Little Cat.”
“I already have designers.”
“Not like me,” she said, and snapped her fingers. A surge of woven ecstatic and flow forces lifted the strips of silk and muslin, and her outer robe flared out around her in eight long lines, like a spider’s legs. Like a black sun.
The Little Cat leaned forward. “What do you want in return?”
“A workshop.” Her voice behind the spider mask hooked up in amusement. “The best tools and supplies a small king’s money can buy.”
“Your costume is cute, but not enough.”
The woman stood and raised her hands slowly to remove the eight-eyed mask.
Gasps stuck in throats, and the Little Cat’s court shied away.
Under the mask was the face of the Little Cat himself.
He removed his own sun mask, tossing it away.
Upon comparison, the spider looked a little more like his baby brother, or little sister. The jaw was not quite correct, the wrinkles too smooth, the nose a little too short. But it was close. Close enough.
Whispers of fear slithered through the catacomb. Whispers—and awe.
The Little Cat laughed, then reined in his knowing stare.
The spider grinned. “Imagine what I could do if I’d had a chance to be really close to you, study your structures, your expressions.”
“I’d rather not,” the Little Cat drawled. “Tell me your name, and I’ll give you a trial run.”
“Silk,” she said, and covered her eyes—her eyes that looked just like the Little Cat’s—to bow.
Even in the palace of the Vertex Seal, they heard the story of how the Little Cat found his apostate.
