She stared down at the dirty carpet. When she looked up she saw her own eyes in the mirror across from the bed, wide and framed by wiry hair. A deer watched from a painting on the wall behind her—the artist had aimed for majestic and settled for frightened—a creature that didn’t belong on this island, framed by forest Kai didn’t recognize, fat sun-dappled leaves hunter green on top and gold beneath, the forest of a country with a winter.

She lay back, and hugged the bathrobe against herself. It smelled of laundry soap and fake lavender.

There it came, bubbling up from subconscious depths. Not exactly an answer, not exactly a plan. But she could get into the pool. All she had to do was apologize.

First, though—thoughts vague now as sleep seized hold—she had to go shopping.

Gods, maybe she was going mad.

*   *   *

The next morning, quarter past nine, Kai stood poolside at the Kavekana Regency in a new suit (cream pants and jacket, navy blouse), hands folded on the head of a new cane (dark hardwood with a silver head molded like a pre-Contact totem), and watched Teo Batan swim.

The Regency’s pool deck overlooked the ocean, which here on the outer face of West Claw was the kind of intense blue painters never used for fear gallerists would laugh at them. The pool water seemed transparent at first glance, but compared with the bleach-white towels and pool attendants’ uniforms it had a slight green shimmer of chemicals or Craft. Water flowed over the deck’s seaward edge into a trough below eye level, and recirculated. To a swimmer, the pool would seem to extend forever, merging with ocean—though the slight green tint probably spoiled the illusion.

In the shallow end, a middle-aged woman helped a toddler tread water, child in one hand and a mimosa in the other. The mother (or nanny—their hair color was the same, and beyond that Kai had a hard time telling mainlanders apart) wore a thin gold necklace and diamond stud earrings with the air of someone who thought gold necklace and diamond studs did not quite rate as jewelry. Behind the woman, two kids played tag.

On the deck, three men bent in identical attitude of hangover or prayer around a glass table that supported three many-umbrella’d drinks. A skeleton in sunglasses reclined in a lounge chair, tanning mirror angled toward his face. Or hers. Hard to tell.

In the deep end, Teo swam laps alone.