Chapter 15 #3
“What is called material—objects, bodies, air, water,” the numen murmurs from behind Iriset, “is made up of pieces so small as to be invisible individually. All things in existence share the same building blocks. Only designed into different patterns for different effects. Water to vapor to cloud to rain to ice, it is the same except the effect. It is what a sunderer can affect.”
“And numena transform between types of—of existence? Naturally?” Iriset glances between the two numena.
Lyric grinds his first knuckle between his eyebrows.
“We have no true form,” the Moon-Eater says in mirané.
“Every moment of every hour, I control my form.” His fish scales begin turning to mist, evaporating off his body and leaving mirané-brown skin behind.
Even his bulbous eyes follow suit, until it’s only the Moon-Eater as plain as any miran Lyric has ever seen.
He’s glad: This is better for begging mercy.
Lyric steps nearer. “Moon-Eater. Shade. Spare Setka tonight.”
The Moon-Eater purses his lips. “Why?”
“Because she’s alive, and deserves to live.”
“What does that have to do with anything? Many living things that deserve to live die.”
Lyric fights to remain still and calm. “She isn’t going to die, she’s going to be killed.”
The Moon-Eater looks skeptically at Iriset. Lyric resists following his gaze. Iriset says, “Shade is right.”
“Where you come from,” the Moon-Eater says delicately, a little amused smile on his face, “you said the kind of design that results in chimeras is forbidden. It makes you uncomfortable. Why ask for this?”
“We aren’t where I come from, and my—my discomfort should not be a death sentence. Neither should yours.”
“Mine?” The Moon-Eater sounds truly surprised.
Lyric presses, “Yes, I understand this festival, how it functions in your city, to curtail extravagance and remind your architects of consequences. I have made choices like this, to destroy a few in order to preserve the whole. I understand the discomfort of such choices and in this case want you to relieve yourself. Save her.”
The Moon-Eater stares at Lyric, expression falling away, until he is so still that something strange happens in Lyric’s perception and the Moon-Eater seems just as expansive as he was as the sea snake.
The Moon-Eater is the entire world for a blink.
It’s a disorienting illusion, and then the old fairy ruins it by grinning. “No. I don’t think I will.”
“What?” Lyric is genuinely shocked. He thought it would work.
“You asked for something simple, easy, nothing lasting. You should have asked for me to cancel the entire festival forever. Save them all!” The Moon-Eater smiles brightly, as if his answer makes any sense. “Not one silly little chimera.”
“But…” Lyric feels lightheaded. “I asked for what I thought I could get.”
Between blinks the Moon-Eater stands before Lyric.
He cups Lyric’s face, and Lyric is too stunned to stop it.
“That is what you fail to understand, Lyric Aharté,” the Moon-Eater croons softly.
He caresses Lyric’s cheeks. “I am a monster of extravagance, of ambition. Excess and splendor. I don’t do little things. It’s a waste of my time.”
Lyric swallows. He pulls away, and the Moon-Eater allows it. “Please,” he murmurs.
“No. Go make a mask, have something to drink, and later find a bonfire and throw in what you make. You can’t build a religion in my city if you don’t understand it.
” The Moon-Eater turns away, stretches his arms over his head, and switches back to Old Sarenpet.
“Eliri, help Lyric and Iriset find what is needed.”
Lyric very carefully breathes. He ignores what’s happening around him, placing one hand over his chest. He breathes in eight-counts, centers his dominant force, and braids the other forces of his inner design into balance.
He lifts his gaze to the strange glittering strings in the air and the lazy butterflies, staring beyond to the small slices of sky.
There is no moon overhead, of course. Only an empty blue.
“Lyric Aharté.”
A touch to his elbow brings Lyric back down, and though his calm is not peace but distant horror, he is able to meet the shifting green-blue eyes of Irsu River.
Beyond River, Iriset is talking with the Moon-Eater and Eliri and the numen, while a group of courtiers have crowded in, standing between Lyric and Iriset—though they don’t come too near Lyric.
Several shoot him considering looks, like the distance might not last long.
But there’s such a swirl of light and color, and the forces are so tangled, ecstatic sparking against his skin, falling dragging him down.
River takes Lyric’s elbow and gently pulls him out of the center.
He needs to find Setka, he needs—
River puts something in his hand. “Drink.”
“Wine?”
“Water.”
Lyric drinks it all. He lets the small king move him away from the noise, though the entire courtyard echoes with it.
“Thanks given,” he says. They stand beside one of the five silver towers, in the shade of a glass walkway several stories overhead.
The shade is fluid, almost like sunlight through water, and Lyric looks up: People walk across the transparent glass.
With that and the courtiers and attendants crowding the floor, it’s more people than he’s seen in the entire fortress before now.
He really needs to leave, to find Setka.
“What did Lyric ask the old fairy?” Irsu River asks lazily. An waves away an approaching woman holding a bundle of vines and flowers, shifting to block Lyric.
Swallowing, Lyric looks more closely at River.
Hadn’t an said things at dinner to suggest an would be sympathetic to Lyric’s undertaking?
River waits, long face open and changing eyes slowly rippling green to blue again.
An has thin red paint lengthening ans eyes into points, and elegant but loose robes in layers of pale red and pink like a peony.
Gentle, welcoming. “Lyric asked for the life of the chimera Setka to be spared.”
River makes a moue of displeasure.
Lyric keeps talking. “River’s cult is against death-design. This festival is full of death. If River is against such things, River should be against the festival, the sacrifice. Eliri the Adept Hand is—”
“This spouse knows what Eliri is,” River cuts in, very lightly.
“Why is Eliri spared but not Setka?” Lyric demands just as lightly. “Because Eliri serves the Moon-Eater and Setka is not so lofty?”
“This small king is not familiar with Setka the Chimera, and so could not say.”
Lyric looks away. He breathes deeply again and blinks at the dazzle of design all around. He has to try something else. “Irsu River lives outside the Moon-Eater’s fortress, yes?”
“The fortress in the Rivermouth district.” Hesitation threads through ans voice.
“And—”
“Stop,” River mutters. An turns and sends a searching look past Lyric toward the Moon-Eater.
As if Eliri can sense her spouse’s gaze, she looks up and lifts a hand, but does not smile.
Beside her, Iriset is too caught up in her discussion with the numen to notice anything.
Could she be arguing Lyric’s case? No. Why would she?
“Lyric Aharté,” River says with a flirtatious smile, leaning nearer.
Lyric begins to recoil, but a hand catches his elbow again, fingers like steel, belying the relaxed coquetry painting ans face.
“Go. Go join Iriset and enjoy the festivities. Make a chimera’s mask and wander the city for frivolities and—”
“But Setka,” Lyric insists.
River’s smile widens and an presses closer to whisper against Lyric’s jaw, “And after midnight, after the fire, come to the Rivermouth fortress and meet me.”
Lyric studies an as understanding dawns. He turns his face, brushing his cheek against River’s lips. “Irsu River will save Setka,” he murmurs.
Tapping a finger to Lyric’s bottom lip, River teases, “Keep the Moon-Eater’s attention here, and it will be done. The old fairy won’t notice, or care, on a day like today.”
“Why?” Lyric squeezes River’s wrist. It’s bony under the thin sleeve.
“Lyric is correct: River dislikes the Night of Chimeras. Now”—Irsu twists ans hand so that an tucks it against Lyric’s inner elbow to be escorted—“let this River introduce Lyric Aharté to some people.”
There are too many strange and discomfiting people to meet, but Lyric remembers a woman called Sipipia with ink-black birds tattooed against her nearly white face, and those birds soar across her forehead, vanish into her red hair, and reappear in a swoop beneath her left ear.
Lyric can barely pay attention to her offer to help him design a chimera mask like hers.
When he doesn’t answer, she laughs at him and tells River perhaps Lyric Aharté requires a more peaceful mask.
“But Sipipia is the best here, and so Sipipia is where one must begin,” River says with a dashing smile, withdrawing one of the small silk fans tucked through ans hair.
“Ah, such falsities when River’s Eliri is just over there.”
“Eliri does not specialize in masks,” River says, and taps the fan against Sipipia’s shoulder.
“What does Eliri specialize in?” Lyric manages to ask.
“Redesign aesthetic, both internal and external.”
Lyric looks over to where their spouses are talking on the daybed, and while he doesn’t understand the nuance of the description, he thinks he gets the gist.
They’re waylaid at Sipipia’s table by two more courtiers, both with loose-flowing black hair that reaches past their waists, matching bone structure and warm tan skin.
The twins are fem-forward, in cleavage-framing bodices, and each of them has real-looking flowers in a band from one temple across to the other.
“Hoarding the Moon-Eater’s friend now that Lyric Aharté attends the Pit, River? ”
“Hardly, Ara,” River says, fanning anself idly. “Ara and Inised are welcome. This is Lyric Aharté. Lyric, these are the Opal fortress Mirror, Ara and Inised. They’re grafters.”
“Like gardening?” Lyric asks, very relieved to participate. “Lyric enjoys gardening.” His eyes lift to their flower bands, and his mouth doesn’t close: The flowers are growing out of their skin. The sight rolls his stomach. Not gardening.
One of them is speaking, but Lyric watches as the pink bud—some kind of tea rose—slowly unfurls. There are nine flowers in this twin’s crown, each of them alive, each of them growing from her skin. “Does it hurt?” he interrupts quietly.
“Oh, of course not,” she says, almost scoldingly. “This is just a mask, to be discarded in the fire tonight, as it’s not quite perfect.”
“Would Lyric Aharté like one? It can be done right over here at our—”
But Lyric is already shaking his head. “Thanks given to the Mirror, but that is too elaborate for Lyric.”
“And speaking of perfection,” River says loftily, “this River sees Anis entering with one of Anis’s husbands.
” As River leads Lyric by the elbow again, fanning anself as if it’s merely something to do with ans free hand, an explains quietly, “Anis is perhaps the greatest artist in the crater city. Not a designer at all, if Lyric can believe such a thing exists. Anis makes art for display, painting and sculpture, and no few design schools would like to snatch Anis up to teach.”
River introduces Lyric to Anis and Keys of Chimera, both of them married to Amado the Reconciler.
Anis the artist is a Pir-pale woman with eyes as golden as the manor walls, her neck slightly too long, and her limbs as well, making her strange and elegant and beautiful in the way of weeping cherry trees or watercolor paintings—not in a human way.
The husband trailing just behind her is masculine-forward and looks remarkably like Garnet.
Such familiarity cuts like a sharp knife, and Lyric breathes carefully to maintain his composure.
He says to them, “Amado the Reconciler has been kind to this priest.”
Both spouses look pleased, but before further conversation, other courtiers crowd in, asking what Anis brought to play with, and Lyric tries not to be overwhelmed by the human design modifications.
Slit pupils and rainbow irises are the least of it, but nothing quite shocks like the Mirror’s flowers.
Lyric extracts himself bit by bit, until River notices and ensconces them at one of the tables surrounded by art supplies.
“Does everyone have—use?—human redesign?” Lyric asks quietly.
“Only those who can afford it,” River answers simply. “Or marry a genius. Or both.”
Lyric stares at the ink sticks, pencils, stiff-looking paper, leather plates, and bowls of beads and glue gems—and real gems—and has no idea what to do.
Suddenly Iriset kneels beside him and stares. Lyric looks back.
“You gave up easily,” she says in mirané.
Lyric’s stomach burns. Did he even eat anything this morning, or just pick at the food?
He looks back at the art, then out at the bright courtyard.
There’s so much activity, laughter, bartering.
“That’s what you think of me,” he murmurs.
He drags a piece of stiff paper toward himself and chooses a pencil randomly.
It’s bright blue. One thing Lyric does not know how to do is draw.
Iriset sighs deeply. She takes the paper and begins sketching.
Lyric watches her every move, as she draws potential masks and discards them, then bites her lip and looks up at him.
She holds her hand up to his face, as if measuring it, and goes back to drawing.
Landing on a skull design, she works quickly, pulling a stylus out of her sleeve and stitching force along the edge of the silk.
What she puts together fits coolly against his skin. Several people gasp, and there’s a spattering of applause. “How strange!” he hears, and “What creativity,” “This designer has never seen anything quite like it…”
“It looks like Lyric’s skull grows out of Lyric’s skin,” says Irsu River. “Very creepy.”
Lyric tilts his face up to look at Iriset, but she isn’t looking back.
A skull siren mask, he thinks. She made him into a skull siren, as if she knows he’s flailing and faltering with broken wings, and it’s her duty to snap his neck.