They seldom talked about his crime: he was a tough poor kid, and he ran with a dangerous crowd, and one day a fight turned bad, and a boy died. He wasn’t part of the fight, but he didn’t stop his friends, either. Only watched. The court judged him old enough to serve, and threw him into a Penitent. When he emerged, his body was a molded weapon, his mind a made thing. When they met again at the Rest three years back, she barely recognized the boy she’d known. He barely recognized her.

He’d gained weight since she last saw him naked. Muscle, mostly. She bit her lip, hard, and clenched her hands into fists. Nails dug half moons into her palms. Blood tasted copper. He stepped forward. She hadn’t yet removed her jacket.

Her life was bounded by mistakes. Trying to save the idol was not her first, and she’d made others since. So Jace told her, and Mara, and even Gavin by his eyes and his hesitation. This was a mistake, she knew. He had always been a mistake, her greatest.

She let her jacket fall, and made him.

Chapter 26

26

Hours later Kai still ached. She lay hung over on her own bed, alone despite the swell of sleeping flesh beside her. She wanted a cigarette. She’d never smoked. She padded downstairs and sat on her couch in her dressing gown. Her purse lay by the door, discarded in that rush of anything but passion. Hatred, maybe. Disgust—but with whom? She limped to the door, grabbed the purse, returned to the couch, and sat again, purse on the table before her, lump of leather tangled in its own strap.

She clawed inside, past wallet and keys and comb and lipstick and gloves and bandages. The red notebook looked gray as everything else in the dim light of streetlamps through her windows.

She untied the ribbon and opened the book. Its stiff spine cracked, and the pages clung together. Most were blank. Sketches covered several near the beginning, the outlines of a goat-legged woman with horns and spreading wings. Despite the artist’s poor draftsmanship Kai could tell she was supposed to be beautiful. On later pages the drawings degenerated into flowcharts and diagrams, arrows connecting labeled circles. Names, some she recognized, most she didn’t, none human. Concerns, gods, idols. Lists of numbers. Accounts, maybe, or thaums transferred, or the addresses of certain dreams.

Aside from the diagrams and the lists, the book was blank. No memories inscribed here. No explanations. No name, either. Good practice. The notes here could cost a lot of people their jobs.