She wanted to tell him everything: tell him about the Lady wreathed in fire who blessed the hungry with her kiss, who fought Smiling Jack to save the souls of Kavekana’s children. She wanted to tell him how she had healed Izza from the depths of a searing fever. The Lady set a cool hand on her brow, whispered a promise in her ear. Day broke when Izza thought she would never see another dawn.

But when she opened her mouth, those words wouldn’t fit through, because they were bigger than mere sound, like islands weren’t just the part above the water but the parts below it, too, mountains rising miles over seabed.

In the end all Izza could say was, “She died.” She owed him that at least.

He did not flinch. Did not cry. Did not move except to ask: “How?”

She knew that look, the hunger behind it. Margot needed her, surely as the children did, and that need would not fade no matter how many answers she gave him. Izza would remain priestess of a dead goddess, clutching the jagged edges of a broken dream, until she broke.

Cat’s voice: You have to choose.

“The same way as anybody else,” she said, and leapt away into the deepening night of her failure.

Chapter 25

25

Kai rode down the mountain with Claude. The cable car was clean, well lit, and empty but for them. Reflections chased her from the glass. She did not speak, and neither did Claude. He watched her, not the reflections or the slope. His hands rested on his knees. He rarely crossed his legs, or his arms, or his beliefs. His fingers drummed against his thighs. He saw her looking, and stopped.

They slid past a stanchion. Pulleys and rollers realigned. The car swayed, and continued down into the canopy of trees.

Claude followed her out of the empty station. Cable cars didn’t generally run this late. Jace must have started them again for her. Another allowance. She ran her hand over a painted rail, descended three steps to the vacant street, and walked along the sidewalk from the puddle of one streetlamp’s light to the next.

Claude kept pace three meters back, his steps slower than hers to account for his longer legs. Her faithful follower, backup, and minder. The Zurish gods Dread Koschei had supplanted, those lords of gold and raven hair who once ruled the steppe, they used to send priests (she had read) to accompany every warrior and diplomat, tradesman and spy and scholar who traveled abroad. Theological officers, the priests called themselves, haunting those they escorted, noting their every failure.

She wasn’t being fair to him. Gods and rarely priests are fair, and seldom right. Screw that.

“Why are you walking so far back?” she said, and stopped.