Bittor is untied and shoved off the stage into the crowd.
He stands and lifts one hand up to the stage and flicks his fingers in a sign of mercy—as if he grants it to the Vertex Seal in return.
Then he’s gone, somehow, vanished into the shocked, admiring miran. Iriset lets out a long, careful breath, feeling her entire body tremble with its release.
She wants to go home. Home to the old tower, her shielded study. Her spinners. Sit down. Give in to her weak knees and sink to the floor of the stage. Lean against Lyric’s leg like a child or a dog.
The execution will not wait for her recovery.
Lyric calls out, “Proceed. We have had our final mercy, and four is the holiest number.”
Behind her, Beremé hisses, and Garnet says, slightly appalled, “Lyric.”
Amaranth snorts softly, as if entirely unsurprised.
Iriset’s lips part in horror. Actual, cold horror. She and Bittor cost one of those other prisoners their own mercy.
No shade to brutality, she thinks, in layering dismay.
The shifting light flares as the sun fits almost entirely behind the moon at the eclipse crescendo. Rays of vibrant silver, too glaring to look at, are flung from the crown of the moon, and a sliver of the sun itself winks at Iriset’s watery eyes.
On the Mercy Pavilion, the priests move into place, and Iriset remembers to stare out at her father.
He looks back at her. Even at this distance, she can tell. His face is a cold moon, and she imagines the chipped gray of his eyes. She grips the rail with both hands and does not know how to breathe.
The priests speak, mouths moving, and though the elaborate design Bittor shattered has not been replaced, the Glorious Unraveling commences.
Isidor the Little Cat’s shoulders heave, the only sign of distress, and tears fill her vision with clear fire, but she doesn’t blink. He keeps his chin high and his eyes on the stage—on her, but surely nobody else suspects he stares at anything but the Vertex Seal, or maybe the griffons.
Tears spill down her cheeks with heavy, hot trails.Dad, she thinks, her entire body aches to say, to call to him. But she already fucked up today. He wouldn’t forgive her if she dies with him now. Even if it would feel right, righteous, rebellious, afterward she’d be dead.
Make me proud, Iriset.
Forces flare: cracking ecstatic, wavering flow, smoky rising, and sleek falling lines like rain. They aim at each prisoner, surrounding them in an orderly cocoon, pressing nearer, and the echo coins of the prisoners’ collars flash, the force-ropes direct all the power, and just as it happened with the disguised body of Singix Es Sun, the Little Cat of Moonshadow unravels: flesh, blood, bone, and spirit.
The collars fall to the pavilion, empty now.
It’s over.
Iriset cannot breathe: Her father is gone.
Not only dead, but unraveled to his very core.
Iriset begs leave to return to bed, being weary and emotionally compromised. It’s a dreadful thing to witness, she murmurs to her husband, and she’d like to be alone.
She makes it calmly to their rooms, then allows Shahd to unwind her hair and help her into a simpler day gown. The young attendant brings a lunch sampling shortly after that, and a small cup of harsh root liquor she recommends Iriset knock back medicinally.
So it is done.
Then Iriset crawls into bed. She clutches pillows against her breast and buries her face in the silk sheets, grimacing and baring her teeth, all to keep from crying again. Her tears dried on the rail of the royal stage, and she’ll give the empire no more today.
A lovely chime wakes her. It’s designed into the walls to allow someone in the greeting room to alert someone upstairs that a visitor has arrived.
Iriset wants only to remain in bed, but she’s Singix, and so forces herself up. Down the spiral corridor she goes, barefoot and quiet, to where Shahd waits patiently alongside Anis mé Ario.
Iriset’s heart pinches as she stops herself from sighing with relief just in time. Anis is not Singix’s friend. “Handmaiden,” she says.
Anis’s tall, lanky body looks lovely in the layered robe she wears and her face is dotted with white and black like freckles. Her jade cuff hangs heavily against her bony wrist. “Your Glory,” Anis says, holding out a cloisonné box that fits in the palm of her hand. “Her Glory sent this for you, a gift she thinks you should open when you are alone.”
