But Gavin wasn’t looking. Maybe the silhouettes were, above. Maybe someone was running down the winding stair even now to catch her. She unbuttoned faster. “You’ll be fine,” Gavin said, behind, to Mara. “This could have happened to anyone. Shining Empire debt always goes up in price. Everyone knows that. Knew that.”

“You’re not helping, Gavin.”

“One of Magnus’s idols failed six months ago, and he was promoted. It’s good experience. That’s what Jace said. A leader has to know how it feels to lose.”

Kai heard a rustle of stiff cotton as Gavin reached for Mara’s shoulder, and an answering whisper as Mara brushed his hand away. Last button free. The hook on her skirt followed, and the zipper.

The idol in the water screamed.

All at once, Kai thought. Do not wait, or question. If they see, they’ll try to stop you.

Do it, or don’t.

She shucked shirt and skirt, stepped out of the fabric’s warding circle, swept her hands above her head, ran three steps to the world’s edge, and dove.

Mara must have noticed in the last second, too late to do anything but shout: “Kai, what the hells are you—”

Black water opened before her, and closed behind her.

There are many worlds, and one. A shadow cast is real, and so’s the caster, though each is of a different order. Cast a shadow complex enough, and one day it will look up. One day it will tear free from the wall to seek the one who gave it form.

What might such a freed shadow feel, tumbling through spaces of greater dimension than its own?

Kai fell through the realm of gods and idols, on which rock and light and living flesh float like a raft on a cave lake. Diving, she kicked. Bubbles of reality jellyfished up to the distant surface. She swam deeper.

Idols drifted immense around her, sphinxes and chimeras, animals and men and women in lightning outline, planet-sized though they’d seemed small from shore. Every one was beautiful, and each terrifying. In their center, Seven Alpha flailed limbs of silver and samite. Sharp teeth glimmered in her open mouth.

Down Kai swam, down, the drowning idol nearer now, body large as a mainlander cathedral. One sweep of a hand nearly sliced Kai in half; Seven Alpha was desperate and almost dead, scared as a lamb on the butchering floor, but still, here, strong as a god.

The next time the idol clawed in her direction, Kai caught one of the lightning-wires that formed her wrist.