“Fair enough,” Teo said. “Stealing it is.”

“I thought you worked for Deathless Kings,” Kai said. “You and your Two Serpents Group. Heal the world one crisis at a time.”

“That’s the idea. Most of what I told you was true. We are trying to expand abroad. But our sponsors, all those Deathless Kings, they made their names with deicide. Understandably hard to convince Old World gods that we come in peace. So I went to Alt Coulumb, where gods and Craftsmen get along okay.”

“Seril,” Kai said. “The moon goddess.”

“Right. The one who died and got better. One of our main sponsors killed her, back in the God Wars. We figured if she signed on with us, that would get a lot of attention. I made the pitch, and I’m good at my job, current circumstances notwithstanding. The idea intrigued her. But she made a counter-offer.”

Teo stopped, as if looking for the right words. Kai seemed to know this part of the story already—or to be reading it off notes somewhere up in the stars.

“You’re here for the goddess-shard.”

“Basically.”

Izza shook her head. “I’m lost.”

Teo inhaled, and let out the breath slowly. “Look, I only know what I was told. This goddess, Seril, died back during the God Wars—mostly. Her city thought she was dead, anyway. They hired Craftsmen to come resurrect her, only during the resurrection process some of her body went missing. They think Denovo—one of the Craftsmen—they think he carved off a bit to study. Fragments of memory, that sort of thing. But where he stored it, they didn’t know.”

“Jace—my boss, you remember—”

“Turtleneck, bad attitude.” Teo nodded.

“He mentioned that Seril’s priests kept bothering the Order to return a stolen piece of her. But they couldn’t prove we had it in the first place.”

“Margot’s poems were the proof,” Teo said. “Not exactly admissible in a Court of Craft.”

Izza blinked. “Does everyone on the planet know Edmond Margot’s poetry?”

“Just the gargoyles,” Teo said.

“What?”

“Seril’s creatures. Living stone police officers, sort of. Turns out they’re poetry freaks. Songs sung at midnight, odes carved on the sides of buildings, that sort of stuff. They read journals, chapbooks, everything. And they found poems by this bard from a major god haven, which were written in their own style. Gargoyle poetry. They figured the stolen pieces of their goddess must be here—Seril’s influence seeping out into the world.”

“It isn’t Seril,” Kai said.

“Margot’s poems came from the Blue Lady,” Izza added. “Not some half-dead moon goddess.”

“I don’t know anything about a Blue Lady.”