She tried to tear free, but lacked the strength. They carried her from the pool: glass-flat, undisturbed by the idol’s death.

“It’s okay.” Jace’s voice, strong, level, sad, so unlike her father’s. “It’s okay. You’re safe.”

“No,” was all she said.

Chapter 2

2

Izza went to the Godsdistrikt to buy incense for the funeral. She found the shopkeep snoring.

The old man slept with bare warty feet propped up on the glass counter of his coffin-sized store. His head lolled back against his chair. One long wiry arm swung loose from his shoulder, and at the bottom of each swing the tip of his middle finger grazed the ground.

He wasn’t losing customers. The distrikt dreamed through the day around him. Foreign sailors and dockworkers stayed away ’til sunset, and no Kavekana native would risk trafficking with gods in broad daylight. Still not prudent, though, to nap.

Izza slipped through the shop’s front door without ringing the bell. The man’s mouth slacked open as the door shut. His snort covered the hinge’s creak. Izza waited, awash in smoke and scent. Her fingers itched. She could steal half his stock and leave before he noticed. Could swipe the dreams right out of his head.

She could. She didn’t.

That was the point.

She walked to the counter and rang the bell. The old man snarled awake and staggered to his feet, machete suddenly in one hand. Izza strangled her urge to flee. Her reflection stared back from the machete blade, and from the glass incense cases. Ripped and dirty clothes, lean and hungry face.

Neither of them spoke. The old man’s chest heaved. Heavy gray brows cast shadows across his bloodshot eyes. Incense smoke weighed on the sweltering air of a Kavekana afternoon.

“I’m here to buy,” she said.

“Get out, kid. Your kind don’t buy.”

She wondered whether he meant street kids, or Gleblanders, or refugees, or poor people in general. All of the above, most likely.

She reached for her pocket.

“I’ll cut your hand off and call the watch.” The machete trembled. “You want to test me?”

“I’m here to buy incense.” She pronounced the words with care, suppressing her accent as much as she could. “I want to show you my coin.”

He neither moved nor spoke.

She took from her pocket a thin beaten disk of silver, with an Iskari squid god stamped on one face and a two-spired tower on the other. She sank a piece of her soul into the coin, twenty thaums and some change, and tried to stop herself from swaying as the shop grayed out. Running low. Running dangerous.

The old man’s eyes glittered. He set the machete down. “What do you want?”

“Something nice,” she said. Forming words took effort. She didn’t like spending soul, not straight like this. She didn’t have much to go around.