“Well?” she called. “Here I am.”

Night pressed in on all sides.

“You know me. I know you. I told your stories. Sacrificed to you. Mourned you. Missed you.”

Mute idols watched.

“I’m not leaving.”

The quality of the void changed: a great mass swam between them and the pool’s surface, cutting off all light but the faint glimmer of Cat’s skin.

So this was the end, she thought. Drowning in a pit beneath the world.

Fitting.

Then the darkness shone green.

*   *   *

“One intruder,” Kai said. “And her hostage.” Jace joined her by the pool, and looked where she pointed, in time to see shadows swallow the pair of them.

“Lost,” he said.

She hoped not. “We can still save them both. Even if we wait, there should be enough left to question.”

“Gods, Kai. You can be vicious when you put your mind to it.”

“Turns out our problems have a single source,” she said. “A bit of living goddess, stuck inside the pool. She contaminated the other idols.”

“But if we remove her,” Jace said, “our problems should stop. Good. I don’t need to tell you how much of a weight this has been.”

“What will you do with that goddess-piece when you find it?”

“Don’t know yet. Melt her down, I suspect. Recast the soulstuff in another form. Or sell it—plenty of market out there for a living goddess, even a piece of one.”

“If your offer’s still open,” she said, “I want my old job back.”

“Better than your old job. You’ve shown your worth in blood. You’ve earned a promotion, even more than Mara.”

“What about Mara?”

“What do you mean?”

“You still haven’t let her out of the Penitent.”

“She’s less understanding than you are,” he said, and turned from the pool. “And she’s seen more than you.”

Kai too turned away. “You mean the poet’s death?”

“Mara’s not an inherently violent person. She has blood on her hands, but she doesn’t know why it’s there. She will understand, eventually. A little island like ours, in the middle of a big ocean, is a garden: it must be carefully managed.”

“Which makes you the gardener?”

“Basically,” he said.

“Uprooting flowers where necessary.”

“Better to prune than to uproot. It’s a shame we can’t put gods inside the Penitents as well. We’ve had to kill those idols that woke up, and use the Craft to reassemble them. People, on the other hand—we can make them do what they must. Like your friend Claude.”

Kai kept her voice level. “What do you mean?”

“Oh, it’s fine. Claude,” Jace said, “you can come out now.”

Footsteps echoed down the cave-passage behind Jace; Claude emerged. He wore his uniform, and walked stiff backed.