“The rest aren’t?”
“Some of the little sharks. But the rest are designed and redesigned from river and lake fish. The one with the pink whiskers came from catfish.”
The Moon-Eater’s words are soft, his breath warm on Iriset’s neck. She glances down at him to find he’s watching her, not the glowingfish. He squeezes her thighs with an amused little smile. Iriset looks away, up at the water again, at the fish. It’s intimate up here, quads of paces off the smooth black floor, and the dome of water curves comfortingly around them. Iriset feels like they’re deep underwater, just the two of them, and it’s more disorienting than flight, than time travel, for just a moment. Too easy to breathe beneath the weight of all that water.
“How is it done?” she asks, reaching up.
“You can’t see the lines of force?” Shade wonders, rippling the long snake muscles to raise them close enough for Iriset to touch.
“I don’t have that iris cap refined yet,” Iriset mutters, wishing she did. Her opal eye has improved much in the past quad, fully integrated with her mind as best she can tell. Sometimes when she wakes up or blinks, her focus struggles to realign, and her depth perception has been hilariously off to the detriment of her already-lacking grace. It dries out faster than her flesh eye, and she hasn’t gone to bed at night without a headache since it happened. But mostly, Iriset would never know this wasn’t the eye she was born with.
“Well, I’ll bring you back when you do,” Shade promises. “If you do it fast, because I don’t think this room will survive the outcome of this meeting for very long.”
Iriset grimaces. “There aren’t rooms like this in the future, that’s certain.”
“Samishi is the designer maintaining it. I’ve had this place for a century or so, but always assign one of the fortress designers to hold it.”
“I don’t think I’ve met them.” Iriset licks her lips, but this near the Moon-Eater, his complex force signature is overwhelming and she can’t sense any of the eddies no doubt coming off the false ocean. Finally, she skims her fingers against the surface: Water splashes down on them, and Iriset shrieks in surprise.
The rumble of the Moon-Eater’s laugh turns hers to laughter, too, and she’s squeezing her eyes closed because it’s salt water and it fucking stings. “Red moon,” she snaps, still laughing, patting her eyes with the sleeve of her jacket. They slowly sink down.
“What did you think would happen when you disrupted the field?” Shade chides.
Iriset licks her wet fingers. “Is this really ocean water?”
“Partly, originally,” Shade says, setting her on her feet. He turns himself into his preferred teenager form, almost shorter than her but for the high tail of fluffy black hair. “I had tanks of it brought here, and the sharks and eel, and a few hundreds of various fish for my designers to play with.”
“Just for extravagance? There’s a lot of ocean theme in your fortress.”
Shade’s moon-red eyes lower, and for a moment Iriset thinks he won’t answer. But then, “Never left me for the sea,” he says, and Iriset feels the anger tucked behind the words, little ecstatic pops and rising fire, but the Moon-Eater flashes a grin. “I wonder if it saw those islands your lover was from.”
Yes, there Shade is, Iriset thinks, needling and unwilling to be the only person in the room who’s hurt. She sighs. “I suppose we can ask the next time it shows up. But you might not like what it has to say about its travels.”
“Doubtless,” Shade murmurs, then takes her shoulders to turn her to face the round table where people have already gathered.
(Iriset doesnotwant to be here. She looked at the information gathered that was sent to her by Amado Chimera, and immediately knew what to do. But she doesn’t want to explain the way to fix this array is by setting Holy Design steeples into place. She doesn’t want to let anybody know that unraveling the Moon-Eater is part of the solution to ending the imminent danger the untethered array causes. Shecan’t imagine trying to explain the nature of the time-spiral mechanism, inasmuch as she thinks she understands it. She doesn’t want to say the words to set the end of the Apostate Age in motion—and make no mistake, that is exactly what’s happening here! Sure it will save lives in the crater, but! The consequences! Iriset can’t believe the Moon-Eater is making her.)
Helica Silkhair sits beside someone Iriset doesn’t know, another woman but this one dark as a Bow queen and absolutely exuding rising force like it’s not just dominant but singular. Beside them on one of the floor chairs is a masculine-forward person with what looks like metal growing out of his brow ridge and both cheekbones. He’s in dark blue robes with golden constellation embroidery on the shoulders, and an array is tattooed to his bare brown scalp that from this angle is obviously a subtle resonance cap. Iriset leaps to the conclusion that he can attach some kind of visual telescopic apparatus to his face, and she guesses, “The astronomer?”
The man lifts his nonexistent eyebrows and says, “Cardinal of the College of Lightning Revelation,” and beside him Helica Silkhair says to Iriset, “Yes, astronomer.”
Iriset introduces herself, wishing they didn’t need to conduct this whole meeting in Old Sarenpet. Eliri went over a vocabulary list of design terms with her when they started discussing the untethered array, and Iriset knows she can keep up now, but it’s annoying to constantly mentally translate back and forth.
Before she can get the name of the Bow queen, the main doors swing open and Amado Chimera strides in, tricolored hair vivid against a stark-white outfit with internal structure to sharpen his shoulders and bell the skirt around his ankles. With him are two people Iriset doesn’t know, introduced as the Chimera city planner and the small king of Sharp-Shin fortress. The small king sits beside the Bow designer who immediately beings speaking to herin an undertone. They’re still expecting Eliri and Irsu River, an artist for some reason, two more small kings, and at least one more commander-philosopher.
Iriset lounges beside the Moon-Eater as attendants come in with pitchers of cold water and tea and wine, interested in the way most people seem so wary of him, despite his youthful appearance. She wonders if he does it on purpose, to be disconcerting.
River’s drawled greeting is easy enough to ignore, but atLyric’s voice, Iriset jerks hard and spills her wine.
The Moon-Eater laughs at her.
Lyric stands almost directly across the table, nodding to the Sharp-Shin small king, and doesn’t even look her way.
Iriset’s heart thuds hard, and her left eye socket seems to burn. He’s right there and she was not expecting it. She’s not ready!
Lyric’s hair is shorn so close to his head she can see the rich mirané brown under the short black sheen. Scars sprinkle around his left eye, where there used to be freckles and maybe still are. The scars scatter back into his hair, little shiny stars disappearing into the black. With a shaved head his features seem bolder, more beautiful, and are thoseearrings? Someone is giving her husband jewelry: little silver-and-black studs she wants to suck on right now.
Then his head turns and Lyric looks at her with such a changed gaze.
