Title Page

Copyright Notice

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CONTENTS

Title Page

Copyright Notice

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Chapter 60

Chapter 61

Chapter 62

Acknowledgments

Also by Max Gladstone

About the Author

Copyright

Chapter 1

1

The idol would drown that night.

“Death projected for half past one A.M.,” ran the memo Kai read at lunchtime on the volcano’s break room bulletin board. “Direct all inquiries to Mara Ceyla.” Another business update among many, pinned between a recruitment ad for the office ullamal league and a pink poster for a lunch-and-learn on soul trading in the Southern Gleb. Few noticed the memo, and fewer read it. Kai did both, and took the news back to her office with her sandwich. Ham and cheese and lettuce on white bread digested easy. The news didn’t.

Kai ruminated through the afternoon, and dinner, and the night. By 1:00 A.M. her work was done: three chickens sacrificed, one each on altars of silver, iron, and stone; a stack of profit and loss statements dispatched by nightmare telegraph; a prayer litany chanted balancing on one foot; a proposal drafted, suggesting an Iskari family shift their faith from the high-risk personal resurrection market to dependable grain-focused fertility. She scrubbed down the altars, washed her hands, brushed her hair, tied it back in a ponytail, and glanced again at the clock. One twenty.

Her office windows faced into the caldera. Two human figures waited on the shore of the dark pool far below, in the pit’s center. Kai recognized their outlines, though rendered doll-sized by distance. Gavin, tall, round, peered into the deep. Mara beside him was a straight line with a slight bend at the shoulders; she paced in tight circles, nervous, desperate, already mourning.

Kai had long passed quitting time. The Order owed her a carriage ride home. In thirty minutes she could be brushing her teeth, and in five more abed and asleep, safe from everything but dreams.