POV: siri
Summary
Siri wakes curled against Susebron's shoulder in the bed that, since the night their picnic ended differently, he no longer leaves in the mornings. The white sheets throw prismatic light around him as they always do. She lies still for a while, marvelling at the absurdity of her life — married to the most important religious and secular figure of the Inner Sea, the focus of the Iridescent Tones, the creature Idris is taught to fear — sleeping quietly against her side. She thinks, ruefully, that they are fools. The one thing they had to avoid was conceiving an heir; they are aiming straight at it. She suspects too that her old act would not have fooled the priests for many more weeks regardless.
Susebron stirs and, true to the routine, opens by writing *I love you* on his board. She tells him she loves him too. He keeps writing: *we are probably in trouble, aren't we?* They go through the arithmetic. She knows nothing about pregnancy except what she has heard from women in Idris — some take time, some did it in a single wedding night. A year from now she could be a mother. And if any of the Susebron-and-she theorising they did was right, any child she carries is already in the priests' hands: they will take her infant, swap in their smuggled Returned one, and dispose of her. Bluefingers warned her. She had not understood how immediate the danger was.
Susebron tells her he has made a decision. He wants to make himself known — to the people, to the other gods — and take his throne for himself. She objects: they had agreed that was too dangerous. He concedes the danger and answers it: the priests have stiffened the leash on him personally; *he* cannot shout the truth and his guards will pull him away if he tries to bolt. *You* have fewer guards. *You* can yell. She points out that no one will believe the Idrian queen screaming that the God King is being held prisoner by his own priests. He has a better plan: she should go first to Lightsong — the Returned she has been telling him about — and tell him the truth, and let him bring in other gods whose voices the priests cannot all silence.
She offers an easier route. Why not flee? Her serving women are now Pahn Kahl; Bluefingers has said he will get them out if she asks; they can run for Idris. Susebron shakes his head. The Hallandren armies would follow them to Idris and they would arrive as the reason their country was invaded. Idris is no safer for them than Hallandren. Some other country, then? He shakes his head again. Foreign powers would take them as ransom against Hallandren; the kingdom of iridescence is still hated from the Manywar outward. And the only way to actually stop the war is for the God King to forbid it openly; if he reaches the throne, his gods are obliged to obey him.
She raises one last objection. He needs a Breath a week to live. If they flee, that becomes impossible. He hesitates, then writes: *I would not die without Breath.* He has overheard his priests once. The stories of weekly need are not lies — but he holds the hoard of generations on his throne, and his body would simply absorb one of those extra Breaths each week. He could survive in hiding for years. He adds, immediately, that this is not an argument for fleeing: the same hoard makes him a prize anyone would try to take, God King or not. She turns the implication over in her head — that there is something hidden in the way Breath holds itself together that she does not yet understand — and lets it go. She does not have the experience to unpick it.
They agree. If they are going to expose his priests, it must be now, before her body forces the issue. There is a general assembly of the court in a couple of days — Susebron has heard his priests call it the meeting that will decide whether Hallandren marches on Idris. She will sit with Lightsong as she often does, ask for an audience away from servants and priests, and tell him everything. If they can move enough of the pantheon to demand that the God King speak, Susebron will open his mouth and let the gods see for themselves. The priests will have to bow to their own pantheon's will. Siri nods. *All right. Let's try it.*