The lintel was carved of jade in the form of two eru with hands braced against each other’s, their lips about to meet in a kiss that would never be consummated. Did the entrance always look like this, or was it formed this way to taunt me? The doors had neither ring nor latch. When I pushed with a foot, neither budged. The cut on my forearm was still oozing, but a smear of my blood wiped onto the jade did nothing.

Frustrated, I murmured my sire’s words. “ ‘The palace where those without blood cannot walk.’ ”

“The dead have no blood to offer,” said the cacica. “Perhaps the dead cannot cross.”

“I could go forward alone. But it seems wrong to leave you behind. I should have sent you with Bee.”

“Hers is not the responsibility. You can hang the basket from the tree and return to get me.”

“What if someone steals you, Your Highness? What if I can’t return this way? Or get out at all?”

“If you are unable to get out, I will be lost regardless.” Her clear gaze measured me. “I do not fear you will abandon me. You have proven yourself loyal.”

“My thanks, Your Highness.” Her praise startled me into an unexpected spike of optimism.

I returned her to the basket, hung the basket from a branch, and from the spring drank my fill of water so cold it numbed my lips.

This time, when I smeared blood onto the jade, the stone parted as easily as curtains. As I pushed through, my first step took me into light so bright it blinded me. My second step brought me to the brink of an impossibly vast chasm. The silence made me wonder if I had gone deaf.

An entire world fell away from my feet like a bowl with tiers. Each of these tiers marked a landscape as wide as continents, and each landscape was surrounded by the Great Smoke. I looked down as might a star, hanging so high that the whole of existence lay exposed as I watched the surge and flow of the spirit world. Tides of smoke swept up from the waterless ocean to engulf swaths of land, then rolled back into the sea. Everything the tide touched was changed, except for the steady gleams that marked warded ground, the straight lines of warded roads, and a few patches that might have been briny salt flats.