Kai dove into the water without a splash. The bottoms of her feet kicked twice, pale against the black, and she was gone. Izza felt her go. Kai had already absorbed the soulstuff Izza added to the necklace when she fastened it around Kai’s neck. But some of Izza lingered there: bits of self sunk into that necklace through years of wearing. Not so much you’d notice, unless you almost starved yourself to death.

Which Izza had, many times.

So a piece of Izza sank with Kai, and wriggled free into the ocean. Distance attenuated the sensation: Izza’s soul pulled like toffee, bond stretched long and thin, fading to a toothache in the heart.

Maybe Kai would keep faith. Maybe the contract would hold. Maybe not. Either way, Izza would find her. The necklace could look after itself: the knot Izza had tied would warn her if it was broken, or the cord cut. Only the wait remained.

She stood before the altar and pondered how to wait.

Chapter 46

46

Shivering, wet, Kai checked into a hotel in the Palm, one of those cheap transient places with ratty gray carpet that could look clean for a decade between shampoos. Luckily she’d found a cab after a few minutes of limping soaked and cold down the dockside streets. Her clothes dried, mostly, in the cab, but she still looked a mess. The desk clerk barely glanced up from his book—passed her a contract on a clipboard that she signed without reading. She rode the lift to her third-floor room. Floral print wallpaper, holey sheets. Walls and curtains and table and chairs all had a stain-proof sheen, slick as the back of a beetle’s shell.

She wrung out her clothes in the bathtub, and hung them over the towel rack to dry. Harbor scum crusted her skin, and stained the whites of her nails black. She steamed herself off in the shower. Dark rivulets ran down her body. Dirt and scraps of seaweed flowed into the drain. She painted figures with grime on tile: the half gods of the hidden temple.

She had to dive into the pool, to see the idols, to learn the truth behind the records. Of course, she wasn’t allowed back into the mountain.

Which did not leave her many options.

Before her shower, the room had smelled stale. After, it smelled stale and damp and bodily, like crumbled mushrooms. She opened the window. Curtains bellied in the night wind.