Some days Elir was allowed to walk through the twisting, layered streets of the crater city on her own, with nothing but a linen cloak designed to bend threads of ecstatic force to make her slightly hard to spot. She didn’t like wearing the hood, as it muffled the singing of skull sirens and the hum of graffiti and street advertisements. Elir was not worried about thieves or assaults, for her crystal bones were strong, and her claws viciously sharp.
It was on the days when her neighborhood and the Rivermouth were under small-king alerts or the god’s interdiction warning of sky-whales roosting nearby or diamond rain—both remnants of recent wars between city factions—that Elir took extra protection with her: a contingent of mercenary combat-designers trained to turn air into ice or pull blood out through an enemy’s pores. Paid for by Lady Insarra, of course. Those days, Elir was bundled into a force-suit woven with ecstatic wires, which she could activate with a sharp cry. Even a sky-whale would hesitate to chomp on such a spiky treat.
Elir arrived at Insarra’s fortress exhausted those mornings, needing to rehydrate herself from the effort it took to move under the weight of the suit. She stripped it off piece by piece in the sunny courtyard just beyond the fortress’s third-tier gates. The mercenaries teased her, easily moving in their own armor as they left for Insarra’s private barracks. Usually a kitchen servant awaited Elir with a flask of water and cup of mint tea, as well as a small basket of sweet cheese and olives to take with her to the workshop.
Today it was Irsu holding a juniper-wood tray inlaid with gold sigils spelling out a poem Elir could not read. She took the water flask and sipped from it, then dribbled some into her palm to splash her hot forehead. All the while, she kept her eyes on Irsu’s, trying to exude confidence.
But ans nearness shook her. Especially when one half of ans mouth lifted in that wry smile as she pressed some water up into her scalp, hoping to stick her baby hairs where they belonged.
“Don’t you have a design comb for that?” Irsu asked.
“Not with me. Can I borrow yours?”
An shook ans head, and that sleek, straight hair brushed along the embroidered silk of ans sleeveless robe. “I don’t need one.”
Elir licked her bottom lip to feel the threads of force dancing around Irsu, and when ans gaze flicked down to watch, she realized a non-designer might think it was a different sort of habit. But when Irsu kept ans gaze on her mouth, she also realized she didn’t care why an thought she’d done it, because it was clear an liked it.
She took a deep breath. “I need that tea, please.” She plucked a small square of cheese off the tray. The sweetness was complicated by essence of roses. A good restorative.
“What is the alert for?” Irsu asked.
“An old spider mine was tripped last night, arming a whole web of them between Chimera and Ribbonwork. Everything around is on the god’s interdiction.”
Disgust crawled over Irsu’s beautiful features. “It is these wars that make the small kings small.”
“When you are the small king of Rivermouth, will you stop them?”
“If I survive to ascend.”
An would, Elir thought, because ans mother was not long for life.
* * *
They walked in the labyrinthine pearl garden in the residential section of the fortress. Near the center, four towers were connected with flaring balconies like petals spiraling up the stem of a vibrant suncup. The pearl garden wove around the bottom levels, looping over itself in puzzled layers, tucking under to make surprise rooms or corners that flared with shade bushes. The paths were laid with crushed marble, gleaming white and iridescent blue-purple, which is what gave the garden its name. Irsu led Elir to a tear-shaped grotto with a thin lattice roof laced with blossoming drop vines—the flowers hung in near-perfect spheres of white and deep pink. They bobbed happily in the artificial breeze of force-fans.
“I can relax here,” Irsu said, sinking onto the gleaming granite edge of a crescent-shaped pool. Fish with fins like a peacock’s tail swam lazily in the clear water, blowing bubbles that lifted above the surface before popping to release a sweet smell. Decorative chimerical design could be the most fun, but it wasn’t intense enough to hold Elir’s interests.
She perched beside Irsu, watching the way sunlight filtered through the vines to mottle ans black hair. She could see the slight waver in the light-prints indicating that a force-roof covered this entire garden.
“Do you think you’re making my mother better?” Irsu asked, tilting ans head back to look at the nearest bobbing drop flower.
“Is something wrong with her?” Elir asked, sliding her gaze along the lines of Irsu’s throat. Her pulse popped with little bursts of ecstatic force.
Irsu laughed and jerked ans chin down to grin at her. “So many things. But nothing a redesign of her body will improve.”
“Oh.” Elir missed the visual access to ans neck, and traced the lines of ans bare shoulder with her gaze instead. “But what will a redesign hurt? And if it improves her state of mind, surely it helps.”
“Her state of mind is boredom, so I suppose….But your skills are wasted giving her a new aesthetic she doesn’t need.”
“It’s never a waste!” Elir was startled out of her obsession with Irsu’s features. “At the very least I am practicing, and together, your mother and I create art.”
“But you could be practicing your art by making the world better.”
Elir narrowed her eyes. She knew this philosophy. “You’re a cultist.”
Irsu glanced away and rubbed ans thigh nervously. Then an curled ans hand into a fist and looked back at her, hard. “So? Cultists have good ideas. There is even a cult approved by the fallen god.”
“My parents were both architects in my college,” Elir said.
“The College of Dedicated Renovation.”
“It sounds cold, and we have many necessary regulations that help us direct our designs so we don’t end up hurting anyone. My ama taught me to work architecture without doing harm.” She put her hand over Irsu’s and wondered if her ama would approve of this sabotage assignment. It was a small harm to prevent a greater one. Like cutting into a body to revive the heart, the commander-philosopher of her college had said.
An loosened ans fist and nodded. “Good.”
“Good?”
Turning ans hand beneath hers, Irsu laced their fingers together. “I wouldn’t like to want to kiss someone who believed in weaponizing architecture or death-design.”
Elir’s breath caught in her throat, and instead of replying, she leaned up and put her mouth against Irsu’s. Ans lips were dry, and softer than she’d expected, and an pressed gently. Her eyelids fluttered, and she thought of the contours of ans thin lips even as she touched them with her own, even as rising force teased up her spine, tingling with ecstatic, and flow pounded through her veins with every beat of her heart. Falling force dripped through her stomach like the hundred tiny feet of a tunnel snake.