“That’s what I thought, at first. I convinced myself I imagined the whole thing. But we keep track of our idols. Every gift they grant, every bit of grace they bestow, is written in our library. I found this list of gifts issued by the dead idol. Your name appears again and again. But you’re no pilgrim of ours.”

He turned from the wall to face her. “I don’t understand.”

Somehow she found the strength not to look away. “What do you know about idols, M. Margot?”

He swallowed. “They are … repositories. Holes where one hides soulstuff from gods and kings.”

“I think when you were attacked, you needed help so bad you somehow broke through into the pool, into the space where our idols live. I don’t know how, yet, but you took soulstuff from them. You prayed, and your Lady answered those prayers. Your poems caught fire, and some of them bled back along the bond into your Lady, and lingered inside her. Until one day she died. Now you have a reputation you can’t sustain without more poems. Meanwhile, our vaults have been pilfered, our pilgrims robbed. On paper, it looks like you were stealing from the Grimwalds, a family of, let’s call them legitimate businessmen. People who are very jealous of their property.”

“I didn’t steal anything. I wrote.”

“Great writers steal,” she said. “Didn’t someone say that once?”

“What happened was a consummation.”

“Maybe. Look. I bet the priests up the mountain have been hunting everywhere for Edmond Margot—but they’re looking for a thief, not a poet. You’re lucky my friends aren’t literary types.” He didn’t seem to get the joke. Kai continued. “It gets worse. The Grimwalds have a Craftswoman working for them, and she’s already suspicious. She’s combing through our records, and when she learns the truth, she’ll come after us both—the Order in public, and you, too, if your luck holds.”

“And if it doesn’t?”

“She’ll come for you in private. I doubt her clients would use anything flashy. Knives are cheap. Efficient. Hard to trace.”

“I didn’t mean to take anything.”

“Intent doesn’t matter, it’s the fact of the taking. What you did should be impossible. If others can follow in your footsteps—the pool holds tens of millions of souls. If you knew what you had tapped into, you could be the richest man in the world today. Hells, I doubt the Grimwalds will even kill you. Their smartest play is to take you apart and learn how you wormed past our defenses.”

“Let me see that.” He reached for the vellum, but she pulled it away.

“No.”

“You expect me to believe you on the strength of evidence you refuse to show me?”

“I’m not supposed to have these papers. If you see what’s here, you could end up in even more trouble.”