Irsu tasted her, and Elir gasped into ans mouth at the touch of ans tongue, leaning away.
It was lovely and strange to feel the eddies of design dancing in the air because someone else had licked her bottom lip.
* * *
Irsu kissed her almost every day.
In one of the pockets of the pearl garden, or in her workshop, or quickly in a turn of the corridor, just a breath or lick of her lips. It added such a tension to her days that Elir relished nearly as well as the kisses themselves. Frequently, Irsu came to observe during Lady Insarra’s posing sessions, leaning over Elir’s shoulder to watch the sweep of her pencil. She’d moved on from the contours to the details, and marked extremely precise maps of Insarra’s body. The lady wanted as little change as possible, except what was required to forward a male aesthetic. Irsu rarely spoke to Elir during the sessions; an wasn’t cold exactly, but seemed indifferent. When Elir asked why, Irsu said ans mother would lose respect for her if Insarra realized she was carrying on with an. “I’m lazy and unambitious,” an said, drawing the words out like ans mother.
Insarra did wish to retain her perfectly shaded Osahan skin, but said she’d take a darkening of her hair with undertones of auburn, as such was the perfectly realized beauty of her ancestors. Elir nodded her agreement, but she was disappointed.
Irsu noticed, and inquired why when they were alone.
“Beauty should be surprising,” Elir said. “She could have blood-red hair, or iridescent scales spilling down her scalp, for the price she’s paying. I could fit her irises with ecstatic shifting flecks! And she merely wants the physical appearance of a man’s aesthetic. How is that better? For her or anyone? It is merely different.”
The heir to Rivermouth smiled in such a haughty manner Elir snapped her mouth shut. But an said, “You’re frustrated with the art.”
Elir reminded herself that the ultimate point of this redesign was assassination. She could not meet Irsu’s gaze that afternoon, and put off ans kisses. An teased her for being a grumpy artist.
* * *
Elir carefully controlled the release of her breath to keep her claws from trembling as she linked six separate threads of force over the mouthpiece of her design mesh. They latched as they should, shaping a perfectly specific lip-corner. Insarra had approved the final design two days prior and so Elir had begun the real construction. This part was even more delicate than the initial phases, especially because it would be examined closely by security designers and the small king’s mercenaries, for weaponry or false-design. Elir had to get it right, and still leave a ripple in which to pinch the sabotage at the very last moment.
Every stroke and pull of her claws could unravel it.
When the alarm ripped through the walls of the workshop, Elir gasped and instantly splayed her hands away from the mesh. Then her mind caught up, and she realized what the alarm meant: the fortress was under attack.
She carefully opened the long box and settled the mesh inside it, sealing the box with null spikes to keep every possible combination of forces out. The workshop was a good place to hole up, as it was suited to defense here in the depths of the fortress.
But Elir didn’t stay there: she clawed the door open and dashed out, heading up the spiral stairs. Irsu spent ans afternoons in the tiny fortress library, practicing rhetoric with a tutor or listing Sarenpet declensions, and occasionally writing poetry an refused to share.
It was stupid to leave the workshop sanctuary, but Elir wasn’t thinking. She pushed past a quad of Insarra’s personal soldiers and avoided people rushing to one of the underground shelters by darting through the gardens. The air was tinged dark, despite the daytime hour, and rang with the alarm. Just as Elir reached the side arch leading into the minaret with the library and a honeycomb of guest rooms, she slammed into Irsu.
An caught her shoulders, but was given no moment to speak, for the soldiers swept them both along to the private shelter, disregarding that Elir was not allowed, because Irsu refused to release her.
Once they were buried under not only the red rock of the crater floor but layers of defense-design, a combat-designer in Insarra’s employ lit force-lights in a web against the cave ceiling. The shelter was small but luxurious, and Insarra herself was standing with a flask of some fuming liquor in hand.
When she saw Elir, the small king tapped her foot angrily. “What is she doing here?” she asked, not exactly hostile, but annoyed.
“She was with me,” Irsu said. “And so I brought her. She’s too expensive to risk losing to your enemies.”
“Our enemies,” Insarra said sourly. She drank from her flask and stalked to her combat-designer, dismissing Elir.
Elir hugged herself. Irsu touched her shoulder. Ans hand was a weight grounding her, and she wanted to lean into an, but she settled for closing her eyes and licking her bottom lip. The forces in this shelter were perfectly aligned and in order.
She felt a hum in the soles of her feet. Then the vibration traveled up her crystal bones in uncomfortable dissonance to her ears, becoming a sound she doubted anybody else could hear. “Null the gates,” she said. Then louder, glaring at the combat-designer. “Null the gates! Can you do it from here?”
“Kid, I don’t know what you—”
Elir unsheathed her claws, gripped the lines of force tightly woven across the arch, and bent them, slipping out enough to see the air of the tunnel turning hard yellow in billowing clouds. A gaseous design, and it was strong enough to turn on elements too tiny for her to see—that was the only way through the defenses they’d passed. The elements of the air screamed as they were violently redesigned, and she could feel it in her bones.
She reached out and dug her crystal claws into the stone wall, hunting for the right threads: they were so thickly woven here she had to strip some apart to find what she wanted. Knots that could be undone and redone into null knots. She gripped a thread of rising in her teeth—bless the crystal in her bones—and worked fast. Behind her the combat-designer grunted and grabbed another thread with the tip of his stylus. He twisted it and held it at the angle she needed, then Elir flipped the final thread and hissed to speed the ecstatic force, and the null knots imploded.
As Elir fell back, Irsu caught her, dragging her inside while the combat-designer sealed the arch again.
Irsu lowered Elir to the cold floor of the shelter and stroked her braids.
“What was she doing with you?” she heard Irsu’s mother demand, though Elir was slowly drifting into force-loss sleep.
“Drawing my picture,” Irsu said tenderly.
Elir’s last thought was that her quick actions had saved Lady Insarra’s life.