“I don’t like sending you away. But I will, to protect us, and you.”

“You can’t protect me from myself.”

“I can. I have. As of this midnight, the mountain’s locked against you. The rock won’t let you pass, nor the forest. The halls will turn your footsteps, the golems and glyphs bar your way. You’ll lose yourself if you try to climb the stair.”

“Forever?”

“For now.”

“This isn’t fair,” she said. “It isn’t right.”

“No,” he said. “But gods and priests are rarely fair, and seldom right.”

She said nothing.

“I love you, Kai. I wouldn’t do this if I didn’t have to.”

“Do you expect thanks?”

“No,” he said. “We’ll go together to the cable car. I won’t make you walk down alone, like a novice or a thief.” He paused at the rock, and turned. “I asked the watch for someone to escort you home. They sent Claude. He’s waiting. I could send him back, keep you here until another watchman comes.”

Beneath them, the city shone. Water lapped the shore.

“No,” she said. “That’s fine.”

Chapter 24

24

The poet lived in a walk-up apartment on the second floor of a two-story stucco house. Bed linen hung drying over the balcony. Palm trees grew in neat rows to the house’s either side, and more in the narrow yard behind, near the alley wall. Izza climbed that wall, jumped to a palm tree, and kicked a coconut crab off the trunk when it snapped a massive claw at her heel. The crab was large, and landed heavily, but it raised itself on spindly legs and lumbered off. From her perch, she watched.

Edmond Margot sat by his window. Candlelight glinted off his bald patch. She couldn’t see the details of his room, the packed bookcase and the bare china cabinet, the worn rug and the bed with no blanket but a sleeping pouch sewn out of a doubled cotton sheet. She didn’t need to see these things; she’d surveyed his apartment earlier, looking without success for hidden weapons or the remains of kids abducted, tortured, butchered. The room made him seem unbalanced, a good sign: the worst predators she’d known were the ones that put the most effort into seeming normal. Still, even poor predators had teeth.

The wraparound balcony ran beneath the window where Margot sat writing. Long jump, but this way she wouldn’t be seen from the street.

So she jumped, caught the railing, and pulled herself up and over, light as falling leaves. The poet, though, was less focused than she’d thought. His shoulders twitched, and he looked up. His eyebrows rose, mazing his high forehead with furrows.