Mara and Gavin had enlivened the bathroom with a few touches from Kai’s house, but purple duck-shaped soaps and green towels did not soften the sterile white and chrome. Her hospital gown husk lay discarded on gray tile. Too-bright ghostlights reflected off her skin and off the mirror to her eyes: a worn, ill-used body made of meat, webbed with old and new scars. The bite wound on her shoulder looked like the angry outline of a blinded eye. More scars on her back, from the idol, as if she’d once had wings and someone sawed them free. They’d cut her hair short to operate, the clipped black fuzz grown out since to something like a pageboy cut. Mapping her scars, she imagined her next trip to the beach, once she’d healed.

What happened to you? the boys and girls would say.

Myself, she thought, and showered, and gritted teeth rather than accept the pain.

*   *   *

When Kai reached Jace’s office he was in a meeting. She waited in the leather-cushioned foyer, paging through a two-week-old copy of The Thaumaturgist (garish lede: The Helmsman’s Mistake, with accompanying full-color cartoon of an embarrassed Shining Empire theocrat draped in the kind of quilted robes no Imperial official had worn for two hundred years). Someone had left the door ajar, and she paid more attention to the argument within than to her article.

“Other members of the island council appreciate the merits of our proposal.” She recognized the Iskari accent, nasal on vowels and heavy on consonants.

“Other members of the council,” and that was Jace, “are more concerned with real estate profits and construction contracts than with theological security. That’s where I come in.”

“No one’s proposing missionaries. We want a cathedral for our own merchants and diplomats to worship. The Communion of Iskari Faith will pay for construction, and land.”

“I’d be more interested in your proposal, Legate, if your gods didn’t have a way of wriggling into people’s heads.”

“The Old Lords do not corrupt. They call, and those blessed to hear decide whether to answer. I expected more than slurs from you, High Priest.”

Jace’s secretary cleared her throat; Kai was no longer even pretending to read. She returned her attention to the magazine, and tried to look as if she weren’t listening. “Kavekana is neutral,” Jace said, leaning into that last word. “We don’t allow Craft firms to own land here, either. Even shipping Concerns rent their piers.”

“A formality. Craftsmen’s crystal spires stand three miles outside the harbor’s mouth.”

“And the nearest Iskari military base is fifteen minutes away on dragonback.”

“That’s hardly the same thing.”