The chapel loomed empty above her. She wondered if Cat was sleeping now, beyond the debris wall in the warehouse’s front chamber. What would the mainlander think of this—of Izza showing her underbelly to this woman she barely knew. This woman she’d almost killed not two hours ago.

This woman who might be dead already.

Kai surfaced, coughing. Izza waited for her to open her eyes, then held out a hand to pull her up. The woman panted, on her knees for a while, then stood, wrung out clothes and hair, and looked around, almost blind. She wasn’t used to this kind of dark. “Where are we?”

“Our church,” Izza said.

She’d built this room herself: the low benches around the hole in the floor, the ragged altar piled with the proceeds of her last several weeks’ theft, along with Nick’s ill-conceived contributions. A cave made by human hands, starlit through gaps in the roof.

Nick’s paintings watched from the walls.

Kai saw them, now: brightly colored figures eight feet tall, so rough they seemed arrested in mid-motion. Simple, vague, and vivid. “You did all this?” Kai whispered.

“We did.”

“Who?”

“Me, and other kids.”

“Those paintings. The pool in the center.” Kai paced around the entrance, examined the altar. “Why did you build it like this?”

“It seemed right. And they asked us to.”

“Who?”

She’d betrayed so much trust, bringing Kai here. Betrayed, or displayed. Why stop now? She could always kill her. She thought she could. “The gods.”

“Tell me about them,” Kai said. Izza heard fear in her voice, or desire, or both.

“A couple years back,” she said, “I got in trouble. You know how it is.”

Kai shook her head. “I don’t think I do.”

“It’s not just kids in the alleys. We’re safer here than most places, usually, because the Penitents take older crooks. Nick says they tried stuffing kids in Penitents once, but it didn’t work. We break different.”

“I’m sorry.”

Weird thing to say. “Some grown-ups caught me. I fought back, I ran. They cornered me in an alley. I was so scared I couldn’t think. Then she came.”

“The Blue Lady,” Kai said.

“No. Blue Lady was later. The Wind Woman was first. She swept me away, hid me. Whispered in my ear.” Izza walked to a white drawing on the wall, overlapped now by a towering red eagle and a one-eyed man in a scraggly robe. “She was my first. I’d heard about her from other kids, but I didn’t believe ’til then.”

“You became a believer.”

“No. Believers just believe stuff, doesn’t matter what. They don’t look too close. I didn’t become a believer. I believed.”

“And the … the Wind Woman talked to you.”

“Not much, but yeah.”

“What did she say?”

“She was scared.”

Kai blinked. “Gods don’t scare.”