Decades past, their master had left Kavekana for the God Wars, traveling with his sisters and the Archipelago’s finest men. Bound west to war, they stopped at every island, held tournaments, chose the best and brightest to join their number. They sang as they paddled, one man choosing a melody and others joining in as the fleet became a choir. They rowed to war, warrior-poets, sailors, and scholars. One day they would return, bearing riches won in hidden battles across and beneath the earth. A crown of light would ring Kavekana’ai. The world would break and change.

Meanwhile the Penitents stood watch, and kept faith. This was Kavekana’s duty, the duty of the whole Archipelago—but weak flesh forgot its promises. No matter. Stone endured. Stone watched. Stone reminded.

And if reminders failed, stone would punish.

*   *   *

“You sure this is the way?”

“Yes,” Izza said. “I can feel it.”

“I can feel my legs about to give.”

Near the tip of West Claw, stores and parks and boulevards ceased. Tall iron fences replaced them, guarding private property. Mansions stood here, owned by Old World magnates and New World entrepreneurs, inhabited one week a year if not less and warded so intensely even Craftless Izza could see them. She wondered if Mako had to close his eyes to see.

She decided not to ask.

All this private property complicated their pursuit of Kai. Rather than circle around the beach, Izza led the old man uphill to the fields below Penitent Ridge. No estates here. Maybe the screams made even Deathless Kings nervous.

She crept from moonshadow to moonshadow, and tried not to look up at the Penitents silhouetted against the night, matte black save for their gemstone eyes. “Hurry.” She’d taken this path before, trying to escape a gang of local kids—what it was she stole she’d forgotten, a knife or a favorite skipping stone—but that time she’d been able to run.

“Why?” Mako’s breath whistled through his throat and teeth. He held her hand; his skin was dry and loose, his bones thin twigs beneath. He stumbled, and she caught him, but when she tried to pull him forward he didn’t follow.

“Every minute we waste is one more that thing has to work.”

“It’s already worked.” The old man stayed curled over. A wail drifted down the green slope from Penitent Ridge, and he flinched. “People break differently than you think. It’s not that you hurt someone enough and one moment they snap. It happens by degrees. Small accommodations. Insinuations. She’s moving now, from shade to shade.”

“What can we do?”

“Little. This is her fight.”

“I thought you could help her. Get her out.”

“Maybe,” he said. “I know tricks. One or two, from way back. I’ve never tried them. They might not work.”

“Then why are we even doing this?”