“But now—do you have any idea of the weakness of your position? Your moon goddess Seril has returned, in secret of course, since half the city still hates her. They’ve hated her for decades, since she abandoned them to fight in the Wars and died. That she’s back, concealed, changes nothing. Kos will defend her to the death—so she’s a weak spot, pure leverage for your enemies to exploit. Hundreds of Craftsmen find the very existence of a godly city in the New World an affront. You’ve given them an opening. When they learn Seril’s back, girl, they will come for you. They’re not as smart as me, nor half so ambitious. They won’t pussyfoot like I did. They will kill your gods, and your friends. They’ll carve them to pieces. They will occupy this city and remake it into a gleaming citadel of Craft and commerce. No more Criers—newspapers on every corner and zombies in the market. You’ll weep if you live to see it. You’ll wish you’d never clawed your way out of that fleaspeck town where Elayne found you.”

She scooped out his organs, one at a time, weighed them piece by piece, and burned them to ash.

“You have my job for the moment, sure. Enjoy it while it lasts.”

“This wasn’t your job,” she said. Meathooks of Craft raised and turned the body. She tore off his back in a single sheet.

“I was the Cardinal’s advisor for forty years.”

“And you used him to kill his own God.”

“If you don’t use people, they use you. The whole world’s chains, Tara—Gerhardt said it, and the God Wars proved him right. When I worked with the church, I made sure I wrapped a chain firmly around its neck. You’ve fused one around yours and handed them the dangling end. You can’t command these people from within—and command’s the only way you’ll beat what’s coming.”

The slab lay empty save for the bones. To a laywoman all skeletons looked more or less alike. Experts could read differences: healed fractures, specific ratios of limb length to torso. Tara had never seen Alexander Denovo’s bones before. She would not have recognized him had she not carved him apart with her own hands.

“This city will stand,” she said.

“What city? It’s a mess of gargoyles and priests, Craftsmen and common folk, gods hidden and revealed. When trouble comes, they’ll tear out one another’s throats. You can’t stop them. Either you’ll be chained to them—one piece of a breaking machine—or you’ll be alone, a girl naked against a flood. They won’t trust you. They won’t follow you. They won’t work with you unless you kneel to them, and if you kneel, they lose anyway.”