Chapter 23
Standing out
Iriset settles on opal as the base for her new eye.
She’d been leaning toward silicate, or a crystal structured similarly, because it could react easily to new design, maintain arrays well, and respond to resonance, but Eliri mentioned that they’ve had more luck with the fluid structure of opal when it comes to integrating its inner design with human design outside of rigid mineral compositions like bone in her case.
Besides, opal is colorful and sexy.
She and Eliri create a prototype prosthetic, designing multiple overlays and a quad-core of layered opal, quartzite, ferro-magnetized silicate to protect against interference and electromagnetic resonances, and pure force, then spend another day building it and prepping Iriset’s socket.
Eliri manipulates a detailed scaffolding to insert the prosthetic, and when she triggers the eye, it hurts.
Just a sharp sting, and Iriset sucks air through her teeth.
A headache radiates through her skull from the prosthetic.
She closes both eyes and tears spill out, surprising, but then again there was little damage to her tear ducts or sinuses, and Iriset can feel the clinging ecstatic force, the heat of rising, the sinking, belonging of falling force searching for her mind, and the flowing blood and the hard, impossibly slow flow of the opal itself.
“Breathe, and when Iriset is ready, try to look,” Eliri says in her soft way.
Iriset gives herself only slightly less time than she thinks she should before peeling open both eyes. Her fleshy eye aches in what must be sympathetic brain disorientation. Iriset sees through a bright blur of tears. But she sees.
Despite Eliri’s protest that they move slowly, Iriset hops up from the chair and finds the hand mirror they’ve been using.
The skin around her opal eye is reddened, slightly puffy, but nothing worrisome to Iriset.
She blinks, cognizant of the different texture of the opal eye against her inner eyelid.
It’s smooth, cooler, though slowly warming to her body temperature.
And the eye itself is gorgeous. Its milky-white surface shimmers with underlying chips of hot orange and strands of phosphorescent green, with hints of pink and gold.
The pupil blooms like a black-hearted flower, its vibrant iris the blue-green of iridescent lichen, with facets of sunshine yellow.
The iris could have been any color drawn out of the opal, but Iriset claims to like this bold choice because it’s different from mirané coloring, from earth and crater and bone.
(Truthfully, they’re the colors of Singix’s best gowns, the teals and deep blue of tide pools and starfish, the elegant green of tropical waters, anemones—colors that hardly exist in the desert, but that Singix wore on her body. She brought the ocean with her.)
Eventually Iriset will be able to tap the eye with a stylus to shift several layers of design and allow it to draw in different visible spectrums—last night Eliri read to her from an actual dissertation on bird eyes compared to human eyes, because such investigation is legal here!
The amorphous nature of opal will allow for greater numbers of complex arrays to simultaneously exist within.
Iriset’s face, though, is so strange now. Lyric is probably going through a very similar disorientation. She knows he’s healing well, according to Eliri, but Iriset hasn’t asked more.
She grins at herself in the mirror, shoving away unwanted distractions. Eliri watches calmly over her shoulder and Iriset says, “Thanks given, Eliri the Adept Hand.”
Eliri nods acceptance. Then they go to show off to the Moon-Eater.
The Moon-Eater isn’t lounging in his pit, and he wasn’t in the design tower, so Eliri asks a few passing attendants until one says they sent cinnamon coffee to the Moon-Eater’s library.
Eliri cups Iriset’s elbow to lead her around a fountain in the center of the tower atrium that looks like an upside-down waterfall.
“The library is not made of books, but is more art and armory. Gallery would be a better name, but perhaps when Shade named it the language was different.”
“Then what sort of art does the Moon-Eater like?”
Eliri shrugs. “Color, flowers, the ocean.”
Stopping, Iriset waits for Eliri to face her. The fountain rushes gently, and now that they’ve paused, it sounds decidedly musical. “Does Eliri not consider design to be art?”
“Science,” Eliri counters easily. “Question, hypothesis, experimentation, result.”
“That sounds lovely,” Iriset says. “To have the structure—the resources to treat design in such a way.”
“Iriset learned without resources?”
“Some of the schools taught that sort of foundation, the kind of structural support that might allow designers to exist in such a way, inventing techniques and applications. But draconian regulations kept genius at bay. And I did not grow up in a design school,” she adds with a wrinkled nose.
Not quite disdain, because she knows she’d have loved being in design school.
“But it’s also why my ideas are so great. ”
Eliri smiles, a rare smile that pinches at the corners of her eyes. “Rogue.”
“Criminal,” Iriset whispers, half hiding her mouth with the back of her hand.
“Perhaps that is why Iriset is a sunderer. Iriset was never taught limitations.”
Reminded suddenly of her father, and the little bobcat she gave wings that he murdered, she shakes her head.
“Different limitations,” she allows. What would the Little Cat think of her new eye, she wonders?
Not much until it proved useful beyond beauty.
And Bittor—Iriset swallows, because their bone structure had been so similar, their coloring and height, everything except their eyes pointed at relation.
Maybe if not for the inherited chimeric design, Bittor’s eyes would have been sandglass brown, too.
Now, both of them with inhuman eyes, chimeric, apostatical eyes, they’d have been even more alike.
They continue through the five-tower cluster that surrounds the Moon-Eater’s court, to the shortest of the towers.
The lower level is open to the elements on all sides, lifted up by eight twisting pillars.
In the center a spiral staircase leads up, guarded by a familiar tall woman with short horns at her temples, spiky white hair, brown skin, and inset jewels along her cheekbones and jaw.
Not guarded by: She’s waiting for Amado.
But Iriset is intrigued by the alcoves carved into the eight pillars holding up the tower.
The alcoves are tiled with gilded blue and lit with tiny sconces that burn short red flames and smell of floral incense.
Within are statues exquisitely carved from a pale wood.
All are of a figure that is half human, half tree, in different seasons of the year.
Some trees blossom, others grow tiny leaves, tiny fruits, or are lush and fat with greenery.
Some leaves turn ruby red and ochre, and they drop, leaves held in the air, caught mid-fall.
They make her think of Never, though she’s unsure why. She hasn’t seen Never in several days.
Just then, the Chimera small king strides down the spiral stairs.
He opens his mouth to speak to his companion but sees Eliri and Iriset, and his bright eyes are narrowed with displeasure.
“Adept Hand,” he calls. “Sunderer. Chimera hopes the sunderer’s work goes well enough to turn toward the crater array sooner than anticipated? ”
Eliri lowers her eyes, content, it seems, to pass silently.
Iriset, always ready to fight, does her best to lock her gaze on him, especially the opal. “Very well.”
He falters under her glare, but only for a breath. “That is remarkable. Does it see?”
“Perfectly,” she lies.
“And what does it see?” he asks in the passively curious voice of a master politician.
“Magic.”
“Did Iriset carve out Iriset’s own eye for Lyric Aharté in order to create this power?”
“Iriset carved out Iriset’s own eye because the defense necklace Amado the Reconciler gave to Lyric did not protect Lyric,” she says, leaning closer, narrowing her eyes, hoping there is a dangerous gleam to the opal.
“But it was useful when this designer pulled it apart to make its wires into forceps and its threads into a design cage.”
For a moment, Amado only watches her, then he inclines his head as if acknowledging something.
If they were in her own time, Iriset is certain she’d have a better handle on this whole situation.
“In that case,” he says, “this Chimera will send over the maps and information the sunderer requested, then set a broader meeting for all to present discoveries. Moving faster will shut up some of the less enthusiastic voices. Those who have decided Iriset Sunderer and Lyric Aharté might end the emergency by being removed from the equation,” he says delicately, but with equal threat.
Iriset grimaces.
“Helica is placing the temporary shield dome in four days, despite difficulties with the infrastructure teams across fortresses. Perhaps Iriset Sunderer might take up the cause of charging the Moon-Eater to encourage recalcitrant participants.”
“This designer is merely a designer,” Iriset says. She really hates politics, much preferring someone to explain them to her and then explain exactly what role they need her to play.
“That isn’t the impression Iriset gave at the crater shrine,” Amado says.
With a grin, Iriset waves Eliri ahead, and Amado snorts. He snaps his long sleeves as he leaves them, but something about it reads to Iriset as amusement—and satisfaction.