For the first time, he hesitated. He held his hands palms up, balancing. “I suppose, if you look at it from a certain point of view. Your dive caught the Grimwalds’ attention. Which brought the Craftswoman down upon us. But I don’t blame you. I should have expected Mara’s friends to come mourn with her. I should have expected you to do something strange.”

“I didn’t, though.” She felt a thrill as she said it. “There’s nothing strange about trying to save a murder victim. You told me I was mad, and sent me away. I wasn’t.”

“You were idealistic,” he said. “Isolated. You didn’t feel the threat. I thought work with Twilling would prepare you for this conversation. A few months of seeing how little we really matter to our clients beyond the reward we offer them. I didn’t lie to you, Kai. I hope you can see that.”

“The gods won’t stop waking up,” she said.

“Then we’ll keep killing them.”

“The island is changing, Jace. You’re trying to save a world that’s going away. We all have been, since the wars. Old Kavekana’s gone.” She felt a thrill as she said it, a breaking of thick ice. “Something new is about to happen.”

“And if we let it, we’ll all pay. Mara understood that.”

“Where is she? I want to hear all this from her.”

“Ah,” he said. “Well. That part, I think, really is your fault.”

Kai felt the room grow colder. “What do you mean?”

“Your unexpected dive caused the lawsuit. The lawsuit allowed Ms. Kevarian to depose Mara. You remember your deposition.”

Her mind stretched to violin strings and the Craftswoman’s will the bow. “Yes.”

“We Craft our memory blocks well, but Mara—I don’t know whether to blame her stubbornness or praise her perspicacity. The Craftswoman didn’t find anything, but Mara realized some of her own memories were missing.”

I’ve been made partner. Their breakfast by the water, when Kai was so distracted by her frustrated pride—she’d missed Mara’s desperation. A woman groping among the jagged pieces of her mind for a truth she was afraid to feel.

Jace would have asked Mara to edit the Blue Lady’s records herself—and she kept a single shred of evidence, the stigma of her crime. Unsettled by the deposition, she found the notebook. And once she realized what had happened, where would she turn for help?

“In some ways we must all credit your persistence. Her meeting Ms. Kevarian inside the library dream was a stroke of brilliance; we might not have noticed had you not chosen that night to sneak into her crèche.”

“Mara didn’t tell you I was there. You tracked me through my cane.”