JUST A DESIGNER MINDING ANS OWN BUSINESS
Raia mér Omorose delivers the speech exactly as written.
An recites lines in the cadence an practiced again and again with the angry, reluctant Garnet méra Be?, with the intense, passionate Amaranth mé Esmail Her Glory, and with the quiet, incisive Hehet méra Davith.
To get the emphases correct, to pause when the Vertex Seal would pause.
When to blink, when to glance up or aside, how to stand, how to shift ans weight, how to sit firmly in the center of the throne without leaning back but without seeming to perch.
Belong in the throne, Her Glory had said.
Breathe if you need to gather yourself back into him, Garnet advised.
And Hehet asked, “Do you know what makes Lyric méra Esmail a good Vertex Seal?”
Raia shook ans head without bothering to consider an answer. An wouldn’t get it right, especially not from a powerful mirané prince’s point of view.
Hehet sighed and leaned closer. “He isn’t.”
That startled Raia badly enough ans normally graceful fingers ripped through the parchment with all ans speech notes.
Hehet laughed, but didn’t sound amused. Raia didn’t find it funny, either.
Two quads ago, Raia was just a designer minding ans own business, still torn up about the sudden death of ans friend, making a valiant attempt to bury anself in the work of recalibrating the security nodes in the wake of the Silk rebellion’s huge, terrifying, (beautiful) spider graffiti that slashed and tangled its way across half the palace complex.
An noted an alert amid the mess, where none of the spider echoes should have been, and investigating it according to ans vocation led one thing after another to an witnessing the disappearance of the numen who was supposed to be chained behind the Seal throne, the Vertex Seal, and ans actually-not-so-suddenly-dead friend.
While the Moon-Eater’s Mistress, her body-twin, and Garnet had argued, and a handful of Seal guards secured the perimeter, Raia walked forward through the rain of falling tiles.
An crouched, stunned, and put a hand flat to the altar.
It was cracked, just a hairline, from one corner to the center.
The forces wiggled under ans palm, and an saw the fading remnants of a sixteen-point array. It itched somehow, in ans awareness.
“Quiet!” Amaranth Her Glory yelled, and everyone obeyed. Well, an had been quiet already, and merely froze.
“None of this leaves this room. We will tell the princes and the city that the aftershocks here in the temple were caused by the spider disruption,” Amaranth said firmly.
“If I hear the slightest hint that Iriset mé Isidor is alive, or the numen is free, or that Lyric was even here, then I’ll make sure all of you Seal guards are unraveled. ”
Raia glanced at the guards, who uniformly looked at the floor, except for one, who looked at Garnet. The body-twin’s jaw clenched visibly, but he nodded once. Then to Amaranth he said, “But Lyric was here, Amaranth. And he is gone.”
To Raia’s abject dismay, Amaranth turned her grim smile onto an and said, “I know how to keep that secret.”
It was a craftmask, of course. Raia pricked it into the skin at ans hairline, hands composed despite the sweat rolling down ans spine and sticking to the tight wrap of ans binder.
Behind an, Garnet glowered into the mirror with arms crossed, Amaranth watched the tip of the stylus, and Anis mé Ario bit her lip, her bold mirané eyes sliding up and down Raia’s self.
When it was attached, Raia infused it with a prick of ecstatic, and the thing sucked to ans face with a sharp burn.
Tears sprang to ans eyes, and through the mask ans waterlines reddened.
But in the mirror it wasn’t Raia’s pale, narrow features, the soft brows, the pleasant but unremarkable jaw and lips, the fine nose and wide eyes.
It was the balanced, broadly handsome features of the Vertex Seal.
Including freckles under the left eye. Raia’s mouth fell open, and an watched Lyric méra Esmail look dumbly at anself.
“His hair is too long, not wavy enough,” Anis said. “We can cut it and style it with heat—or maybe find some of that ecstatic gel that was in fashion when we were kids, before it was outlawed by the Chapel.”
Amaranth nodded. “And bulk him up with shoulder pads, maybe a skin crawl like Iriset did for the hands and neck.”
“An,” Raia whispered. Not him. Nobody listened.
Garnet said, “But there’s nothing you can do about the eyes.”
Amaranth stuck her face closer to the mirror, then swung around to look directly at Raia. “That’s true. Lyric’s eyes have flecks of true red. Raia, can you do anything about that?”
Raia shook ans head. “That’s—that’s apostasy.”
The silence that dropped was more stunned than anything.
Anis reached out to pet Raia’s hair. Garnet’s lips pulled away from his teeth.
He said, “An is correct. This is madness, Amaranth. I won’t let you do it.
What you’ve already done is bad enough, but Lyric would never want this. Never allow it.”
“Lyric isn’t here!” Amaranth hissed. Raia sank away from her on the stool, but it wasn’t any better to be close to Garnet, who radiated anger in waves of flow. “We don’t know what happened to him, Garnet! This is the best way to hold everything still while we try to figure it out.”
“It’s not a best way to anything. You are so compromised right now, have compromised yourself for quads—”
“Do you want to tell the world that Lyric is dead?” Amaranth said so intensely she was clearly holding herself back from screaming it. “Missing? That would disrupt everything, everyone. There’d be chaos in the streets!”
“Vertex Seals die all the time,” Garnet said, but his voice broke. He cut his hand down between himself and the rest of them. “There are precedents, procedures.”
“To make me the Vertex Seal!” Amaranth’s mouth went tight, the color of her lips drained.
“Is that not what you want? You want instead a puppet Seal, a puppet brother to do your will while you hide with the Moon-Eater?” Garnet roared.
Raia closed ans eyes.
“How dare you,” Amaranth whispered.
There was a pause, and Raia felt the forces in the room aching, knotting, straightening again. Raia usually only felt forces without tools when they were very, very pointed.
Then Garnet said, more quietly but no less ferocious: “You’ve dared more than I dreamed you were capable of recently, Amaranth. You should be the Seal in his absence.”
“I don’t want Lyric to be gone,” Amaranth said. “Let me avoid it, let me do what I want here, now, Garnet, please.”
Raia folded ans hands flat together between ans knees and pressed ans legs together. An should not have been there for that discussion.
The body-twin Anis said, “You’re scaring him.”
Raia opened ans eyes and found a tiny flare of backbone to say again, “An.”
But the Moon-Eater’s Mistress shook her head, her big curls fluffing all around her like she was an angry cat. “Not anymore. You’re Lyric méra Esmail now, and he doesn’t ever look scared.”
After the speech, Raia sits perfectly the way an was taught, but only for about six breaths.
Then an slumps back, because who cares, everything about this is wrong, and if somebody guesses an isn’t the real Vertex Seal because he’s slouching after losing his wife, his mother, and nearly losing a rebellion in his own city, then Raia thinks the mirané princes have a disturbing idea of who Lyric is allowed to be.
A cold cup of water is handed to an, and Garnet nudges ans hand demandingly. Raia should sit up, but an doesn’t. What is Garnet going to do here, poke an with that sharp force-blade sheathed along the small of his back?
Raia drinks while Hehet méra Davith takes up the call of the speech, in an also well-rehearsed not-quite-argument with Amaranth about what Raia—Lyric—brought up: a citywide restructuring of certain foundational design elements, starting with the graffiti channels and ribbon network.
It’s ostensibly to smooth out military communications and allow for immediate information passing, laying groundwork for more aggressive security measures.
One of the mirané princes suddenly and loudly demands to know if such measures will be adaptable to individual small kingdoms or if the Vertex Seal wants the basic patterns to follow the same rhythm.
Though it isn’t scripted, Raia says, “Every adaptation will be expected to coordinate enough that the edges will interlock and harmonize smoothly between and among all the neighborhoods of Moonshadow. If all the city is not protected, it is useless.”
An does not miss Amaranth’s momentary glare.
An knocks back the water, vaguely wishing it was drugged, and proceeds to stop listening.
What does it matter if an pays attention?
If an actually understands the meaning of the speech they wrote for an?
Nobody showed an the full contents of that letter Hehet brought, the one supposedly from Lyric, wherever he is, but what made it into ans speech, the outlined shifts in the city’s foundational design patterns, speaks very loudly to Raia—as they will to any decent designer.
Something is coming that might destroy the city. Or at least fundamentally upset the perfectly balanced Holy Design.
Raia wishes with every fiber of ans being that an had no idea any of this was happening.
An prefers to do ans work, to receive assignments and dive into them.
Redesign the whole security grid for the palace grounds?
Yes. Investigate a line of illegal craftwork?
Certainly. Toy with triple balance techniques in the hopes of reconfiguring some of the basic teaching methods of the schools an was not able to get into thanks to ans Pir ancestors and lack of mirané connections? Oh, Silence, please.