Ms. Kevarian cocked her head to one side. “Interesting assertion. I can speak, at least, and words have power wherever they are heard.” She gestured to her briefcase, which rose off the ground and snapped open. An envelope floated to her hand; she removed a few papers. “I’m prepared, based on what I’ve heard, to name you personally, as well as the Sacerdotal Order of Kavekana in general, in a suit for fraud and mismanagement of my clients’ funds.”

Jace kept his balance, and his composure. “You do not frighten us. We have allies.”

“You do not,” she said. “You have clients. And how long will they support you, I wonder, once people learn that you mismanage funds and kill Iskari tourists? Your clients will not risk war in your defense, I think. And without them, what do you have? You are, in the end, one small island.”

And so the web pulled tight. Kai stood rigid in silence that felt much longer than the few seconds her watch ticked out. The war played out in her mind: skyspires around Kavekana pulsing with light, Craftsmen and Craftswomen swarming the island’s defenses in their thousands, crackling with fury and unholy magic. Penitents would fight on the beaches and in the forests, and they would break. The Iskari would let the island suffer. Docks would burn, streets run molten, the sky melt.

All this, if she’d guessed wrong. She hoped she hadn’t.

“I don’t think that will be necessary,” Kai said.

*   *   *

You don’t have to do this, Cat said. This is too much for anyone to ask of you.

The goddess filled space, warped time. Secret and strange, newborn heart of the world that had torn her life again and again to rags. Unknowably vast.

Yet she remembered running with the Blue Lady through West Claw alleys at four in the morning, pockets full of stolen coin, blasted out on bliss and worship. As they ran their feet trailed fire. She fell, here, too, as once she’d fallen and the goddess had reached out to catch her. She tumbled through the air and did not die.

If you do this, that’s it, Cat said. No more running. No more hiding.

“I know,” she said.

The world was too big to change, this dread Lady too much to comprehend at once.

But she knew where to start.

Izza saw herself by the gods’ light, reflected off Cat’s silver skin. She didn’t want to turn away.

You could be safe, with me.

“Maybe,” she said, “but this is a broken place. And my people need me. And nowhere’s safe, not really.”

What people, she mocked herself as she said the words. A few refugees. Street kids. Children of no country, and a goddess with no children. Yet.

Are you sure?

And then there was Cat. Chosen of a goddess, and alone.