Izza approached down the beach, and listened. “I don’t want to show things as they are,” the kid said. “Kid” also wasn’t right—he was at least ten years older than Izza. But he sounded like a kid. “What’s the use of showing them how they are if we don’t talk about how they could be?”

The old man laughed, a crumbling sound. “Don’t be an ass. I don’t blame you for writing damn fool love poetry. I said you shouldn’t write about riding horses unless you’ve ridden a horse. Especially not if you want to write lines like ’surging bone-white sides / and dew-sparked flanks at dawn.’”

“Would you tell Cathbart not to write about colors because he was blind? Or not to write about angelic battles because he’d never fought in one.”

“Cathbart fought in the Tyranomachia, back in Camlaan, and angels never made so grand a war. And he’d seen for forty years before he lost his sight. You think we forget how these work once we lose the use of them?” The old man’s hand shot out faster than Izza could follow or the poet could flinch, and rapped the kid’s skull.

“Oh. No. Gods, Mako. That’s not—”

He bared broken yellow teeth. “I’m telling you this for your own good.”

“You’ll let me perform?”

“Perform on the street if you want, I can’t stop you. And if you show up to the open stage, Eve won’t turn you away. But go up there with these and you’ll deserve all the rotten fruit they throw.”

The kid closed his book. “I need to think.”

“Go. Think. Tell me when you’re ready to do. Or, better yet, don’t tell me. Do first, and I’ll hear.”

The kid stormed off without sparing Izza a glance. The old man shrugged, and turned back to the surf. Izza crept closer.

“Not a bad poem,” Mako said to no one in particular. “All things considered. Needs a few more passes, tighter imagery. Not to mention he thinks he’s the only person on the planet ever thought of alliteration. But if we threw out every kid who thought they were god’s gift to whatever, we’d be short geniuses in a decade or so. So what are we to do?”

Izza decided to go. She’d hoped this Mako might be a fierce operator, but here he leaned on his stick, talking to waves.

She’d send him a note, explaining what happened. Then leave the island with Cat, if Cat would take her.

“I said, what are we to do?”

Mako was looking at her.

“Ah,” she said. “I don’t know.”

“What’d you sneak up on us for, if not to listen? Why listen, if not to form an opinion?”

She swallowed hard. “I. Um. You’re Mako.”