A slender hand emerges from the shadows, thick green scales covering a skinny, twiggy arm. The chimera holds a peach, broken open where the claws punctured the fuzzy skin of the fruit. “Aharté?”
Heart pounding, Lyric crouches. “Lyric Aharté.”
The scaled hand drops the sticky peach into his palm. He brings the peach to his mouth. It smells delicious, tart instead of richly sweet as he’s used to.
“Don’t make a mess, little trash chimera-girl,” Bowna says.
Setka slinks back against the tree, hiding from the hostility in Bowna’s tone, so Lyric ignores the gardener, ignores his own disquiet, training his attention on the little creature. “Thanks given for the peach. It looks tasty. Does Setka have a peach to eat?”
The chimera nods, he thinks, her slit-pupiled eyes gleaming in the shadows.
“Join Lyric to eat?” he offers, reeling slightly at his own boldness.
“Bah,” Bowna says. “Gardeners have to work, if priests do not.” They listen to Bowna crunch along the path until the only sound is breezy leaves and a humming like crickets.
Lyric makes an effort to smile. “Will Setka come out?”
The chimera hesitates.
“This priest would like to thank Setka for aid rendered,” he says gently. “Lyric and Iriset arrived in danger, and Setka helped. Lyric is grateful.”
Setka makes a strange clicking-hissing noise that sounds like demurring.
So Lyric says, “It is wrong for Bowna to call Setka trash. Setka is a living creature, and all life is beloved by Aharté.” Itisn’ta lie. Despite the apostasy that created Setka, she lives, and so her design must be acceptable to Silence, even before Holy Design exists in the crater city. (Interesting, isn’t it, how Lyric shifts his thinking to accommodate what he wants to be true. Convincing himself is the first step in convincing the world.) “Lyric has seen wonders in this garden, and would love to see one more, if Setka is willing.”
“Frightening,” Setka whispers.
“This priest has met Setka under the full sun and will not flinch.”
Slowly Setka emerges from the shadow.
She is as he recalls: head-to-toe greenish scales, but for a few bruised yellow patches of skin. Long spines curling over her skull instead of hair, sharp scaled features, huge reptilian eyes, no ears, barely existing lips, her little secondary arms fused by an extra bone from the elbow to ribs. She’s still wearing a little capelet over her shoulders and a scrap of a pleated skirt at her hips. Her feet are powerful looking, most of her weight to the fore, with dull black claws dug into the leaf litter.
Instead of staring, Lyric takes a bite of his peach, giving himself time. He keeps crouched, and she shuffles to kneel beside him. When she bites, she shows triangular alliraptor teeth layered over one another in a way that looks painful. Her hands are very human but for the scales and claws. She holds her secondary arms tight against her body, as if to make them less noticeable. Lyric cannot imagine a purpose in creating something like this.
A thump alerts him to her tail. It is as long as she is tall, thick and scaled and crooked near the tip in a way that seems wrong even on a body so very wrong to begin with. It was broken and left unhealed, or she was born with it improperly formed. Lyric has no idea, and it all fills him with a simmering anger.
Worst of all, she seemsyoung.
They eat their peaches in silence. Setka devours hers in two bites, pit and all. When Lyric has stripped the flesh from his, he tentatively offers the pit. Setka giggles, covering her mouth.
Lyric takes that as a win. He sets the pit against the root of the nearest tree like an offering. “How old is Setka?”
“Twelve or thirteen, maybe.”
Nodding very carefully, Lyric asks, “And how long has Setka been in the Moon-Eater’s garden?”
The chimera thumps her tail. It’s too large for her scrawny frame. “A few months. The Moon-Eater said Setka is safe here until the Night of Chimeras, which is very generous. Most people don’t want a chimera in the gardens. But the Moon-Eater is kind to things like Setka.”
“People,” Lyric corrects, almost against his will.
Setka bares all her teeth in an apologetic grimace. She scrubs her cheeks, where the scales look too dry. Lyric wishes he had oil or lotion for her. “Where is Setka’s family?”
“The others in the nest did not survive. Only this chimera was strong enough for hunting and experimentation.”
“Experimentation,” he says flatly.
“It is the purpose of chimeras.” She says it looking away from Lyric—something, shame perhaps, belying the words.
