They’d sent only one. Strange: Penitents rarely made arrests alone, since they couldn’t speak or think fast. Each thought worked first from the stone shell into the human prisoner for processing, and back. They were blunt tools, lacking subtlety or social grace.

But even blunt tools had their uses.

The Penitent raised one hand, ponderous and slow. Two massive fingers and one thumb balled into a fist and it struck the door, a blur of stone faster than Izza’s eye could follow. The door snapped down the middle; the hinged half swung in and slammed against the wall, while the latched half tore free of the jamb and fell.

That, Margot noticed. He stood, turned. Green fire trailed him, and seeped out his eyes and mouth. Izza could not hear what the poet said, but she did not think he spoke a human tongue. Human or divine, his words did not faze the Penitent; it stepped forward, splintering the doorjamb. Izza ached for Margot to run, to escape through his barred window, over the balcony into the night. He could not outrun the Penitent, but at least he might have given it a chase.

He stood before the statue, rigid, proud.

Izza knew what came next.

The Penitent’s hand caught Margot around the throat. It lifted him off the ground with so little effort he seemed made of paper.

Margot stabbed the Penitent’s arm with his pen; he kicked, and slapped, and clawed.

Izza went cold. Penitents did not kill. They enforced bad laws. They caught stupid or unlucky dock rats. But Margot was dying. The flames that suffused him flickered and dimmed.

The priest had sent not cops, but an assassin.

“Leave,” a thin high voice whispered in her ear, Smiling Jack’s voice, all metal and wheels. “That’s all you can do. Margot built his own coffin. Let him lie.”

Margot stabbed the Penitent’s sapphire eye with his pen. The statue did not flinch. The prisoner within wailed.

Izza could not help Margot. But perhaps she could save a piece of him.

She leapt from wall to tree to balcony, ducked beneath the window to stay out of sight. The apartment floor creaked with the Penitent’s weight. Izza was close enough now to hear the poet gasp for breath, the faint percussion of his fists against stone.

With the Penitent’s attention fixed on Margot, Izza might be able to snatch his notebook. The window was open. Her arm could fit through the bars easy. Grab the book, and run.

Now.

She did not move.

Dammit. Go. This is how they get you. They march, and they terrify, and when they come for you in the end you’re so scared you let them do what they want. Like Dad, and Mom, like the priestess with her throat slit.

Margot tried again to scream, and failed.