“Beremé,” Garnet says.
Striding urgently toward them is the sharp, thin Beremé mé Adora, followed by a handful of other mirané secretaries, with General Bey méra Matsimet on her heels.
“Your Glory,” Beremé says, hardly brushing her fingers to her eyelids and ignoring both Singix and Iriset entirely. “There’s been an incident with the cultists. Ongoing, the army-investigators are there, and Bey’s precinct forces, but we need emergency restrictions.”
Lyric says, “Convene the privilege council, I’ll be there. General, do what you must to stop any immediate violence. You have my authority.” The Vertex Seal turns to Singix and continues in Ceres. “My pardon, Princess.”
Singix lowers herself into a Ceres curtsy, hands folded in respect. She remains bent as Lyric leaves with Beremé; Garnet shoots Iriset a meaningful look, and she realizes he trusts her to manage the princess.
It feels strange to be trusted even for an instant, for something so small.
Skull sirens nest at the pinnacle of the Bright Star tower.
Up the round sides of the tower, windcatchers gape wide to gather all the breezes, channeling the air down into the palace corridors. But the platform at the top is a lovely lookout, covered in a honeycomb dome painted cloud-blue and the rail is a star-lattice carved from thin white marble. In the center flows a circular pool and its lip forms a bench atop which plush blue pillows wait. The top of the dome is cut out with an eight-point star as wide as Iriset’s head, and through it the silver-pink moon overhead can be seen.
The skull sirens built their silk-scrap-and-rose-petal nests into the bases of three arches on the east side. The delicate, strange birds sing to one another from bony beaks, and the glint of their hooded eyes can hardly be seen. Singix Es Sun steps carefully onto the lip of the pool to study them, her lovely face pulled with interest and vague distaste.
“What tiny nightmare creatures,” Singix murmurs.
Surprised, Iriset says, “I find them lovely.”
“Are they not… apostatical?”
“Yes, but their design must have pleased Aharté, or the Holy Syr would have destroyed them.”
“Ah, yes. Therefore some apostatical designs can be… forgiven?”
Iriset leans against the rail, facing Singix, her back to the whole of the palace complex. “I don’t know that the designer of the skull sirens pleased Aharté, only the design itself.”
“Apostasy itself is innocent, but the apostatical are guilty of betraying your god.”
Impressed by the princess’s sharp wit and vocabulary, Iriset answers, “If a design is successful, I suppose it earns its innocence.”
“What makes design successful?”
“Stability and balance. And self-sustaining design is beautiful in Aharté’s Silence, because Silence is tensile strength, perpetual motion, not mere stillness. Um. The pause between breaths. And so if a design falters it will do so in that moment, by not breathing again.” Iriset is unsure she conveys her meaning properly. But it’s nice to try with Singix, who has no stake in apostasy or Silk or the Little Cat’s daughter. “The skull sirens, the sheer moths, the rep-cats, none of them require an architect to survive, to thrive. A successful design is balanced, it does not take force from others without giving back in turn. That is the ultimate goal of design. To create something that thrums with balance, the… tension of perfection.”
“You would strive toward apostasy, then, if only to prove that it is not so by making it perfectly.” Singix’s soft voice doesn’t suggest she seeks to entrap Iriset, but only tease with smart curiosity.
Iriset lowers her gaze modestly. Here she cannot be Silk, after all. “I only am still learning to be a designer, Princess. But I believe because we have the power to affect the design that we should. We must. Aharté wants us to, or would have stripped the ability from us.”
Singix nods. “If you are successful with a design, Aharté approves of it, or you could not do it.”
“Oh, I am not a philosopher. You should ask your husband-to-be, for by all accounts, he is.”
“My brother,” declares Amaranth as she emerges from the mouth of stairs cut into the tiled floor, “would have rather been born second to my first, and have been a priest.”
Behind her, Sidoné says, “And you, then, would be the Vertex Seal.”
“And engaged to beautiful Singix.” Her Glory smiles flirtatiously at the princess.
Singix’s lashes flutter, but she says calmly, “But Aharté made you both as you are, and thus we must all be satisfied.”
Amaranth laughs. “I always seek new ways of satisfying myself, for that is how I best serve my Moon-Eater. Iriset there does not settle, either, does she?”
Iriset touches her fingers to her eyelids in acknowledgment, then turns to lean over the rail. She sticks one hand out; the wind strings through her fingers. She revels in the feel of her cloth mask rippling on her cheeks and nose, at the wind strong enough she could almost—almost—grasp it. They fly in the castles of the Cloud Kings, but such architecture doesn’t function within the bounds of the empire. The answer to flight within the empire is in the ribbons, in threads of spider silk, in rising and ecstatic force, Iriset is certain. She needs more time.
No, she doesn’t settle.
