Her jaw clamped and her arms tensed and her nails bit into her wrists and forearms. She would have stood and kicked the box across the warehouse, but she didn’t want to waste the rice.

She stared instead into the steam and imagined fingers around a throat, and didn’t know whose throat or whose fingers. A Penitent patrol marched by outside in thunderous array. She did not flinch. They passed. Even their echoes failed.

“Hey,” Cat said a few minutes later. “Sorry I’m late.”

Izza twitched to her feet, whole body taut at once. Her eyes were used to the dark by now. The mainland woman stood by the hole in the warehouse wall. Must have crept in while Izza wasn’t looking. Stupid. Distracted, feeling sorry for herself.

She tried to look calm, but still she took a step back as Cat neared. The woman’s limp was better, not yet healed. She moved slowly over rubble, into and out of light.

“I thought you left,” she said.

“I went for a walk, got lost in the warrens. Too many side streets. I need you to help me make a map.”

“I thought,” she repeated.

“I’m here now.” Cat spoke slowly, hands out. “I just took a walk, that’s all. Trust me. When it’s time to leave, you’ll know. You’ll be ready. Okay?”

“I brought you rice.”

“Thanks,” Cat said, and sat, and ate.

The next day, Izza stole a purse and did not sell it: kept it, rather, on the altar in the hidden warehouse chapel, under the gaze of dead gods. The day after that, she stole two, and the next two more. Building a little storehouse for the kids, tribute to whatever new gods they might find after she was gone.

She’d leave them ready. But she’d leave all the same.

Chapter 7

7

Kai woke to find a folded letter on her sickroom sheets, parchment marked in spindly writing that faded as she read: “My office, one hour. —J.” Economical. She placed the paper, folded again, on her bedside table, stood with aid of cane, and staggered to the bathroom. Sleep gummed her mind and body. At least Jace didn’t come to her by nightmare. Her dreams the last few weeks had been dark and drowning.