10 Uniquely positioned
Uniquely positioned
Lyric is quiet, at first, when Eliri the Adept Hand asks about the Holy Design. It is so many things to him. His life has been dictated by it, for it, and as he thinks about where to begin explaining, Lyric is overwhelmed suddenly with missing it.
There’s a tightness in his throat. He doesn’t know what to say, it’s true, but on top of that, he can’t.
“I’ll explain it,” Iriset mutters in mirané, nudging him with the butt of her dinner knife.
That’s enough to make him open his mouth.
His voice is too quiet, lacking authority.
“The Holy Design is two things, really. It is a way to… organize the forces, to balance them within architectural design. And it is a greater plan, a design of Aharté’s, The One Who Loves Silence.
What Aharté wills to become of the world, of Aharté’s people. ”
“Religious,” River says.
“More of a cult,” the Moon-Eater suggests, waggling his eyebrows. “Aharté is Sarian, isn’t she?”
“Historically,” Lyric agrees. “Aharté is the only god of—of where we come from.”
“That’s not true,” Iriset says, almost sneering.
“The most important, then.” Lyric looks at her.
Iriset glares right into his eyes. “Unfortunately.”
Irsu River laughs once, lounging against the low table, nearly in Eliri’s lap.
The feathers in the small king’s thick brown hair could be woven in, just decoration, but Lyric knows better.
He’d rather focus on River and Eliri than Iriset right now, despite the obvious evidence of human architecture in every blink of River’s eyes and the glint of Eliri’s claws.
“And it is Aharté’s will that human design be forbidden?” Eliri asks gently. “Why?”
“Human design causes more harm than good outside of Aharté’s own creation,” Lyric answers, just as gently.
Though Eliri the Chimera seems thoughtful, her large gray eyes unemotional, Iriset beside him scoffs. “That is such a patronizing reason.” She says the last in mirané, as if she doesn’t know how to say it in Old Sarenpet.
“Iriset, this isn’t—” Lyric switches to mirané. “I’m not saying nothing good has ever been done with human architecture, just that—”
“You don’t trust people at all not to destroy each other and themselves, I know.”
“I’m sorry recent events have not changed my mind about trust,” he says, leaning toward her because he wants it to hurt.
Iriset narrows her eyes dangerously, but Eliri speaks, drawing their attention back to her.
“This chimera agrees that it does more harm than good. Restrictions are necessary to ensure it does any good at all. This one is uniquely positioned to say so,” she adds quietly, clicking her crystal claws gently.
As if to say, this is my existence that does more harm.
Lyric stares at her, wondering if the chimera means it.
Iriset says, “How can it do more harm than good if it saves lives?”
“At the cost of other lives?” Lyric answers before Eliri can, thinking of how Iriset has chastised him for ruling sometimes for the good of the many over the few.
Eliri the Adept Hand says, “Before this chimera was successfully born, countless attempts failed, and the fetal mesh technology developed through revolting experimentation. In a balanced world, most certainly Eliri’s life and actions cannot outweigh the lost potential, the harm done before. Better to—”
“Eliri,” Irsu River gently but firmly interrupts. “This world, this city, is better with Eliri in it.” An takes Eliri’s hand and kisses her knuckles, kisses the tips of her claws.
The chimera looks away in clear disagreement. “But no more are necessary.”
“Eliri is amazing,” Iriset suddenly gushes. “And very necessary!”
Irsu River cuts a look at Iriset as if an did not expect such an ally in her.
Lyric considers uncomfortably that Irsu River is another name he knows from history, and an does not remain a small king after the creation of the mirané people and the setting of Holy Design.
Lyric does not know why, if River dies or sides with the Moon-Eater or leaves: It is only that ans name is listed as the Rivermouth small king before, and removed after.
It’s nauseating to contemplate, not just the fact of it but Lyric’s responsibility to this moment, to the future, to the person alive beside him right now.
“Yes,” agrees the Moon-Eater. “Eliri is amazing. And River’s cult proposes restrictions on human design all the time, so we are all in agreement, and Iriset Sunderer is being na?ve.”
Iriset squawks in outrage, turning to the Moon-Eater.
But the numen knocks its glass of tea over onto the Moon-Eater’s plate. “This is boring. Go with me.”
The Moon-Eater smiles too-sugary at it. “Stay with me.”
The numen launches to its feet, snapping teeth with a crack like thunder, and then it vanishes.
“What pissed it off like that?” Iriset wonders.
The Moon-Eater turns that sweet smile on her, then only one of his eyes twitches to the side to stare at Lyric as he says, “Never never stays in one place, unless it is in chains.”
Lyric’s stomach rolls from both the disorienting effect of this eye trick and the reminder that the red god, the Moon-Eater, knows about the future.
He won’t be able to eat more tonight. He can’t say anything past the sharp rock in his throat, his feelings balled up into a cork against communication.
And so Lyric stands rather too abruptly.
“Good night,” he manages, unable to explain himself around the tightness clenching his chest. He needs Garnet here to explain for him, to glare everyone away, or Amaranth to make up a very politic, believable lie that will cause him trouble later.
His mother to—to just forgive him, support him, even if she never trusted him.
He’s never going to see any of them again.
They won’t be alive for hundreds of years, and if he doesn’t do everything right, they never will be.
The fleeting thought that he won’t exist either fills him with such relief, Lyric looks at Iriset in something that might be panic and she stands, too, taking his hand.
“It has been exhausting,” she says to him, but also to the others at the table.
Her brow pinches with worry. “Moon-Eater, can this conversation continue tomorrow?” She sounds like Singix.
A soothing, careful wife, calmly excusing them so that she can get him into bed and her mouth all over him. Lyric feels so empty.
“Very well,” the Moon-Eater says slyly. He lifts a hand, and a small rainbow bee peels away from his first knuckle. “Follow this back to the suite. Eliri, River, this ancient beast is going after Never after all. Feel free to enjoy the feast.”
“This one will come tomorrow, Iriset Sunderer,” Eliri says. “To see the rest of the design tower. And perhaps learn more about balanced design?”
Iriset’s fingers tighten eagerly around Lyric’s, and she says, “Iriset can’t wait.”
Lyric takes all the effort he has in him to find Irsu River’s kaleidoscopic eyes, and he bows very slightly. River nods back, with an indifferent little smile.
Then Lyric is pulling Iriset after him, eyes on the little bobbing bee.
Peace slumps against the arch of their door, but she startles upright at their arrival, then slides a hand up the arch to light up the ceiling of the bedchamber.
Iriset stops there, poking at the smooth wall.
Quietly she asks Peace about the design functionality, and Lyric passes through into the center of the room.
He glances between the bed and the balcony, the dark sky beckoning him, the question of where the moon is now.
Probably it set. It’s gone. On the other side of the world, arcing back around to rise in the morning, if the pattern of the last two days continues.
Lyric puts a hand over his sternum, where it hurts. It’s not the marriage knot, it just hurts to breathe. He has no power, he can do nothing. Not even breathe.
A bath, he tries to say, but it’s only his lips moving.
He goes to the bathing room and strips out of his clothes, letting them fall.
He turns on the water and all four spigots burst to life.
Lyric barely rinses himself off at the shower station before he climbs into the empty shell and closes his eyes as the bath fills around him.
“Aharté,” he mouths, and again. He needs Silence, a labyrinth, he needs to find himself—he was raised to be the Vertex Seal, to lose himself in the role.
He doesn’t know how else to be. And it’s all gone.
It doesn’t exist and maybe never will. (Maybe that would be better, he thinks, like Eliri thinks, my existence does more harm.)
He breathes. No eight-counts, just carefully in, in, in, out, out, out.
By the time Iriset enters on bare feet, he doesn’t feel better, but less like he’s in danger of clawing his throat open.
The water laps his collarbone. Iriset turns off the water, and he can hear her gathering things.
A cold toe nudges his shoulder, and he leans away from the rim, tilting his head questioningly.
But Iriset sits behind him, bare legs to either side of his shoulders.
She pulls him back and dips a hand into the water.
What little remains in her cupped hand she drizzles onto his hair again and again.
It slowly wets, clinging to his neck. He lowers his chin, eyes closed, uncaring if water slips forward into them.
Iriset drops something cool and soft against his crown and starts scratching at his scalp, lathering the thin soap. Lyric smells sugar sage.
“They told me you did this when I was asleep,” Iriset says quietly. “Wouldn’t let them help. Bathed me, fed me, never left.”
Lyric says nothing. He’s trying to let the hot water and gentle lapping and her fingers and the muscles of her inner thighs against his shoulders ground him back in his body so that he can keep it together.
“Thank you,” Iriset says. “You could have gone anywhere. Walked away.”
“Marriage knot,” he whispers.