“We’ll never make it that far.” He turned to the window, to Kavekana. “Look at us. Our pretty little lives. Beachside poetry readings. Cocktails with tiny umbrellas. The great and good flock to our shores and overpay for drinks. You know what it’s like out there, over the horizon. In the Gleb. In Southern Kath. The poor swarm Dresediel Lex and Alt Coulumb in hungry millions, yes, but the most miserable gap-toothed glory-addict quivering on a Coulumbite street corner stands on the backs of a hundred men in lands he can’t even name. Do you know what the great powers do to tiny nations with no armies to speak of, atrophied industry, warm climates? Empires may still stand on the coast of southern Kath, but the jungle’s burning. Zombie-worked plantations consume rain forest mile by mile. Northern Craftsmen and Iskari bishops and Shining Empire families trade the locals scraps of soul for the land their ancestors built. In the Southern Gleb, Deathless Kings rule the cities while hungry men and gods scrap over bloodstone mines. We survive because an accident of history made us valuable. And if our value fades, the masters of the world will demand something else from us. Build ships. Grow sugarcane. Bow before Iskari squid gods. Host a military base. Our value is the price of our independence.”

“You talk as if there’s a war coming.”

“Of course there is. You read the newspapers. Giant serpents over Dresediel Lex. A god killed in Alt Coulumb, and the outbreak there a year later. These aren’t accidents. There’s a story here. And it’s not just the big things, the sudden changes and grand tales. Koschei’s armies fence with the Golden Horde across the steppe—because they’re scared. The Shining Empire stretches its tentacles across the Pax, and Dhistran armies train in police actions for an invasion they know will come one day. The world’s smaller than ever, and you put too many big things in a small space and they eye one another wondering who’s biggest. We may be social animals, but our gods are not. They’re hungry, and bloody.”

“You’ve given this speech before,” she said.

His face had flushed red. As he recovered his breath the flush receded, like a flower closing. The old mask returned. “I have,” he said.

“To whom?”

“Monica, first. I don’t think you knew her well—she was a partner, managed the first idol that woke up. She was as scared as me. She knew something had to be done.”

“You killed it. The idol. The goddess.”