Cat leaned back against a warehouse wall to watch the customs Penitents work. “Same thing that happens to anyone else. She goes away.”

“To her worshippers, I mean. If a goddess dies, what happens to her people? They were connected, through her. Does that connection last?”

In the customs yard a Penitent broke open a crate. Wood splintered, and packing cloths fell away to reveal a statue of a four-armed Dhisthran goddess. A clipboard man shouted in protest and produced a sheaf of documents, which the Penitent ignored. “Sometimes,” Cat said. The word sounded hollow. “When gods die they leave bodies behind. Those bodies tie faithful together. The bond sticks. Its meaning changes. Weakens, over time. Like when you lose a friend: you’re still tied to everyone else who knew them. Sometimes the bond helps. Sometimes it makes the whole thing worse. For priests and the like, most of the time it’s worse. They’re tighter bound. They know how much they’ve lost.”

The Penitent lifted the goddess statue and carried it to a white wagon packed with religious contraband: reams of printed leaflets, piled prayer beads, heaped ebon effigies. The clipboard man tried to pull the goddess from the wagon, but he wasn’t strong enough to lift her. The wagon rolled away toward impound.

Cat made her marks on the wall, chalk scratches and the eyeless smile, and erased them once more. Silver dust stuck to her palm. “I’m done. Let’s go.”

They left the clipboard man staring after his cargo, or his goddess—Izza couldn’t tell which.

Chapter 17

17

Kai lay bound on an iron bed in the dark.

Leather cuffs cased her wrists and ankles, held her rigid to the rails at the bed’s foot and sides. A harness tied her shoulders to the frame. She could not move up or down, left or right. Her attempts to rise twitched her on the rough cotton sheets, like a live moth pinned through the wing. She stopped. Breath rasped in her throat.

The ceiling hung above her, unfinished stone painted black by shadows.

She heard others. The sound she’d taken at first for the rush of waves was in fact breath—the breath of several hundred breathers, soft, harsh, rapid, slow, pained. Past the iron rails lay another bed, a man tied atop it, and beyond that bed another and another still. Thousands maybe, too many to count, arrayed in a grid. Transparent tubes ran from Kai’s wrists and stomach and nose to trail along the ground. Similar tubes sprouted from each prisoner. Dangling IV bags fed drugs into immobile arms. The room was so large she could not see its walls.

Her heart beat panic. She lay still, and felt no pain. Intentional. Pain was anathema to this place. They wanted her quiet, asleep.