“Rent an office in the Palm, like everyone else. Or buy a skyspire suite. My duty’s to keep this island safe until our gods return, and to protect our idols in the meantime. I won’t risk exposure to mainland proselytizing.” Jace checked his volume; his next words were so quiet she barely heard them: “I’m sorry, but it is what it is.”

Kai couldn’t make out the cleric’s answer, if one came. She browsed business news until the Iskari legate swept out of the office, his purple robe trailing over stone. Gems glinted from the eyes of the squid god stitched into the robe’s back. An attaché jogged after him, suited, holding a briefcase. Kai felt a pang of sympathy, watching the attaché go. Hell of a job. Sometimes literally.

She leaned onto her cane, pressed herself up, straightened her jacket and shirtfront, and stepped into Jace’s office, closing the door behind her.

The High Priest’s chambers stared south from the volcano summit over a more elevated version of the view from Kai’s balcony: the slopes of Kavekana’ai, the city, East and West Claw pinching the harbor between them. The window was not made from glass, but rock transmuted transparent.

The office was almost empty. Upon his accession to the post, Jace had spent a week moving out his predecessor’s junk. High Priests clung to life a long time, and most accumulated office mess like moss. Much of the cleanup was standard shred-or-store, but Jace’s predecessor left arcane knickknacks in drawers and cabinets and trophy cases. An onyx statue of a beetle, when touched, came to life and began carving the mountain’s stone into new beetles, who copied themselves in turn. A stack of papers in one corner had proved impossibly dense: seven hirelings strained to lift a single sheet. The papers had to be burned in place, and the resulting stink—of burnt hair and melted flesh and not of paper at all—lingered in the volcano’s executive levels for a week.

After all that trouble, Jace kept his chambers spare. No furniture save for the magisterium wood desk, the leather chair he rarely used, and a small glass table. Four statues flanked the room, old Kavekana make, gem eyed and flat featured. No books. No pictures. Nothing to shield him from the demands of the job. Nothing to shield the job from him.

The chair was empty, the desk polished. Jace himself paced behind both, swift-moving silhouette against and above the island. He kept trim despite his desk job. Age showed only as frost in his short hair. She let the door close behind her; a pressurized arm guided it to soft rest in the jamb.

“Tough talk,” she said.