Chapter 25 #2
Of course he can, so Iriset doesn’t answer, only does her best to look back unwaveringly. Though the nature of this opal eye means she isn’t quite able to boldly stare into his, she does her best to mimic it, watching with her flesh eye for every hint of his reaction.
Immediately his lips part in surprise. He leans closer.
She can see the scars from the explosion, the ones her crawling design couldn’t quite fix but surely Irsu River’s surgeon could have if Lyric wished it.
They scatter in an oblong patch around his left eye socket, trailing toward his cheek and temple, back into his scalp, and probably when his hair grows back it will grow with a few extra dimples.
“Is that opal?” he asks.
“Yes. Mostly. I’m going to make a cradle eventually, I think, and a force-lattice to fit inside, that will hold a new version of the eye that’s easier to remove and insert, for maintenance and also experimental iris arrays.
It’s easier to get a hold of the kind of resources I need here.
Maybe I, well—” Iriset cuts off, never having so quickly babbled about potential apostasy to him.
Worse, she has no idea what he’s feeling without the marriage knot. So Iriset has to look at him. He’s nodding as if she’s discussing a new design for an umbrella in a week they’re expecting rain.
Iriset doesn’t quite scowl, but she hugs her arms to her ribs. “You’re not angry? I—you…”
Lyric turns away. He touches the mammoth skull beside him with one hand and, with the other, touches the skin of his left cheek.
“I know in quite a bit of detail what you went through. What you did. I asked, and was answered with guesses and theories, because you were not there to tell me yourself. You left expecting my anger—and I have been angry—expecting me to reject what you’d done, which I have wanted to do, despite the fact that what you did was to save my life.
Of course you expect those reactions. And you didn’t only save me, you took—you took your own eye, Iriset. Fuck.”
Iriset’s whole body reacts to that single word, pulling away and leaning toward, imploding a little. She swallows hard. She thinks of how to answer, the meanest way, the truest way.
“You knew what I would say, and—”
“Would you really want to die?” she says, trying to spit it out, but it really sounds like she’s begging.
Lyric stops. He breathes in through his nose, then lets it all out from pursed lips.
“In the moment I would have denied you. I would have said no, never. Not only because of invasive, apostatical architecture, which you know I abhor, but you—you could have died, too, if anything went wrong. Head wounds, Iriset, Silence! They’re—”
Iriset covers his mouth with her hand. “In the moment. You said—”
Gently grasping her wrist, Lyric lowers her hand.
He watches her with their eyes. “You didn’t ask me in the moment, you couldn’t.
And you did it, all alone, surrounded by fire and death.
You chose me, and you. The surgeon, the human redesign surgeon, she says it was nearly impossible to do what you did. ”
“Amateurs,” she whispers, shrugging awkwardly and trying to twist free of his grip. Lyric lets her. She doesn’t like that any better than the rising respect in his tone.
“I’m glad to be alive,” he says simply. “Now. You are the only reason. How can I call what you did anything but holy?”
Iriset swallows a chunk of shock, bile maybe, a thousand words. She closes both eyes. The tears of her opal eye are a little gummy these days, probably from conflicting forces pulling through the skin and ducts. But it’s just tears on her right cheek. “I don’t want to be holy,” she says.
“Then you shouldn’t act like a god, Silk,” he says with just a hint of the bite she knows so well.
She scoffs, but it comes out too wet.
“Either you’re part of the Holy Design or you’re not,” Lyric says. “Silk wrote that human architecture must fall under Aharté’s purview or it wouldn’t exist. That’s a gross oversimplification of Silent orthodoxy, but it’s also my problem. Not yours. My problem to accept.”
Iriset doesn’t know what to say and she hates that. It reminds her she’s hated him a little bit for a very long time. And how dare he read those pamphlets Silk published! “Don’t make me holy,” she manages.
She feels his fingers curl around hers again, tugging her hand away from her ribs.
She allows it. Lyric asks, “What do you want to be? If not holy, if not a god of apostasy alongside the Moon-Eater? Silk is Syr,” he murmurs.
“You asked me, but your answer doesn’t fit with what you’re doing now.
Showing them how to enforce the Holy Design, to balance the city and capture Aharté’s moon. ”
There’s a pocket of heat between their palms, and Iriset focuses on it.
She looks with both eyes, one clear, one all shadows.
“I have to do that, or the whole city will crumble! It’s too late because of that array, because we ended up here—and it’s my fault, so I have to fix it.
That’s nothing to do with what I want. I don’t want to be your Holy Syr, I don’t want to make the fucking miran, and I don’t want to lock them into this design that will bring about the worst thing that ever happened to this crater! ”
“Me,” he says immediately. Tenderly.
Iriset grinds her teeth. “I won’t do what I don’t have to do. The Holy Design will save them, so fine, fine. But it has nothing to do with mirané princes or a Vertex Seal. It doesn’t. You haven’t won, Lyric.”
“What do you want?” he insists.
“Ugh! I told you. I just want to be a designer. I want to make designs, I want to fly, to practice my art—my answers are the same as that night.”
“But if all you want is to practice your art, why did I find you with Bittor méra Tesmose when you fled my palace? Why did you make that spider array to show everyone Silk was alive? You could have slipped away at any time, you could have taken money, information, gone anywhere to practice your art.”
With a mulish glare she says, “Showing Silk to be alive was art. Expressing what I did and could do—art.”
“Ah. And the rebel?”
“He was my friend. I loved him.” Iriset shrugs, trying to play it off while her hand is curled in Lyric’s.
“I thought he was hurting you.”
“I know.”
“I wouldn’t have hurt him if I hadn’t been so…”
“Caught up?”
“Terrified.”
Iriset sighs a little. Her opal eye throbs. Bittor had been born with his cat-eyes. She doesn’t want to keep being sad, to feel this ache. Now that she’s here, Bittor would want her to thrive.
Wouldn’t he?
Or would he want her to fight? Stay a criminal, embrace her outlaw legacy, even though her art is perfectly legal here. Her profession. Her purpose. She thinks about her father telling her to change something. Do something great.
“I’m sorry I terrified you,” Lyric murmurs.
“What?” She looks and he’s staring at their joined hands.
“In the explosion. Given the damage, you must have been terrified. And you hurt yourself for me. Because you were afraid.”
“Ah, Lyric, yes, I… I was. I panicked, but that’s not why I did this, or at least, even if I hadn’t been, I can imagine making the same choice with cold, plain rational thought.”
Lyric frowns. He starts to shake his head, but Iriset says, “Look how gorgeous this is,” pointing at her opal eye. “And useful, and just neat. Much better than a regular eye.”
“I don’t mind my regular eyes.”
With a little wince, she touches their shoulders together.
It’s strange to be back on a bench in a garden with Lyric, after everything.
He wants to know why she didn’t leave him when she could.
Why she waited until the last moment, when his mother tried to kill her and her spider array was ready, when the army was going into Saltbath to avenge rebellion against the Holy Design.
Slowly, Iriset says, “I didn’t leave sooner because I didn’t want to.
I didn’t want to leave you. I wanted it all, but I couldn’t have it all because of apostasy, yes, and Bittor, yes, and your mother.
So many reasons. Because I couldn’t stand that you loved Singix and not me.
And she deserved better. It was all unsustainable without me doing something even worse, so I had to choose.
I chose design. I chose rebellion. You know why, don’t you? ”
“Tell me.”
With a little growl, she says, “Because you’re wrong.
You were wrong. The entire empire was founded on faulty theory!
It made people do terrible things in its name.
In your name. You—you, Lyric, you did terrible things!
I couldn’t answer your brutality with worse!
Just because I love you doesn’t make that less true. ”
“I know.”
“That’s worse!” Iriset nearly shrieks. She takes her hand back only for Lyric to touch her elbow instead, as if he needs the contact.
Her opal eye aches and Iriset wants to smash her fist into it, or at least cover it with light-repelling cloth.
It’s showing her only light and shadow, too-bright light around Lyric like a fucking halo, which is hilarious.
“It’s worse that you know you’re being awful.
Hurting people for the greater good is still hurting people. ”
“I know,” he says again, more tensely this time. “But now the choices are different.”
“Are they?” Iriset turns completely, straddling the cool stone bench.
She knows her glare is weird because of her weepy opal eye, but at least the flesh one should be doing its duty.
“That’s what fixing this array is: hurting people for the greater good.
We brought it here, and people are dead because of it!
Because of our—my—negligence. And now my only choice is to remake this city in the Holy Design!
That’s such bullshit. I can’t believe I basically blackmailed myself into making it happen. ”