“We do not age in your manner. Few accidents harm us. We fall in battle, or never. But that is not so rare as you may think.”

“This is my fault,” she said.

“Did you let demons into Alt Coulumb?”

“If I hadn’t reported on you, none of this would have happened.”

“Or it would have happened later.” Aev sat on the dais and laid one hand on a fallen horn of stone. “You might as well call this my fault for saving you, when you entered the Hot Town. My child rebuked me for that. We are both creatures of obligation, Ms. Jones: I was built to serve. You haven’t walked the path of a cause until you molded yourself to its form.”

“Why did you save me? You knew what I was.”

“They were hurting you.”

Gabby kept quiet for a while. “Seril isn’t here.”

“She is everywhere. But She is not here as She was last night.”

“I wanted to finish our interview.” The words sounded foolish even to her. She brandished her notebook.

“The time for interviews and revelations has passed. We live under threat of attack. Soon Alt Coulumb will face a fire fiercer than its god.”

Beyond the tower’s rim, the city burned.

“I heard,” Gabby said. “That’s my job. And that’s why you need this interview. People don’t know who you are, why you’re here. I can tell Seril’s story. Or yours.”

“Mine?”

“Why not? You’re at least as scary, in most people’s minds, as your goddess.”

“We are imposing by nature.”

“It’s not helping you.” Gabby approached the dais, leaving footprints in dust, and sat beside Aev. She flipped to a blank page in her notebook, took pencil and knife from her pocket, and cut the pencil sharp. “Just say what comes naturally.”

“Where should I begin?”

She looked out, and down. “Start with the city.”

*   *   *

“You should leave,” Cat told Raz that night by the Bounty’s wheel, while skeletons and snakelings and the rest of his shadowy nighttime crew busied themselves on deck.

“Leave?”

“Leave Alt Coulumb. Get to sea. There’s bad stuff coming.”

She’d found him working through a ledger on a low table by starlight. No lanterns. He didn’t need them. The book creaked as he closed its spine. “Tough day?”

“You have no idea.” She leaned against the wheel. “You know how long Justice’s regulations are?”

“Few hundred pages?”

“Try a few thousand, all dense Craftspeak, little shades from act to act. Ninety different kinds of fraud. Seven classes of assault, each with seven subclasses. Why seven, don’t ask me.”

“You’re not the type to spend her off hours reading rules.”

“No. But we’ll be under attack in a few days, so I figured it might help.”

“Attack.”