Izza stood before the ocean, and raised her right hand. “I won’t betray you. Blue Lady forsake me if I lie. Smiling Jack gnaw my bones.”

Kai heard the weight of her words. Belief, deep held. “I don’t recognize those gods.”

“You don’t know all the streets on this island. Or all the gods.”

“Those aren’t Gleb gods, I mean.”

“I didn’t say they were,” Izza said. “Now I’ve sworn. Tell me.”

Kai looked up and down the road, and behind them. Dockside was as empty as it ever got. Cargo wagons rolled past. “There’s a pool at the heart of Kavekana’ai where our idols live. Only priests can enter, but somehow Margot got inside. He drew the idols’ power, and used it to write great poems. Thing is, people only bring their fortunes to Kavekana because they believe we’ll keep them safe. The fact that he could do this is dangerous to us. And the people he stole from aren’t nice. If they found out, they might have come for him. Maybe they sent someone to do their dirty work. Could have been that woman Claude was talking about.”

“Not her,” Izza said. “I know the woman he meant. She didn’t do this. The Penitents did.”

“They don’t kill.”

“I saw it.” There was a fire in Izza’s eyes that Kai didn’t dare contradict. “And it saw me. I heard Margot’s neck snap. A Penitent chased me halfway across town. Its eyes burned. I am not lying to you.”

“And yet the Watch is there, investigating his death.”

“Pretending to,” Izza said. “They won’t find anything. They killed him because they thought he was stealing from your people. Even though he wasn’t.”

“He was,” Kai said. “I have proof. Records. Documents. Margot stole from our idol. That’s certain.”

“His poems didn’t come from your idol. They came from his Lady.”

“That’s just the name he called her. He grabbed the power, made his poems however poets do, and convinced himself the idol spoke to him. Artists are liars—they lie to everyone, especially themselves.”

“No,” Izza said. “I know he spoke to her. Because I did, too.”

Kai felt she was looking at herself through a distant lens, so the dock seemed a clay diorama like the ones she used to make at school. A woman on a bench. A girl leaning against a metal rail. Dollhouse buildings. A mountain of papier-mâché. Ocean of torn paper, or cotton balls. “Idols don’t talk,” she said. “They don’t think.”

“I don’t know about idols,” Izza said. “But my Lady lives. Lived. And she gave Margot his poems.”

The words seemed so simple in Izza’s mouth. Entering Kai’s mind, their implications scattered to infinity. “Some foreign god, you mean. Margot was in touch with some kind of underworld demiurge from the Gleb.”