She took all their soul scraps, and held them, and touched them to the thatch. The dry grass caught at once, and burned, and the bird burned, too. A thread of sickly smoke rose to the sky. Izza removed two incense sticks from the black box, and lit them in the pyre. They smelled of the desert after rain, of blood shed on cold stone, of empty temples pierced by shafts of light through ruined roofs. Beneath all that, she smelled burning feathers.

Nice, the old man had said. She wasn’t sure.

One by one the others left. Ivy stayed longer than the rest, curled into a ball against the ledge, chin propped on her knees as reflected fire and burning bird made a hell in her pinprick pupils. At last even she climbed down, and only Nick remained.

Izza could barely breathe. She told herself it was the smoke.

They climbed down together, and through the woods, and strolled along Southern past rich folk’s houses until plaster walls closed in again and streetlamps put the stars to flight and they could walk easy, camouflaged by drunks and madding crowds.

“What did you mean,” he said, “that you can’t do this anymore?”

“What I said. I won’t wait around to be locked in one of those things, just for one of you to take up as storyteller after me and get locked up in turn. I won’t be Sophie for you. For them. I have to go.”

“You can’t.”

“Watch me.”

“They need this. They need you.”

“They shouldn’t,” she said, and walked away down Southern toward the beach. He didn’t follow. She told herself she didn’t care.

Chapter 3

3

Kai met the Craftswoman a week later in a nightmare of glass. She sat in a glass chair in front of a glass table and her fingers trailed over the slick armrests without leaving a trace of oil or sweat. In one corner a glass fern stood in a glass pot, glass roots winding through glass soil. Other identical rooms stretched above, below, and to all sides, beyond transparent walls, ceiling, and floor, and in those rooms sat identical Kais and Craftswomen. As Kai crossed her legs beneath the table her infinite other selves crossed their legs, too, a susurrus of stockings breaking the silence of the dream.

In the distant waking world, she lay bandaged on a bed. Here, no injuries bound her except the ones she earned herself.

She’d set her hand on the table’s edge as she sliced her palm to the pink, a long deep wound that healed at once. The blood on the table stayed, though. Millions of red streaks surrounded her on millions of tables, catching the nightmare’s sourceless light.

“Before we discuss the idol’s death,” said Ms. Kevarian, “please explain the services your firm provides.”

“Our Order, you mean.”

“Yes.”