Page 133 of The Shape of Monsters
“It won’t go wrong,” Iriset insists, though she is not as confident as she pretends to be.
They get so many volunteers from the design colleges and small kings they invite, including friends and family, that they must turn people away. Maybe rewards from the Moon-Eater were unnecessary. But Shade insisted. He’s in fine form these days, throwing lavish parties across the expanse of his fortress, filled with debauchery and fireworks, showing off what he can do and what he likes to do. He starts an impromptu design contest, inviting city designers into the fortress for an aesthetic fashion show, and turns into a dragon to give rides to those brave enough. Only six people die from extreme designblowbacks, and one dies when his blood vessels all burst after going home for the night.
Iriset learns of all this when she’s made to eat so she doesn’t starve—usually it’s Lyric enforcing meals, and usually Maimeri is with him. Maimeri is scathing in ahz reports of ahz mother’s party agenda. It’s good, Lyric teases, because setting Maimeri as opposed to the Moon-Eater will play into the stories Maimeri tells for the future generations. (Lyric is completely in favor of Maimeri as the first Vertex Seal.)
Lyric takes care of everything that isn’t design. Coordinating with Amado Chimera to speak with the mirané volunteers and teach them the basics of the Holy laws of Silence and Silent meditations. Working to finesseWord of Ahartéand write down the basics of mirané vocabulary and grammar with Roc Aliel, who, despite the truths revealed about the Renovation War, is an enthusiastic participant in establishing the Silent Chapel to go alongside Holy Design. Lyric writes down the calendar and traditions of Moonshadow City, and the rituals for the Days of Mercy. Roc enjoys debating finer details with Lyric, except that Lyric actually knows the answers to all of Roc’s critiques. Lyric anoints into the priesthood several of the young ones who have kept up the little shrine at the crater. To everyone’s surprise he makes his first attendant, Peace, the high priest of the Silent Chapel. Maimeri wants to know why, if it’s because she worships him as Aharté, and Lyric only admits that he chose her for her name.
(At one of their morning meals, Iriset reminds Lyric to set up the Moon-Eater’s Mistress inheritance. “Is there a requirement besides being the direct descendant of the Vertex Seal?” he asks.
Iriset thinks while tapping her lip with her finger, stimulating ecstatic. “No, and actually, anyone could do it, as long as they’re mirané. It would be better if they have a falling-dominant inner design. I think that will gather the necessary forces to restart the helix array more easily, though it’s not necessary.”
“Does Amaranth know what she’s really doing every morning?” Lyric wonders.
“You’ll have to ask her.”
“All right, and what about the bloodletting I do on the rock—ah, I must remember we need to find a suitable rock. What is that purpose for your array? I didn’t think blood would be necessary. Do you know?”
Iriset nods slowly, her eyes getting wider.
Lyric waits, and she stares until he nudges her arm. “Iriset.”
“Ah, nothing. It does nothing!” Iriset laughs. “Purely symbolic! Lyric, that face you’re making, you look like a spoiled child.”
He stuffs a piece of soda bread into her mouth to stop her laughter.)
Iriset is bent over the floor, various papers tossed about in what most would assume to be a mess but is actually the closest approximation to a two-dimensional representation of a helix array as she can manage. The knot she’s diagramming is to comprehensively encompass her understanding of mirané selfhood—biology, gender, inner and outer design. It’s symbolic and wouldn’t mean anything to most people. But each thread of force, each patterning, needs to mean something toher. Iriset needs to believe it will work, needs to believe this means this, that means that, and everything will come together. It’s a strange tension, when she’s used to either complete scientific confidence or total freestyle.
“Iriset,” Eliri the Adept Hand says from the doorway, and Iriset leans up with a shot of ecstatic from tailbone to nape.
“Eliri,” she breathes, getting to her feet. “Are you… well?”
“How can this chimera help?”
It’s been more than a quad since River kicked them out of ansfortress, and Eliri hasn’t sent word or anything. Iriset stares for a moment. “Is River well?” she tries again.
Eliri lowers her big gray eyes. “River keeps ans contracts, and so Rivermouth will be ready and suited to the Holy Design.”
That’s not even close to what Iriset was asking, but she expects it’s the best she’ll get. And she won’t refuse Eliri’s help if that’s what Eliri wants.
“Here,” Iriset says, kneeling again. “Iriset is working on the blowback channeling. The solution is to redesign sixty-four people in sixty-four nodes all at once. It should take the excess power and give it work. Like a pressure release in a heating array.”
Eliri’s gaze flicks along the threads of Iriset’s design, leaping between sheets of paper and diagrams. “Where is the theory display?”
Iriset digs it out of the piles on the side table. It’s one very basic layer of the multilayered metadesign, and Iriset needs to lock it down soon, because laying the array itself in the proper order and even with in-place guardian caps to push back at entropy will take an estimated fourteen days. She hands Eliri the schematic.
After a moment, Eliri nods. “This looks right, but there is no diagram for the transformation itself. It is sundering? Not redesign aesthetic?”
“Correct. I can do it, I can make it work.”
“Iriset is certain? Has Iriset experimented?”
“Hard without volunteers. But the healing in the Rising Smoke collapse was related, and I know it’s possible.”
Eliri holds Iriset’s gaze for a long moment. The chimera is hollow-cheeked, but not more than usual, Iriset thinks. These past days must have been difficult for Eliri, if she’s conflicted between supporting River and working with Shade.
“Use this one,” Eliri says, sinking slowly to her knees, head lowered so her blunt-cut hair sways forward.
“Huh?”
