A Penitent stepped onto the road, an earthquake gone for a stroll. One drunk dropped the wine bottle, and milky liquid spilled into the gutter. The Penitent stood ten feet tall, a barrel-chested almost-human carved from stone. Gem eyes burned with inner fire. The street fell silent save for the fleeing girl’s footsteps, the sizzle of oil in the wok, and the Penitent’s muffled sobs. Kai watched.

Light burst from stone joints. The Penitent gathered its several tons’ bulk and leapt. It shrieked as it flew huge and horrible overhead, cry broken by its landing crash, three feet in front of the thief. Cobblestones splintered beneath graven feet. The girl skidded to a stop, scrambled back. A stone hand lashed out before she could flee, snared her around the waist, and lifted.

The girl’s bare feet kicked at empty air. The Penitent’s grip pressed her arms and the purse against her chest. She struggled to breathe. Kai heard a woman weep beneath the stone.

The Penitent turned, prisoner held in one hand, and strode off west, bearing the girl to justice, or anyway to punishment.

The cook fried on. The drunks retrieved their wine, and drank, and retold stale stories of their younger days when Kavekanese sailors had been prized from the Pax to the World Sea. Days past, but not past remembering.

Kai climbed away from drunks and dominoes and shop window mannequins.

The girl was young to be a thief. Too young, Kai hoped, for Penitence, but maybe not, if she had priors, or the victim pushed for vengeance, or the moon was in the wrong phase or the wind too heavy in the west.

Kai had jumped into the pool to save the drowning idol. To save Mara. She’d thrown herself on Ms. Kevarian’s sword for the Order’s sake. And in return, she had been thrust to the sidelines, even her sanity questioned. Why should she have risked herself for that girl?

Not that she could have helped, not wounded and weak, and anyway the cases weren’t at all alike. The idol was her business. (Though not really.) The girl was not. (Mankind is my business, didn’t someone say that once? Or else it drifted to her out of a mist of dream.) The idol was not at fault; the girl was. (What fault? She looked hungry. Could you blame a hungry person for stealing to eat?)