Mako’s chest heaved, and he took a long time to speak. Whatever he had done all but shattered him. “The girl dragged me here. Dared me to come.”

Kai turned to Izza. “Thank you.”

Which Izza knew she was supposed to answer, but instead she pointed, and Kai looked behind her, to the next Penitent: the big modern model that had escorted her down from the mountain. It opened floodlight eyes, and turned toward them with a sound of grinding rock. Down the beach, two more came to life.

Kai swallowed. “Mako? Any chance you can do whatever that was again?”

The old man tried to stand, but could not.

Kai turned to Izza then. “I don’t suppose you have any ideas.”

Izza shook her head.

“Fair enough,” she said, and advanced to meet the Penitents.

Chapter 56

56

Kai had no plan, no powers, no miracle hidden up her sleeve, no gods to answer the prayers she didn’t make.

She had Ms. Kevarian’s business card in her pocket. And she was out of options.

The stars were too bright. Thinking hurt. An Iskari experimental painter had come to the Kavekana Museum once when she was a kid, and the school took them all to see. The man painted canvasses solid colors that did not exist before he invented them: blues that tugged the eyes, greens that melted the air and lingered in nightmares long after you looked away.

After Penance, freedom felt like that.

The advancing Penitents mounted toward the sky, Teo’s nearest, and behind hers two more. Kai wished she could stand straighter, walk steadier to meet them. Her legs quaked. Her shoulders and back would not obey. She didn’t limp, though: every part of her hurt equally for once.

Teo was inside that front-most statue, trapped as Kai had been. What had it done to her mind in these few hours?

“Teo,” she said. She didn’t bother to speak loudly. The other woman could not help but hear. “Teo, I’m sorry.” She groped for words to bring the Quechal woman back to herself, but thought of nothing the Penitent wouldn’t use to its own advantage. She barely knew Teo, really: saleswoman, swimmer, smiler. Not enough to free her from the prison into which the Penitent sculpted her mind.

Izza and Mako hadn’t run.

They thought she knew what she was doing.

More than one way to get yourself killed, she supposed.

The two Penitents flanked Teo’s now.

Kai put her hands into her pockets, and stepped forward.

Teo’s Penitent moved.