“I have enough for today,” Elir said, remaining on her knees.
“Good.” Insarra stood and snapped the corner of her robe as she wrapped herself, in a slight display of irritation. Unlike Irsu, she swept out of the chamber loudly.
Elir gathered her things and retreated to the workshop.
* * *
The workshop was deep in the heart of Insarra’s fortress, where no light penetrated that Elir did not invite, and no breeze or errant force-thread was allowed. Cubbies were built into the floor for storage, and sections of it lifted to become worktables of various heights. Everything an architect might need, Elir could find right here.
She pinned her day’s drawings to the south wall, made of smooth stucco to discourage sticking forces. It had been built to her specifications when Elir’s college accepted the commission to redesign Insarra’s body for her, and Elir was satisfied with it. She sealed the door behind her and opened the long box containing the delicate wire mesh into which she was building the structural design. She rotated it so that the right hip was level with her chest and flexed the forefinger and middle finger of both hands so that her crystal claws slid out.
Slightly curved, the claws acted as precise styli, and Elir plucked a humming thread of flow force that had entwined itself around one of the wires of the design mesh. She pulled it in two places to readjust, and with it the thread drew the mesh into a more accurate peak of hip bone. For several minutes Elir worked by memory and instinct, before turning to the sketches to refresh her familiarity with Insarra’s physical design. Elir needed to understand the design intimately; not only to successfully convince everyone the redesign would work, but so that she could sabotage it when the time came.
A chime shivered around the seam of the workshop door: Elir had a visitor.
She took a moment to fix the mesh in place before answering. She tapped her key into the small panel with her claws before retracting them. The door unmade itself, flowing smoothly into the design of the walls, as if it had never been.
Irsu stood there. An leaned ans bare shoulder against the entrance frame and said, “I’d like to see it.”
Silently, Elir backed away, allowing Irsu entrance. An walked to the mesh, where it hovered over its box on a cushion of rising and flow forces. In ans wake, eddies of rising force lifted, tingling the hairs along the back of Elir’s neck.
“You never speak to me,” Irsu said, examining the wire mesh vaguely shaped like ans mother.
“I was not hired for conversations.”
Irsu glanced over ans shoulder at Elir. Wryly, an said, “Do I need to compensate you for this then?”
Though she might’ve earned a tip for herself that she wouldn’t need to report to the college, Elir tilted her head no. The excuse to study Irsu’s face and the lilt of ans voice would be compensation enough. An stood still, staring at what would eventually be fit over ans mother and irrevocably alter her design. An said, “How are you so good at this, and so young?”
“I have trained for it my entire life. How many languages do you speak?”
“Six.”
“I only speak this.”
Irsu fell silent, staring at the complex wires of the mesh. Maybe an could see or sense the force-threads, too.
“Why are you here?” Elir asked carefully.
“I’d like to ruin it.”
Elir’s eyes widened. An could so easily touch the wrong thing and undo days of work.
Irsu turned to her, smiling. “But I won’t,” an assured her.
“That was unkind,” she said, unable to stop her gaze from darting along every line of ans face. Irsu was slightly taller than she was, more slender, and graceful. Ans mouth looked too thin to be soft, and a slight rose-gold darkness bruised the skin under ans honey-colored eyes. Copper studs pierced both ans ears, curling up around the cartilage. As Elir stared, she realized that hidden among the sleek black hairs on ans head were long, narrow feathers. Her lips parted.
Irsu sucked in a quick breath, surprising Elir out of her trance. She raised her hands to touch her eyelids in brief apology and murmured, “I look with a designer’s gaze.”
“And?” Irsu asked just as quietly.
“I wouldn’t change a thing,” Elir answered immediately. She felt rising force climb her neck to flush her face with heat and wondered if Irsu was studying her intently enough to notice the dusky tinge it would give her light-bronze cheeks.
“Neither would I,” Irsu said, glancing back at the design mesh that would change everything about ans mother’s physical body. “My grandfather had the eyesight of an eagle, and a related chimerical redesign aesthetic.”
The sudden change of subject startled Elir until she realized it was no change at all. If Irsu had been born with feathers two generations after ans grandfather’s redesign, that was amazing! “That is indicative of a stunning level of design,” she said breathlessly.
Irsu shot her a look just as wry as ans earlier comment.
Elir raised her right hand and flexed the appropriate muscles to slowly display her crystalline claws. “My mother used a fetal mesh to redesign the development of my bones. My body is a perfect machine for architecture.”
Irsu’s gaze swept down her body, and when an lifted ans eyes, they held on hers. An touched the pad of a forefinger to the tip of her claw.
“Be careful,” she whispered.
“I think everyone should be careful around you.”
Elir stopped herself from asking what Irsu saw when an studied her. How did an suspect her when nobody else did? Or was it something else an meant with those words?
She wanted to find out.
* * *
The crater city did not have a name because for over a hundred years everyone had been arguing about what it should be. Small kings, cult leaders, the commander-philosophers of every design college, boss artists, and crime lords, all had their own names for the city, and nobody could earn a majority preference or the favor of the god whose fall had caused the crater itself. He lived in the center of his city, sometimes benevolent, sometimes razing an entire precinct with his temper.
Every neighborhood had a name to make up for it, and Lady Insarra’s fortress rose in a spiral of elegant towers at the center of the Rivermouth precinct. Stone designers had carved tunnels through the side of the crater to draw the clean water of the Lapis River into the city, where it bubbled up in private springs and carefully monetized pools. It was this water that made Insarra rich.
Elir lived a twenty-minute walk away, in the Chimera precinct, where several design colleges made their homes. There the buildings burst with strange angles and open rooftops lined with toothy force-hooks, swaying towers, and cloud bridges connecting floating apartments, each style a secret of its birth college.