When the time finally comes for Iriset to visit Nielle, Huya gives her a half-circle mask of sheer blue silk and silver wire, and too many Seal guards escort them to the royal skiff. The skiff is designed like most, an oblong cup perched on four skids perfectly balanced between the forces, with specialized hooks in front to latch on to the force-ribbons threaded throughout the city streets and smoothly tug the skiff along. Though many skiffs have bubble roofs of glass or flow-thinned crystal panes, this has tiny steeples to anchor a force-shield that is perfectly see-through but impervious to weather and most projectiles. Iriset leans forward to study the prime steeple in the narrow nose as best she can with only her eyes: It’s flow force, to be expected, while the three balancing steeples in the back have rising and falling to either side and ecstatic in the rear for those occasionally necessary bursts of speed or sudden brakes. The driver hovers in a smaller cup attached to the skiff’s nose from which they can hold and tug the force-reigns to steer and maneuver.
Iriset sits carefully on one of the cushioned benches with Shahd and Huya in front, and a Seal guard beside. The restof the guard company slide alongside the skiff, attached to its dynamics by individual skaters. Iriset wants one. She folds her hands in her lap to keep from touching anything as the skiff shudders and pulls forward.
Life as her father’s daughter had seen Iriset sheltered in many ways, despite the murder and apostasy, or because of it, and she’s experienced only a fraction of what Moonshadow City has to offer. A few times she ventured out of Saltbath wedged between her protective grandparents, who took her to the Edge Market to shop for exotic seeds in the hot greenhouses. Once Bittor snuck her into the rafters of the layered dome of the Theater of Silent Delights to listen to a choir from Eastrass City perform at a charity event. Though she didn’t thieve herself, sometimes she joined Dalal or Paser on jobs when they had to break into especially well-guarded buildings and the Little Cat’s designers needed Silk’s skills to pry apart their security nets herself. In the early morning she’d wait alone for them to complete the job in one of the all-night cafés perched along the force-lines of the Cirrus Suspension Bridge, listening to the cries of skull sirens and watching the city wake up under the moon.
On the way to Nielle’s home in the Ecstatic Steeple Shadow precinct, the ribbon skiff passes through the Silent precinct with its labyrinthine streets and spiraling tower gardens, then the Lodestone precinct, which is much more perpendicular but terraced with rosette houses and shops, and Iriset has plenty to stare at, including the distant chain of island apartments hovering high off the ground in the Falling Steeple Shadow precinct. She knows they work thanks to ingenious loops of falling force, but exclaims anyway.
Despite the heat, the layered city streets are alive with pedestrians and fellow skiffs, cafés with their doors thrown open andforce-fans working hard. Several times people pause to stare and Iriset waves back shyly, though by the time anyone realizes who she must be and begins to point, the skiff has already moved on.
The Ecstatic Steeple itself casts a massive shadow most times of the day, curving across its precinct with the passing of the sun. Iriset appreciates the temporary shade as they drive beneath it, resenting that they can’t drop the bubble shield so that she can feel the strength of her dominant force respond to the power crackling around the steeple.
They arrive just on time at the fourth small king’s manor, set off from the wide avenue behind a garden of granite boulders in red-pink-white, and miniature juniper trees shaped into perfect spheres. The home is built like two concentric star succulents, each with four elegant towers offset from one another. Very conservative. Iriset suspects that Nielle hates it.
Before exiting the skiff, Iriset turns to Shahd. “We’ll be here for two hours. Is that enough time to see your mother?”
“Of course, Your Glory,” Shahd says, fingers to her eyes. The attendant climbs out and hurries off, messages for undermarket drops hidden in her sleeves.
The moment Iriset alights, Nielle is there with all her enthusiasm and a ruffled pink split-skirt dress, bare arms gleaming mirané brown, and an elaborate mask of thin orange leather strips charged into place. It seems combed into her heavy updo of curls, and it cups over her upper face without touching the skin. Perfect for a hot summer day to let a breeze in between mask and face. “Your Glory!” she calls. “Welcome to Ecstatic Steeple Shadow! Come in, come in.”
Before Iriset can do more than nod, Nielle offers her arm and whisks Iriset to an inner courtyard. This one is lush with tropical plants kept alive all year by carefully tended force-shieldsto trap moisture, heat, and light. A picnic of chilled fruit and dry pear cider is already spread out, and Nielle doesn’t pause her chatter even to share the snacks. Iriset lets herself be overwhelmed, blissfully sweating among trumpet flowers the size of her head and striped pink-and-green boe leaves.
Both have long removed their masks and Iriset lifts Nielle’s from the picnic blanket. She inspects it and tentatively asks, “Where did you get this? It seems suited to the weather.”
“Oh, well…” Nielle grins, and Iriset is struck, just as she was when first meeting the handmaiden, that enthusiasm is all Nielle ever needs to make her unbalanced face appealing. “I made it,” she confesses.
Iriset parts her lips and reverently sets the mask back down. “Amazing. How?”
“Let me show you my workshop.” Nielle leaps up from her cushion and hauls Iriset after her with a giggle. The workshop is much larger than the half room Nielle used back in Amaranth’s petal, and absolutely dripping with supplies. Iriset feels ecstatic in her pulse, and rising lifts her chin as she turns around, inspecting it all with excitement.
Nielle sits her down and shows her the basics, asking all sorts of questions about whether Singix can draw or is any good with colors. Then she goes on a tangent about how different cultures actually think different colors go well together, and how she thinks that Ceres prefers bold colors all mingling together because of their tropics, but the mirané people are more strict and like to make perfect matches of only two (or four) colors, and does Singix think that’s because of Silence and the rules of design, or were the miran born that way and created their faith and art to match a natural visual preference?
“Is it visual preference, or emotional?” Iriset wonders, and Niellehugs her, declaring that she knew they’d get along. Then they get down to business. First on the agenda is the mask Iriset brought.
Nielle breaks down its elements and complains at its lack of decoration or statement, though backtracks that naturally a person as breathtakingly gorgeous as Singix needn’t make a statement after all. Unless she wants to.
Iriset admits she likes the plain blue mask, and that the frame and cloth combination remind her of the silk squares her people use for fans and shades and hair decorations.
“If you like it, then perhaps just some trim?”
They work for an hour in pleasant companionship, Iriset asking all sorts of questions about the tools and where Nielle acquires them, and Nielle blithely answering. Iriset mentions that this might be a fine hobby for a foreign princess to take up and in return is gifted with enough tools to nearly complete a starter set. Nielle bumps their shoulders together and says, “And I’m making this one just for you.”
Glancing at the mask, Iriset lifts her brows in a question.
“You’ll see,” Nielle teased.
When it is time for Iriset to depart and Huya comes to fetch her, Nielle hands Iriset a small box of beginner mask-making supplies, then with a flourish presents the real gift. Nielle offers the full-face mask, looking boldly into Singix’s eyes. Iriset glances at the creation.
The mask is deep green ceramic, edged at the brow in white fur. Ugly black thread is sewn across the eyeholes like slicing scars, with red glass beads rather like blood splattered around. It’s appalling, nothing that suits the perfect loveliness of Singix of the Beautiful Twilight. Iriset loves it.
She says so, then promises to wear it the next time there’s a gathering of small kings at the palace.
“It’s Leq’ina,” Nielle says, frowning.
Iriset knows the name of the Ceres demon of obedience—each of their virtues is ruled by a god and a demon—and she raises her chin. “I know,” she says. “Leq’ina icons often depict him with a full mane of white hair. I will acquire a silver veil and bead it with glass and pearls to accentuate the likeness.”
Nielle seems mollified. Good, because that’s everything Iriset knows about the demon of obedience.
Shahd waits by the skiff already, and when she helps Iriset climb up, she squeezes her hand twice to let her know the notes were delivered. Iriset hopes Bittor can do something to get her grandparents to safety, and that he can coordinate with her on the timing of her new array.
