Kai sat frozen, mouth slack, staring at Margot. She replayed the poem in her head. She hadn’t made it up, the line. How did the poem run? No rhyme, and harder to memorize in Kathic than Archipelagese, but still. Dreaming free wind / Howl, bound world with / Painted gods … Her words, the words from the pool, on the tongue of this damn fat foreign bard.

“What was that?” she said.

“Margot’s work, it’s pretty abstract. Once an Iskari, always. But he’s good. Never suffered a paper cut before he came to Kavekana, but that works for him, sort of. Some people suffer from not suffering. You want his gratitude, tie him up and thrash him with a cat-o’-nine for a while. Anyway’ the scholars like it. His work. Hidden Schools called him out to give a lecture there a few months back.”

“That poem, I mean. When did he write it?”

“A few months ago now,” Mako said. “Give or take a week.”

“I have to talk to him.”

“You’re drunk.”

“And you’re ugly.” She lurched off the table, and the ground heaved beneath her. Torch flames, ghostlights, flickering tabletop candles threaded webs of light through skin and wood and meat. She drowned, and gasped for air, as the room worked its way right again. When the lights resolved to stationary points, and she no longer felt the world’s spin, she sought the poet.

He stood apart from his friends at the edge of the Rest, watching the Gleblander chant his chant.

Kai groped for and found her cane, trusted its support, and ploughed into the crowd. She made slower progress than she expected. Before her fall, she would have forced her way past. Now she had to wait for waiters to cross in front of her, skirt the edge of rowdy groups that might send someone tumbling into her path or knock her cane away.

The poet did not acknowledge her approach. Up close, she could see his sweat: a slick sheen on skin, soaking his once-white shirt. His forehead shone beneath the brim of his small green hat.

“You’d be cooler if you took the hat off,” she said.

He wheeled on her, spilled his drink over his hand. His eyes were round and bright, like a frightened cat’s, eerie in his pale and sunburned skin.

“Hey, I’m sorry. I just wanted to say I liked your poem.”

His lips worked, but no sound emerged.

“The one you read.” Gods, she was too drunk for this. But the idol drowned still and forever in her head, and the scream echoed. Don’t let the swaying ground dissuade you. Close your eyes and steel your spine. “Up there on the stage. That line, you know, ‘Howl, bound world,’ that one. Is that yours? Is it a reference to something?”

He took a step back, as if she’d threatened him.