She began the long climb home. Her family’s house was near—the ghostlight POHALA SHIPYARDS sign flickered over a West Claw pier a half mile’s walk down the shore—but she hadn’t wanted to see her mother in months, and didn’t now. Stupid body. Stupid spinning room. Stupid bouncers and stupid poet and stupid Mako and most of all stupid Kai.

She walked north and uphill. Her palm hurt from the cane. Trumpets and drums receded, and the tide of natives and rum-soaked visitors ebbed to leave her alone on the sidewalk. Driverless carriages rolled past. A large roan pulled a wagon packed with drunks up the slope: head down, shoulders and flanks rippling with strength. No wasted energy in those steps. Each move a single sweep of a calligrapher’s brush—only calligraphers did not have to fight to draw a line.

There were no horses on Kavekana before Iskari traders first arrived four centuries back. No need for horses, either. Kai’s sister always complained of the stench of horse dung in the streets, of the animals’ filth and of the laziness they invited, as if they hadn’t been a part of island life for four hundred years.

As the carriage passed Kai tipped an imaginary hat to the roan. Craftwork bound and directed the horse. Did it know it was born to a life of service? Did it know how its world was made?

The horse bowed to her in turn. She stood still, and told herself she’d imagined the pointed pause, the dip of head. Anything was possible. The wagon rolled on.

Tropical night folded her in thick warmth. She sweat beneath and through her linen suit. After two blocks Palmheart crossed Epiphyte, and the shoreside party gave way to cafes and food stalls and shuttered boutiques. A woman fried coconut milk curry under a palm frond awning while her children served bowls of the stuff to lined and haggard men who played dominoes on wicker tables. A kid, maybe fifteen, juggled mangoes beside a fruit stand. Six men and two women, thickened by middle age, wearing ragged shorts and stained multicolored shirts, sat on the sidewalk in front of a closed jewelry store, passing a bottle of palm wine.

The earth shook, and Kai heard screams and fast footsteps. A dark girl in torn clothes ran onto the street from an alley. She clutched a purse to her chest, bright pink leather, obviously not hers. Wide black eyes reflected torches and streetlights both. Kai watched the girl run past, and did not move to stop her or to help. No one did. It was too late for the girl already.