It wasn’t burning.

“The altar?” That was the man beside her, the mechanic, Capistano. “They don’t keep it lit in Deliquescence. Guess you don’t come often.”

“It shows?”

“Safe guess. You think church’s this busy any given day? Lot of people scared tonight.”

“I haven’t done much churching since I was a kid,” she said.

Moon-whisper, soft and still: You worship through your work.

“It’s easy.” Not the mechanic—the girl to her right, her eyes large and liquid behind glass. She raised the book. “They’ll tell you what page to read. You say what it says in italics, like here. If you don’t know how to say it, I can help.” Because in this part of the city it wasn’t fair to assume everyone who came to church could read. And Cat was wearing Feller drag, jeans and jacket and worn boots, top two buttons of her shirt undone, a tear at her knee and a fray at her cuff. This was how she dressed growing up, how the kids she collared on patrol still dressed. Not much changed in Slaughter’s Fell, though what change would look like here she didn’t know. Suited uptown kids like those pricing out the locals up near the PQ market wouldn’t fix anything, for sure.

“Thanks,” she said, which carried farther than she meant. A hush fell over the assembly.

She followed the girl’s gaze to the altar, and the priests.

Old Carmichael stood in the center. Cat recognized none of the acolytes who followed her, and wondered if she’d come to no purpose. But the old woman spread her hands and intoned, “Behold His fire,” and from stage left (did priests call it stage left? altar left?) Abelard emerged, bearing in his cupped hands a burning coal. He set the coal inside the altar’s cage-throne. The flame danced. The choir sang. He took his place.

The girl guided Cat through the services so well Cat lost her way only once—her own fault, when she flipped two pages instead of one and landed in an exorcism rite. Carmichael’s sermon focused on duty, faith, and hope. Cat was too tired to follow most of it, but the congregation drank her words like thirsty earth drank rain. They needed.

Seril laughed moonlight when Cat joined the long alterward line to receive the ashes from Abelard. She moved slowly, like a tourist in a fabled city, weighing each street sign, intersection, tree, and graffiti mural, while locals sprinted past to work.