Page 7 of The Shape of Monsters
“I found a sunderer,” the numen answers.
The Moon-Eater scoffs. “That old story you like.”
“It isn’t a story, you child,” the numen snarls.
They’re speaking mirané, Lyric realizes, dazed. “What is a sunderer?” he says mostly to himself. But the Moon-Eater’s attention snaps to him.
“Eliri the Adept Hand,” calls another voice, in Old Sarenpet, and everyone looks.
Eliri touches Lyric’s elbow gently. “Alis Healer is here to help Lyric Aharté’s wife.”
“Iriset,” he says, aware of the Moon-Eater slowly stalking closer.
The healer is a dark-skinned woman with red freckles painted on, and matching eyeliner. Her gaze is steady, waiting for Lyric’s response. She must be only a little older than him, but right now he feels like a lost child. So instead of answering, he lets her help him lay Iriset out. But Lyric keeps her head in his lap. “Dart shot Iriset, ah, here.” He doesn’t know the Old Sarenpet word for lung or ribs, but he can show the physician where the robe is torn, where the blood soaked the deepest. “Eliri stopped the bleeding, a force—a force-burn?”
The healer nods, slicing the material away with a tiny tool between thumb and forefinger like little pinching scissors. With a few drops of something that smells like liquor, she cleans the blood from around the wound. It remains raw and angry but closed up.
Alis Healer has a box beside her, to which she returns the bottle of liquor and retrieves instead a knot of material and quickly opens it. A net of some kind, which she pricks to Iriset’s skin over the injury, using her pinching scissors that must be also like tiny styli for design work.
Lyric is about to watch apostatical surgery. He should make them stop. He should—
Except before he can protest, the Moon-Eater plops into a crouch next to Lyric.
Lyric startles, but the Moon-Eater only cocks his head, staring at Lyric as his hair slithers into black waves like Lyric’s, his eyes turn mirané brown with flecks of red like Lyric’s, and his teeth finally turn white as bone. He is handsome but his expression tilts slightly toward madness, perhaps his eyes are too large for his face, his pupils not quite round, or there are too many white teeth in that mouth, or he has no pores but only smooth, impermeable skin. One such thing or all, Lyric’s mind flags the Moon-Eater as wrong, wrong, wrong.
“Your tongue curls so smartly around these words of ours, friend,” the Moon-Eater murmurs in mirané. “What are you?”
Then the Moon-Eater reaches out with a forefinger extended and Lyric steels himself. The Moon-Eater’s finger makes contact with his brow.
Lyric barely manages to keep his eyes open, looking into the gaze of the Moon-Eater. It must be some kind of sacrilege.The Moon-Eater is a numen, he thinks. He feels the four forces in his body one after another: ecstatic popping with his heartbeat, the flow of breath as he struggles to keep it even, rising heat in his blood and falling exhaustion, cool trepidation, pulling him into himself.
“You should kill him,” the numen says coldly. And who can blame it? Lyric and his family imprisoned and tortured it for a hundred years.
“Ah,” the Moon-Eater gasps softly. “But he is perfectly designed. Not a thread out of place… Ah, so beautiful.” His finger slides down Lyric’s nose and taps his bottom lip, then the Moon-Eater cups Lyric’s face. “I’ve never seen the like. And tied to this one at his core.”
“That is the sunderer,” the numen says. “She was fool enough to marry him.”
“So she might be upset if he dies,” the Moon-Eater says, looking only at Lyric like he’s fascinating. “And I don’t want to kill him.” He switches to Old Sarenpet. “These two caused the star?”
Eliri kneels as the healer continues to prick design against Iriset’s ribs, ignoring everything else. Eliri says, “Yes, Moon-Eater. The star fell, knocking a crater in the Sunrise Rock Garden. Two were within, this Lyric Aharté and wife. Eliri did not realize the Moon-Eater’s friend was a third until now.”
The Moon-Eater glances at the numen. “Do you know what happened?”
“Maybe,” says the surly numen, flicking a glare at Lyric. “He imprisoned me for one hundred years. He should die.”
“He doesn’t look old enough for that,” the Moon-Eater says, and Lyric wonders if he can bargain for Iriset to live, at least. But then the Moon-Eater’s attention returns to him. “Who made you?”
Lyric tries to speak, his tongue dry. He swallows, tries again. “I am made by Aharté.”
“Lyric,” the Moon-Eater says slowly. “Aharté. The song and the breath of a song. A word and the pause between words.”
“My wife is Iriset,” Lyric manages, his voice hushing as he lowers his gaze to the healer’s work. “I don’t know what happened, or how we got here.”
“The sunderer,” the numen says.
“Hmm.” The Moon-Eater grins. “If your stories are true, Never, she could kill me.”
“She won’t. Don’t hurt her,” Lyric says, shifting with the urge to hide her, to put himself between them. The healer grumbles at his movements. From the way she ignores the rest and Eliri remains still and quiet but on guard, Lyric guesses they don’t understand mirané.
