“Have other things to do.”

“Will this be dangerous?”

“Is thieving dangerous?”

“Not unless you’re caught.”

“Right.”

He watched the priest, silent, for a while. “I wish the Blue Lady was here, is all.”

“I know.”

“I miss her.”

“Me too,” Izza said.

“Okay.” Closed eyes, a breath, a whispered prayer. “Okay. What’d this woman do to you, anyway?”

“Nothing,” Izza said. “Yet. And I hope it stays that way.”

She left him lying there, chin resting on folded fingers. Thin puckered lines showed pale against sun-browned skin through the ripped cloth of his shirt. She’d never asked about those scars.

Izza climbed down the dizzying height, from fire escape to drainpipe to garbage bin, to crouch in the alley and watch the sanctioned world walk past. Somber suits, linen dresses, suitcases, and bags: soulstuff condensed into physical form, life made concrete. She thought of the crabs she hunted in the surf, seaborne insects who built heavy shells around themselves. You could grab them by those shells, lift and throw, and watch the splash.

She slipped back east to the poet’s house. The afternoon streets in East Claw belonged to working men and women. Construction workers, shirtless, climbed bamboo frames, tool harnesses slung over broad shoulders. Teamsters drove wagons piled with grain sacks and bales of cloth and packaged goods across town to West Claw shops. Wood strained and leather creaked. A drover wiped her forehead on her sleeve, then swatted an errant cow with a goad. A road crew hauled up broken cobblestones, cemented new ones into place. Laundries flew a war’s worth of surrender flags from clotheslines. Shining Empire sailors toasted one another with sorghum liquor at a sidewalk table outside an Imperial restaurant. An old Kavekana drunk crouched alone on a corner, and watched her with milky eyes. She walked faster.

Margot’s street was deserted. She knocked on his door, but no one answered. She walked around the balcony and peered in the window. Room a mess, bed made, poet absent. Off for an afternoon stroll. If the watch had seized him already, they would have left signs. The door wouldn’t be locked, for one thing, or on its hinges. Watchmen didn’t like obstacles, and Penitents were a universal key.

She’d trailed the poet often in the three weeks since her rescue, and knew his daily routine and where he went on walks. After an hour’s hunt she found him southbound on Dockside—easy to spot, clad as usual in green velvet. Cargo cranes far off by the Claw’s tip flashed mirror codes of reflected sunlight as they swung containers ashore. Margot paused to watch two wagoners argue over a wreck, then walked on. Knees and elbows showed through his threadbare suit.