The Penitent was built on the model of men, but larger: a statue three meters tall and almost as broad, features carved of planes and angles, two massive three-fingered hands, two feet like slabs of rock. It did not climb like Izza and Nick had climbed, feeling for handholds, testing and trusting. It marched up the mountain as if stairs had been carved into the eighty-degree slope. Joints ground rock against rock. Dust drifted down behind it. Jewel eyes in its stern stone face scanned the mountainside.

With every step, the Penitent screamed.

Izza wondered who was trapped inside. Some dockside tough too smart or drunk or angry for his own good. Dope peddler, or murderer, or a kid old enough to be tried like an adult. Maybe that was Sophie. You couldn’t tell from looking which Penitents held men and which women. You could only guess from the sound of their cries.

Penitents made you better. That was the line. You went in broken, and came out whole.

They just had to break you more first.

Izza did not shake. She’d given up shaking when her mother died, when her village burned. She did not make a sign to ward off bad luck or evil spirits. She’d tried all those signs, one after another, and none had worked for her before. Staying still, though, had.

So she stayed still, and watched the Penitent climb.

It drew level with their ledge.

She stopped breathing. Its steps slowed—or else her terror slowed time.

The Penitent climbed on.

Ivy shifted, dislodging gravel. A whisper of a sound, but Izza glared at her nonetheless, and the girl’s pale skin paled more.

Footsteps receded. Faded. Vanished up the mountain.

Wind blew soft and cool over shaded slopes. The sun set, and the first stars pierced the sky.

The dead bird lay on the pyre. The kids watched her. Scared, and waiting for direction. For their leader to tell them what happened next.

“I can’t do this anymore,” she said.

No one spoke.

“Let’s go,” she said. “We don’t need gods who die and leave us afraid. We don’t have to be the ones who survive.”

Their eyes glistened in the light of new-risen stars.

“Okay,” she said. “Fine. But this is the last. Care for the gods yourselves from now on. I’m done.”

She fished a coin from her pocket and handed it around. Each of them sank a piece of their soul into the metal, and by the time Nick passed it back to Izza, the coin pulsed with heat and life.