Chapter 38 #3
Iriset brushes hair off Lyric’s forehead, heart aching.
She really should summon up her old anger at his hypocrisy.
Let him die of apostatical cancer the way he would have let her mom die.
Leave him here, abandon the Moon-Eater and these people who think catching the moon and redesigning their entire city in a few quads is a viable political option.
She should let them all implode and die, then run off to the islands that someday will be the Ceres Remnants and maybe she can become the demon of courage.
Well, not courage, that’s for sure. How about one she always thought was silly, like the demon of hierarchy?
Instead, Iriset holds Lyric’s hand.
He’s stirring as the physician arrives. “Iriset?” he murmurs, and she does not look at Maimeri even though she’s petty enough to want to. She helps him sit, wipes under his eyes with her thumbs. Maimeri moves and gets a cup of water as River leads in the doctor.
“What ill-conceived redesign has been done to Lyric Aharté this time, menace?” the older woman demands. Iriset grimaces at the surgeon from the Night of Chimeras. She’s just as mean-looking as then, just as disinterested in niceties.
“Nothing,” Lyric answers for himself. His voice is raw even after sipping water. The edge of the cup comes away pink.
“Everyone out,” the surgeon commands, stripping off half her bandolier. She shoves dishes aside and begins to set up her diagnostic kit.
“But—” Iriset starts to complain that she’s his wife, and Maimeri looks mutinous, too, standing with ahz arms crossed and a hard frown.
“It’s fine,” Lyric says, turning sad but unapologetic eyes at her. Her own damn eye, so she should get to stay.
With an irritable huff, Iriset stands. “Look for cancer,” she says harshly.
Lyric sucks in a breath, and the surgeon frowns. But Iriset doesn’t look at him again, only gets out, barely aware of River holding the door open, or of Maimeri scurrying after her. Az calls her name, but she doesn’t slow down.
In the garden between the small king’s suite and Eliri’s yard, az catches her with a hand to her wrist.
Iriset stops. Her heart is pounding. The moon is high tonight, shuttered by rolling clouds. But tiny silver lights flicker in the elegant, swaying young trees so she can see Maimeri clearly. Az’s staring right into her eyes.
“It really is yours,” az says. Ahz free hand hovers near her face.
Iriset sighs tremblingly and tilts her face permissively.
Maimeri skims fingers along her cheek. It’s difficult not to let her eyes fall shut.
“He’ll be all right,” Maimeri says very quietly. “No one dies from cancer unless they’re addicted to it. And we’re going to make the Holy Design, where he belongs, which suits his design.”
Every particle of her being wants to follow up on cancer addiction, what the fuck, and it’s anguishing not to.
But later. “Little Rabbit,” she says deliberately.
“Why did you come back with Lyric? Why are you going along with this scheme to unravel your own mother and reorder the entire design of your world?”
Maimeri lets go of Iriset’s wrist. “Because he asked me to.”
Iriset’s mouth drops open at the plain sincerity. She’s never done anything in her life just because she was asked! (That’s not true, but it certainly feels true. She’s fairly sure she’s spent many hours actively doing the opposite of what she’s asked.)
“Let’s go back,” Maimeri says.
Iriset nods vaguely and lets Maimeri pull her back the way az chased her.
Unfortunately, they step through the gate from Eliri’s yard into the side garden next to River’s suite at the same time Eliri herself arrives: and at her back are the Moon-Eater and numen.
Iriset doesn’t bother keeping the ugly expression off her face. But it hardly matters as the Moon-Eater brightens and bounces around Eliri. “Little Rabbit!” he says happily.
Maimeri tenses and Iriset is disinclined to help, so she steps away as the Moon-Eater kisses his child. She pretends to ignore the numen but keeps herself aware of its exact location. It stands as still as a statue except for the constant shifting of its silver-pink hair.
“I hoped that Lyric Aharté’s return would bring you as well,” the Moon-Eater says. “You look good, strong. Older. Aging like a human still?”
With the Moon-Eater’s hands all over ahz, squeezing shoulders, ruffling sleek hair, pinching ahz chin, peering into ahz eyes, all Maimeri can do is nod.
It’s pretty amusing to see the Moon-Eater so fussy.
Eliri, meanwhile, steps up onto the wide wooden porch that runs along the length of the manor building. River leans against the wall with Roc, but pushes off to greet ans spouse. They merely brush their fingers togethers, keeping distance otherwise.
“A little earlier than planned to get the whole company together, but welcome, Moon-Eater,” Roc Aliel says, and even a blunt person like Iriset continues to be surprised by his boldness. But it’s admittedly appealing in a leader.
“Roc Aliel is so frequently here,” the Moon-Eater says, petting a hand down Maimeri’s chest while he turns a dangerous grin on Roc. He makes it sound like here means in my way.
“This old cultist does try,” Roc says lightly.
The Moon-Eater lets go of his child and slinks up the porch steps. “But now Roc and Shade are on the same side?”
The door to the private dining room slides open and Lyric appears, still tying his black outer robe closed. Behind him, the warm firelight and everflame candles cast him in silhouette.
“Lyric Aharté,” the Moon-Eater greets.
Lyric steps out of the doorframe to allow the surgeon to pass. She nods sharply to River, then the Moon-Eater with a tight-lipped frown, and basically stomps away, radiating irritation. Lyric watches her go, face carefully blank, and then he sighs and looks down. “Iriset is correct,” he says.
Oh, it hurts.
“Iriset usually is,” the Moon-Eater says delightedly, though the humor falls away as he notes Lyric’s soft regret. “About what?” he demands.
“Especially aggressive apostatical cancer,” Lyric says, looking to Iriset. Then he half smiles. “Twisted through most of my internal organs, and partially consumed my lungs and stomach.”
Maimeri makes a soft sound and walks to Lyric, hopping onto the porch like az’s weightless. “That is still treatable,” az says quietly but firmly. Like it’s as simple as setting a broken bone.
“The surgeon did say there is an equally aggressive and invasive treatment, yes, involving extensive redesign and physical surgery,” Lyric agrees. “With an almost perfect survival rate.”
“But you told her to leave,” Iriset accuses, forgetting Old Sarenpet in a sudden flare of rage.
That they have to destroy this science! Forbid it!
That Lyric is so casual about his lungs and stomach.
It’s so far along, much worse than her mother was when Iriset saved her. Almost perfect survival rate.
“There isn’t time.” Lyric shakes his head, still politely speaking in Sarenpet. “The summer solstice is barely three quads from now.”
Iriset stares at him, the impact of his statement stripping her rage away and leaving her panting like she’s raced across the Crystal Desert. “A deadline in more ways than one,” Lyric jokes, using the mirané word because that’s where the pun is.
Oh, she can’t even throw anything at him or shove him, he’s too far away and riddled with cancer. He knows, he knows how she feels and is joking about it like they’re arguing over translations of elaborate Ceres marriage poems.
“The unicorn I met liked my jokes,” Lyric says when nobody laughs.
Iriset makes a strangled sound at that—a unicorn!—but then—“You already knew, didn’t you? You aren’t surprised!” She charges closer, fingers curling as she can’t choose which part of him to grab. “How long have you known, Lyric?”
Enough guilt flinches across his face to give her an answer, except—“The sunderer,” the numen breathes right beside Iriset.
She cries out and jerks away from it. The numen’s diamond gaze burns at her. “The sunderer,” it repeats in that old, harsh voice from when they first met, “can heal you.”
It isn’t that Iriset forgot—she knows she can cure apostatical cancer, she’s done it, she’s bragged about it.
In many ways it defined her for years; that successful apostasy gave her the drive and fire to become Silk.
It’s that Iriset never considered sundering.
She still doesn’t believe in it, not really, despite dreaming herself into Singix or saving herself from a knife to the throat and despite saving others.
Iriset faces the numen and it stares steadily, patiently, back at her, as if it’s watching the dawn, content to allow the colors to be, the shifting light to be, the sun to do what the sun always does and rise.
“What matters is this array, not Lyric,” Lyric says. “It must be at the eclipse. The moon will be where the moon needs to be, and this priest will make it that long.”
Iriset spins away from the numen.
The moon shines on them now, almost full, and Iriset feels Silence as she looks at Lyric, feels the design radiate out from the two of them. “You will,” she says, intending it forever.