Kai sat down hard, facing the Blue Woman. “And Margot.”

“Him I only met him a little while ago. We thought the Lady was just ours, but I think we were wrong. He saw the Green Man, too. That one didn’t last long; him and the Great Squid were big, flashy, visible. Smiling Jack caught ’em easy.”

“And no new gods since … since the Blue Lady?”

“No. Maybe someone’s met the next, and kept quiet about it. But I don’t think so. People tell.”

“It doesn’t make sense.” Izza recognized Kai’s expression, and her tone of voice. Gamblers looked that way sometimes when they wandered swaying out of card halls and leaned against a wall and gazed into the earth, like if they stared hard enough it might open underfoot to swallow them. “I know these figures.” She pointed to the gods on the wall. “I’ve seen them, sketched in a notebook. These are idols. The one you call the Green Man—a guy named Ruiz built him, and the Squid, too. The Blue Lady, my friend Mara made her. And you say Smiling Jack killed them all.”

“That’s the story.”

“It doesn’t fit. These idols died because of bad business deals, not because someone hunted them down.” Kai limped from one painting to the next. “And they couldn’t talk. Or think for themselves. You’re describing intelligent systems. These idols weren’t complex enough for that. Simple myth machines, that’s all.”

“I don’t know how,” Izza said. “I just know what was.”

“So did Margot. And he’s dead.” Kai hugged herself, and watched the Blue Lady on the wall.

“Your Watch killed him,” Izza said. “And they’ll go on to kill my friends. My gods. Unless we stop them.”

“No,” Kai said. “The Watch didn’t kill him. I know you saw what you saw, but if a Penitent killed Margot it wasn’t working for the Watch. Something else is going on. I don’t know if that means the Craftsmen, or the Grimwalds, or my people, or what. I don’t know,” she repeated, and turned away from the Blue Lady.

Izza waited awhile, but the woman didn’t speak again. “What do we do?”

“This is deep Craft. Impossible things all happening at once. The key is up the mountain, in the pool. I have to find it.”

“You’re not going anywhere without me,” Izza said.

“I can’t bring you into the mountain. I don’t even know how I’ll get in, let alone take you along.”

“I could dress up like a client.”

“We don’t have teenage clients.”

“I can look older.”