She told the story as she’d thought it through. “She died helping us. The way she lived. Tired of waiting for his dead boys to do his work for him, Smiling Jack himself came down the mountain to hunt her children through the streets. When he caught them, he threw them into his sack, and shut the sack, and when it opened again there was nothing inside.” This had never happened. She’d made the story up days before, a patchwork of invention and theft and half-remembered dreams. None of these kids had been caught, and none had seen Smiling Jack. Still, they listened. “He caught me in a dead end, with stolen gold in my pocket. I offered him the gold, and he said he didn’t want gold. I offered him my next night’s take, and he said he didn’t want that, either. I asked him to spare me, and he refused. He came at me, with the sack open—it looks like burlap outside but inside is all needles.” Heads bobbed. They knew, though they’d never seen. The sack, the needles, both felt true. “The Lady fell on him from above, tearing and pecking at his eyes. I ran, but as I ran I felt her die.”

More nods, emphatic. They’d all felt the death, and heard her scream.

“She saved me. I didn’t deserve that. I didn’t deserve her.” The backs of Izza’s eyes burned. She tried to breathe, and realized she was gulping air. She looked down at the bird, and saw everything it wasn’t, everything it should have been. This small feathery stand-in never sheltered her in sickness, never whispered promises to her at sunset, never caught her when she fell. Her heart beat double-time in her ears, loud and distant at once. The whistle of breath through Ivy’s teeth sounded like a scream.

“We didn’t.” Nick, again. She hated the confidence in his voice. As if he believed this made-up ceremony would help. “None of us.” Izza’s heart kept up its strange double-beat—physical, an echo as if she stood too close to a loud drum. A familiar feeling. Her blood chilled. “When I first met the Blue Lady, I—”

Izza lunged for Nick. He hit the cliff face hard, and swore, but she clapped a hand over his mouth, and raised one finger to hers. He understood then, and froze.

The others did, too. Jet stopped picking at his sandal.

Izza’s heart beat in her chest, but the echo she felt was not a heartbeat. And that high keening was not the whistle of breath through Ivy’s teeth.

She released Nick, and uncurled herself on the ledge. Spread flat, she edged out her head so she could see.

A hundred meters to their left, a Penitent climbed the slope.