That last day in the quartz yards, sweating as they break for water, she asks Raia about the creature behind the throne.
“Oh,” an says softly, wiping ans forehead with the end of ans cloth mask. Raia glances at the damp spot turning the linen translucent against ans fingers. “The numen.”
Iriset frowns. She thought Diaa of Moonshadow was being facetious when she called it a fairy. “Numen are real?”
“Numena, plural.” Raia’s voice remains distant. “It’s from a pre-Sarenpet word that means something like ‘those who manifest’ because they appear from nothing, supposedly.”
(The Moon-Eater’s mother gave them that name, when she said they must be a people in order to matter, and people have names. To her it meantto express.)
“I thought they were only a story—or all gone from here after the Apostate Age.”
What Iriset knows of numena now is only this: They’re magic. Not force-crafters, not architects, but magic, because there is no internal logic to their ways, no bearing on nature or science. And Iriset does not believe in magic.
Raia says, “I understand they are rare, and they stay far away from the empire because of our design. They are creatures of change, of chaos, and we put everything into stability and balance.”
Iriset stares at Raia’s discomfort, at ans refusal to glance toward her or angle ans head in a way to indicate an listened without making rude eye contact. She says, “That numen chained behind the throne is not healthy.”
An flips ans hands awkwardly. “What can we do? He tried to kill the Moon-Eater’s Mistress.”
“Not Amaranth.”
“So he should be freed?”
“Or killed.”
Raia looks at her eyes then, shocked. “Iriset.”
“It is not mercy, or kindness, keeping him this way. I spoke to him, and he is a living creature. Would you chain a dog for a hundred years?”
“You see yourself in his collar.”
She holds Raia’s gaze, neither agreeing nor denying.
“I will not allow that to happen to you, Iriset,” an says with quiet passion.
“Not even if I attempt to murder the—”
Raia’s hand flashes out and covers her mouth. “Never say such a thing!”
Ans fingers smell of lilies and quartz dust and sweat, and they tremble against her lips. Iriset lowers her eyes and an lowers ans hand. “I am sorry, Raia,” she says, swallowing her anger.
They silently return to their design orientation, and every once in a while Iriset allows her elbow or hand or the end of her mask to drift against ans, so that an will forget she’d been so bold.
The very next day, Singix of the Beautiful Twilight arrives.
The late morning veils itself with sheer clouds that do nothing to cut the light and heat, but palace architects have prepared for weeks so that force-fans waft gentle breezes up and down the path leading through the quartz yards to the pavilion where His Glory awaits his bride.
Gone is Lyric’s simple priest’s robe, replaced with an elaborate sleeveless robe in deepest red. He wears gilded sandals and golden earrings, his hair loose. He is just as beautiful as the last time Iriset saw him. She feels the ghost of his fingers against her wrist. It’s a problem.
Amaranth wears black and burnished pink, and aside from black eye lines and red lips, her only face paint is a gaping black circle on her forehead, with eight tiny rays also in black added evenly to its circumference: the Moon-Eater’s mouth. She’s veiled by nothing but her long, waved black hair falling freepast her elbows and to the small of her back. Simple, sumptuous, vivid.
The handmaidens wear simpler costumes of cream and pink, all in matching layers and face paint and sheer pink veils for masks. Accessories.
Her Glory grins, bouncing a little on her feet. Iriset glances at Sidoné, and the body-twin leans close. “Ama was instrumental in Lyric’s decision to accept this marriage. She’s been arguing him around to it for years. It is a triumph for her faction—those who would see the empire expand in new ways.”
Expanding the empire through marriage and alliance instead of conquest and death seems preferable on the surface, but Iriset knows by now how Sidoné has struggled with the assimilation laws, how so many of the minor rebellions of the past two hundred years have been because of multiple generations of resentment and oppression, not the immediacy of war. The empire is still the empire, chewing and swallowing. But Amaranth believes it’s better to kiss than to chew—funny for the mistress of the hungriest god. It’s all the same to Iriset: being claimed and losing.
When word comes by force-ribbon that the Ceres Remnants retinue has arrived at the quartz yards, Lyric méra Esmail His Glory takes his sister’s hand briefly, then places himself at the fore, stands calmly, chin up, hands relaxed at his sides.
