Pulling the threads across the opening, Eliri secures them in a complex spiral web. The threads melt together like water forming puddles in between the lines, and the window is a bubble again. “Touch here,” she says, indicating a flower-shaped carving that has appeared beside it. “And the window will open. This door”—Eliri indicates the balcony window—“functions the same way. The lock is here.”
Lyric steps closer and can see a tiny carving. Eliri brushes her finger against it, and the tall window drips away to reveal the sky beyond, and a narrow balcony with a glass rail. The warm breeze slips inside, and a knot between his shoulder blades loosens. He hadn’t realized how trapped he’d felt.
“Thanks given between friends.”
“One can say, ‘thanks given,’” Eliri says. She turns to him, her blunt haircut swishing against her neck. “Has Lyric’s wife woken?”
“No, but Iriset is nearer to waking than before.”
Eliri peers at Iriset, and her whole body seems to lean in that direction. Based on her expression, Lyric has no idea if she is merely curious, or if she views Iriset as a threat. “Would like to examine Iriset’s wounds when Iriset wakes.”
“Yes,” Lyric says. He knows without a doubt that Iriset will grant Eliri permission to examine her—and likely more. Iriset will thrivehere, he thinks, followed by a wave of melancholy he doesn’t care to examine. This is the Apostate Age, and all manner of wondrous and terrible things were designed in the name of art and progress and medicine. In the Moon-Eater’s name. Iriset’s apostatical god.
Lyric tries not to frown. “Will food be brought, and water, and everything needed until then?”
“Yes.” Eliri looks at him. Her eyes are stormy gray, almost flickering with light of their own, as if the flecks in her iris are crystal like her fingernails. For all Lyric knows, they might be.
“You know the name Aharté?” he asks quietly.
“The breath between words,” Eliri says in a nonanswer.
“But is Aharté beloved? Worshipped? Is there a labyrinth or chapel?”
Eliri shakes her head. “Perhaps somewhere outside the Moon-Eater’s fortress, but not within. It is a Sarian god, yes? Most Sarians live south of the crater, and in Ribbon fortress.”
Lyric nods, vaguely surprised there is a place in the crater named the same way as one of the small king precincts in his own time. It’s Ribbonwork under the Vertex Seal. But the lack of Aharté’s chapels is only what he expected, if not what he hoped. “Until Iriset wakes, this one will remain here.”
The Adept Hand approaches him, gray eyes wide. Beneath them her skin looks delicate, yellowed with exhaustion or grief, and Lyric feels the urge to ask, to offer breath work. If she could know Silence, she might be nearer to peace. But given what he knows of history, Lyric cannot imagine peace in the court of the Moon-Eater. He holds out his hand, palm up.
Eliri places hers against his. Her desert-peach skin is paler than Iriset’s, with a few veins visible along the back. Her hands are soft and smooth, unblemished and unwrinkled, even at the knuckles. But from the tips of her fingers extend those delicate clawlike nails.Lyric’s pulse pops to see the evidence of apostasy so close. He looks up at her face, unsure what kind of expression he wears. Eliri bares her teeth to reveal the same quartz-like mineral make, though the shape of her teeth is as human as any.
Her entire skeletal system, Lyric assumes, is made of a quartz or silicate like so many of the styli used by designers in his own palace. Eliri the Adept Hand was built for design. Created to create in turn.
Gently, she removes her hand from his and her lips fall into a neutral line again.
Eliri says, “The Moon-Eater called Lyric’s wife asunderer.” She says the mirané word.
Lyric frowns. “It is an unfamiliar term, but Iriset is a designer.”
The trace of a smile appears and vanishes on Eliri’s thin lips. “This Eliri looks forward to meeting Iriset the Sunderer.”
Lyric bows his head.
“Go where Lyric likes, or stay. Lyric is protected by the Moon-Eater’s decree of friendship, but rumors of the star that fell already run rampant in the fortress and in the city beyond, so one should be careful.” Eliri walks to the door, where Peace and Saff wait. “Touch this”—she indicates a nearly invisible round tile—“and the door will open. This”—she taps below the tile with her claw—“will summon an attendant.”
“Thanks given,” Lyric murmurs. When Iriset wakes she’ll tear this whole room apart to study the layers of force and design. He doesn’t want to see it.
The three women leave. Lyric stares after, recalling there are more genders in Old Sarenpet dialects, easy to miss because of the lack of personal pronouns. He will have to ask, instead of assuming. Nobody has given a name with any indicators like mé or méra.
Lyric takes a deep breath and sits beside Iriset to carefully comb her hair.
He lets his mind wander to what-ifs and maybes: They’re here, so how do they return home? Will Iriset have any answers? Does she know what she did? Can she undo it? Can he go home? He needs to: He must. And he needs to know more precisely when they are, before he can choose what to say or do. Suddenly, Lyric experiences an urge to blow something up, to change something, anything.
But now is not thetime. It’s a funny thought when he’s pretty sure he’s traveled through time. Not the time, what does that even mean? He wants to ask Garnet, who would be serious, and Amaranth, who would joke her way through defeating even the Moon-Eater himself, her own god. He wants to ask his mother, who is dead and a murderer, who ruined his life. He wants to ask Iriset.
But for now he can only ask himself.
“It’s dark as a dungeon in here,” whispers a voice in mirané that cuts through Lyric’s dulled senses. He whips around, stumbling off the bed.
