Chapter 20
Is this the reason
Iriset wakes up to the steady, soothing noise of work and urgent conversation around her.
Ugh, her face hurts, and her whole body feels like it was squeezed by a huge hand and it’s all a mushy bruise. Her face is hot. Especially on the left side. Iriset groans, lifting a hand.
“No, not yet, don’t touch,” comes the soft voice of Eliri the Adept Hand. “The wound is packed and stable, but can’t poke at it. How does Iriset feel?”
“Punched. Squeezed.” Iriset opens her right eye.
The lid peels away slowly. Sunlight, blue sky, drifting columns of smoke, and a force-web built on an octagonal, some kind of barrier.
It’s like a four-point building schematic.
She tilts her head to where a cluster of people move with intention, focused on something Iriset can’t see with this one exhausted eye. “Where?”
“Rivermouth fortress,” Eliri says, leaning into Iriset’s vision. “Temporary infirmary pagoda.”
Iriset gasps and sits, tries to swing her legs off the narrow bed.
“Iriset,” Eliri chides, but grips her elbow to help her sit.
“Lyric, is he alive? Is he—” She sways in place, blood rushing out of her skull.
It makes her empty socket throb. Eliri shifts so Iriset has a view of the people in the center of the force-pagoda, moving around a tall cot.
There’s a secondary shine of force-threads, a net arched over the cot, one of the people manipulating it with dual styli, and a woman at the head of the cot instructing the other.
There’s mirané-brown skin, Lyric, laid out.
Iriset starts getting to her feet on her own. She ignores the bruised feeling under all her skin. “Lyric,” she says again.
Just then the Moon-Eater slips through lines of force and grasps Iriset’s elbow as she manages to stand. “Iriset,” he says.
“Lyric,” she insists, nodding her chin toward him.
“Iriset’s husband is surviving.”
“Good.”
The fifth person in the room is a stranger, a man with broad shoulders and a craggy but well-made face, wrinkled at the corners of his hazel eyes. He gives Iriset a long look, then makes a space for her. The Moon-Eater holds her elbow as she steps nearer to observe.
Irsu River is the final person in the room.
An stands at the foot of the medical bed, holding a bowl of water and a tray of different styli.
Ans gaze is on the surgeon’s assistant as she continues tightening the force-net at the surgeon’s instruction, while the surgeon pricks tiny force-knots into Lyric’s face and brow and left temple.
Abrasions drag away from his eye, distorting the plane of his cheek.
Part of his left ear is gone, the high shell of it chipped like a broken teacup.
The wounds spread up into his thick black hair, combed back and in places shaved away.
There’s a scatter of ruby-red cuts arcing over his right eye, down toward his right ear, like the red freckles the people of the Bow paint on for good luck.
Iriset’s gaze slowly drags back to the left side.
His freckles. Are gone. She’s breathing too hard, knees trying to weaken.
They’re only freckles. He’s surviving, the Moon-Eater said so.
“Will he see?” She doesn’t remember to say his name instead of the mirané pronoun, but the surgeon answers anyway. Can probably guess.
“Perhaps.” She doesn’t glance up from her delicate work. “Bones are done, brain untouched, thank the red god. Right now need to establish the proper connections between the eye and mind, the eye and muscles. Not a bad foundation.”
Iriset leans back against the Moon-Eater so she doesn’t sink to the floor.
While the surgeon finishes her work, Iriset stares with her one eye. Nobody tries to make her stop, or sit her down, but the Moon-Eater remains propping her up. He slides fingers through her hair and kisses the air over Iriset’s wounded cheek.
“Where is the numen?” Iriset asks softly.
“Flitting about.”
That doesn’t seem right, but the numen has always been moody. It will be upset she saved Lyric.
It isn’t long before the shimmering net the assistant works is as tight and tiny as an eyepatch.
She holds it over Lyric’s face with all ten of her fingers and thumbs crooked into a pattern while the surgeon knits it in place.
Then she taps something near the edge and Iriset can see the wave of ecstatic and falling that weave together to affix the net to him.
The surgeon takes a deep breath and steps back. Irsu River brings the bowl around and she drops her stylus into the shallow water. “This one will sleep awhile yet, some days most likely. If there are dreams enough to rattle anything, use a calming oil on the lips, they will settle.”
“Pain?” Iriset manages to ask.
“The stabilization mesh includes numbing counterflow,” she answers as if that explains everything. “Now guide this doctor back to the other patients.”
The broad-shouldered man Iriset doesn’t know nods. “This way, honorie,” he says, and takes her out.
Iriset stares at Lyric. Little tremors of pain dance down her spine from the small of her back to her tailbone, shivering through all the organs in the bowl of her hips. She wants to curl up next to him. Press the bad sides of their faces together.
Except he isn’t going to forgive her. He might never want to see her again. See her at all because to see her will be to accept the apostatical gift she’s given him. This is definitely the worst thing she’s ever done. And she’ll never regret it.
“Eliri needs rest,” Irsu River says. “So does Iriset Sunderer. Rest, and food,” an continues. “This cleaning up can be handled by Roc and Rivermouth.”
“Is Lyric Aharté alive?”
The tiny voice comes from the door, and Iriset looks away from Lyric slowly.
By the time she manages, the Moon-Eater has leapt across the floor and turned itself into a mirror image of the ugly little alliraptor chimera peeking around the door.
Except instead of green scales the Moon-Eater’s are blood-red and bruise-purple.
“What is this, Setka?” he hisses through a crowded mouth of alliraptor teeth.
“Is this the reason Lyric Aharté wanted to come here, to Rivermouth? The reason Lyric Aharté was in the path of the mine? Wasn’t this chimera bonfire-bound? ”
Setka tries to scramble away, but the Moon-Eater has her arm and hauls her back into the room. She makes little squeaking cries as his claws dig through her scales and dark blood drips.
“Moon-Eater!” Irsu River darts to them, putting ans body between the old fairy and the young chimera. “The Night of Chimeras is over. Setka is claimed by Rivermouth fortress.”
“Oh, Irsu, how petty,” the Moon-Eater says, squeezing Setka’s wrist.
“Stop,” Iriset tries to say loudly, but her voice is raw.
Eliri the Adept Hand manages, if not loudly then firmly, “Quiet and calm, please.”
The Moon-Eater looks first at Eliri, then twists his head unnaturally around to give Iriset the same look. He drops Setka and returns to his usual youthful form, handsome, mirané brown, with a high, long ponytail and flowing skirts. “Sunderer, take care of yourself.”
“Moon-Eater?” Iriset asks, too breathless. She hates sounding weak even when she is.
The Moon-Eater stands before her, reaches out to pinch her earlobe like an affectionate cat. She asks, “Will you take me back to the tower for rest? And give me a new room? Near the design tower.”
“I will.”
Iriset accepts the Moon-Eater’s hand and leaves without glancing back. A clean break. She’s good at that. She’ll make herself good at that.