Wires cut and rolling joints crushed. She strode through a scalpel thicket, and left pieces of herself on each branch and twig. She stopped beside Mara, faced Jace’s desk, and stood at attention. She tried to run, but pain turned her stomach: physical pain from her body’s resistance, and mental anguish from her own failings.

Resistance meant suffering. But how could she not resist the usurpation of her mind?

By agreeing with the statue. By sharing its devotion, and its judgment.

She didn’t know whether that thought came from her or from the crystal.

She felt sick.

“I’m sorry,” Jace said.

A strange thing to say when he’d done nothing wrong. Justice demanded sacrifice. Even, sometimes, betrayal.

Gods. She tried to push the foreign thoughts from her mind, but felt herself pushed down in turn: her own will an evil impulse, a depraved desire.

“It has to be done,” he said. “You’ll both understand, in time.” He walked to his office door, and opened it. “Send the other one in.” A second Penitent arrived, standard model, moving slowly. Kai could hear a woman inside, and muffled curses in Quechal. Teo. “The two of you.” He pointed to Kai, and then to Teo. “Go to the beach around West Claw Tip. I’ll send someone when I’ve decided on our next step.” Kai tried to stay, and the statue cut her—or made her feel she was cut. Surely Penitents weren’t so reckless with their prisoners. Illusion or not, the pain was real, as was the sense of blood running down her leg.

She joined the other Penitent in the hall, ducking to pass through Jace’s office door.

She wished she could talk to Teo. To Mara. Penitents had that ability, it seemed, though she was not allowed to use it: without word or visible signal, Teo’s and Kai’s fell into step and marched down the halls of Kavekana’ai.

Their run down the mountain slopes, stone feet grinding over stone ledges, skidding along cliffs and down heavy slopes, was a new torment: Kai’s body couldn’t bear the speed and force of their descent. She mangled, twisted, broke herself. Once she swiveled 180 degrees from the hips to catch a cliff’s edge as she fell, and torqued the several tons of her legs around to kick footholds into the rock—then somersaulted ten feet to land stiff legged. Her bones broke, joints popped, muscles tore, and knees shattered—but as she reached the mountain’s base and marched down the supply road to the city, she felt whole. Was the pain a phantom of the mind, which knew her body could not stand such strains? Or had she really broken herself, with only the Penitent left to hold her together?

She remembered Claude’s scars and suspected the truth was a mix of both.