Title Page

Copyright Notice

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CONTENTS

Title Page

Copyright Notice

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Chapter 60

Chapter 61

Chapter 62

Acknowledgments

Also by Max Gladstone

About the Author

Copyright

Chapter 1

1

The idol would drown that night.

“Death projected for half past one A.M.,” ran the memo Kai read at lunchtime on the volcano’s break room bulletin board. “Direct all inquiries to Mara Ceyla.” Another business update among many, pinned between a recruitment ad for the office ullamal league and a pink poster for a lunch-and-learn on soul trading in the Southern Gleb. Few noticed the memo, and fewer read it. Kai did both, and took the news back to her office with her sandwich. Ham and cheese and lettuce on white bread digested easy. The news didn’t.

Kai ruminated through the afternoon, and dinner, and the night. By 1:00 A.M. her work was done: three chickens sacrificed, one each on altars of silver, iron, and stone; a stack of profit and loss statements dispatched by nightmare telegraph; a prayer litany chanted balancing on one foot; a proposal drafted, suggesting an Iskari family shift their faith from the high-risk personal resurrection market to dependable grain-focused fertility. She scrubbed down the altars, washed her hands, brushed her hair, tied it back in a ponytail, and glanced again at the clock. One twenty.

Her office windows faced into the caldera. Two human figures waited on the shore of the dark pool far below, in the pit’s center. Kai recognized their outlines, though rendered doll-sized by distance. Gavin, tall, round, peered into the deep. Mara beside him was a straight line with a slight bend at the shoulders; she paced in tight circles, nervous, desperate, already mourning.

Kai had long passed quitting time. The Order owed her a carriage ride home. In thirty minutes she could be brushing her teeth, and in five more abed and asleep, safe from everything but dreams.

Mara turned. Stopped. Twisted the toe of her shoe into broken lava. Stuffed her hands in her pockets, pulled them out again, crossed her arms, uncrossed them. She walked to the edge of the pool, glanced in, shuddered, retreated.

“Not my problem,” Kai said, and realized she’d spoken out loud to her empty office—empty, at least, of people. The altars and prayer wheels and rosaries and fetishes and sacrificial knives kept their own counsel, as always. “Damn.”

She walked the long lonely hallway to the break room and descended a winding stair to the caldera floor, to join the death watch. She paused at the foot of the stairs. She could still go. They hadn’t seen her yet.

Leaving from her office would have been understandable. Leaving now was cowardice.

And anyway, Mara needed a friend.

Kai stepped out into the night, into view.

Cliffs above circumscribed a sky swirled with alien stars. Kai approached over lava five hundred years cool.

Mara’s feet ground gravel as she turned. “You came.” Her voice was at once relieved and bitter. “I didn’t expect you.”

“How are you holding up?” Kai asked.

“I’m fine.” Mara sipped coffee from a white mug marked with the Order’s black mountain sigil. Her free hand trembled. She turned the hand palm in, then out, spread her fingers, and watched them shake. She laughed a laugh of dry leaves. “I wish it would be over soon. Sooner.”

Kai wanted to touch the other woman’s shoulder, but hooked her thumbs through her belt loops instead.

Wind whistled over the crater’s jagged lip. Gavin seemed not to have noticed Kai’s arrival or overheard their conversation. Bent by the pool’s edge, he watched the idol dying within.

“Waiting is the worst part,” Mara said. “Knowing I’m helpless.”

“There has to be something you can do.”

Her laugh was short. “I wish.”

“Your idol just needs a loan. A few hundred souls on credit, to keep her alive until the market recovers.”

“No one knows when the market will recover, or if. Makes it hard to price a loan.”

“Sacrifice to her, then. We can afford the soulstuff to get her through the next few days.”

“Shame I’m all out of virgins and aurochs. What the hell’s the plural of ‘aurochs’ anyway?”

“Use the Order’s funds. You’re a priest. You’re allowed.”

“Jace says no.”

“Did he say why?”

“Does it matter?” She paced again, in circles. “He said no.”

“Blaming yourself won’t help.”

“Who do you think my clients will blame when their idol dies: The market? Or their hired priestess?” She jabbed her thumb against her sternum. “The guilt’s mine sooner or later. I might as well accept that.”

“Your clients signed off on the trade. They knew the risks.”

“I wonder what it feels like,” Mara said after a long silence. “Losing half of your soul at once.”

“Idols don’t feel like we do.” Kai knew as she spoke that it was the wrong thing to say.

Stars glinted in black sky and black pool—different stars above and below, not reflections. The shattered ground was a thin shell separating darkness from darkness.

Gavin turned from the pool and shuffled toward them over lava pebbles. “Won’t be long now.”

Kai replaced him on the shore, leaned over the not-water’s edge, and watched the idol drown.

She was a wire-frame sculpture of light, flailing in the depths like a fish caught on a line: female in figure, almost human. Wings flared. Goat legs bent against themselves. The suggestion of a mouth gaped in a not-quite-face. Her heart had faded, and the fade was spreading.

Other idols swam and shifted around her in the pool. Bright outlines of men, women, animals, and angels danced through invisible currents, tied each to each by silver threads. No threads bound the dying idol. Mara had severed her ties to the rest already, to keep her from dragging them down when she died.

“It’s beautiful,” Gavin said. He shifted from side to side, and his shadow swayed, long and broad, broken by the ground. “And sad. It looks beautiful and sad.”

The idol stared up into Kai and through her, desperate, drowning, and scared.

Idols don’t feel like we do.

Kai turned from the pool.

Human silhouettes watched from office windows above. Curious enough to observe, callous enough to keep their distance. Kai was being unfair. No. She was tired. The situation, that was unfair. The idol was about to die, and take Mara’s career with it.

“What’s her name?” Kai asked.

“The file code’s forty digits long. I’ve called her Seven Alpha.” Mara sat on a rock and stared down into her coffee. “Jace’s secretary already sent me the paperwork. Paperwork, can you believe it? I should have expected, but still. They die, and we fill out forms.”

Kai shouldn’t have come. Should have left early, or lingered over her altars and prayers until the worst was over. One more silhouette watching Mara pace, using distance to shield herself from pain.

Mara’s despair hurt, as did the fear in the idol’s eyes. In Seven Alpha’s eyes. Kai ought to be home, swaddled in sheets. She felt swaddled, here. Arms bound to her sides. Helpless. Her own words mocked her: there has to be something you can do.

There was.

“You think they’ll fire me tomorrow,” Mara said, “or let me stay long enough to pack my things?”

Kai stepped out of her shoes. Sharp stone scraped her soles. She unbuttoned her blouse. Gavin and Mara would stop her if they saw. Especially Gavin.

But Gavin wasn’t looking. Maybe the silhouettes were, above. Maybe someone was running down the winding stair even now to catch her. She unbuttoned faster. “You’ll be fine,” Gavin said, behind, to Mara. “This could have happened to anyone. Shining Empire debt always goes up in price. Everyone knows that. Knew that.”

“You’re not helping, Gavin.”

“One of Magnus’s idols failed six months ago, and he was promoted. It’s good experience. That’s what Jace said. A leader has to know how it feels to lose.”

Kai heard a rustle of stiff cotton as Gavin reached for Mara’s shoulder, and an answering whisper as Mara brushed his hand away. Last button free. The hook on her skirt followed, and the zipper.

The idol in the water screamed.

All at once, Kai thought. Do not wait, or question. If they see, they’ll try to stop you.

Do it, or don’t.

She shucked shirt and skirt, stepped out of the fabric’s warding circle, swept her hands above her head, ran three steps to the world’s edge, and dove.

Mara must have noticed in the last second, too late to do anything but shout: “Kai, what the hells are you—”

Black water opened before her, and closed behind her.

There are many worlds, and one. A shadow cast is real, and so’s the caster, though each is of a different order. Cast a shadow complex enough, and one day it will look up. One day it will tear free from the wall to seek the one who gave it form.

What might such a freed shadow feel, tumbling through spaces of greater dimension than its own?

Kai fell through the realm of gods and idols, on which rock and light and living flesh float like a raft on a cave lake. Diving, she kicked. Bubbles of reality jellyfished up to the distant surface. She swam deeper.

Idols drifted immense around her, sphinxes and chimeras, animals and men and women in lightning outline, planet-sized though they’d seemed small from shore. Every one was beautiful, and each terrifying. In their center, Seven Alpha flailed limbs of silver and samite. Sharp teeth glimmered in her open mouth.

Down Kai swam, down, the drowning idol nearer now, body large as a mainlander cathedral. One sweep of a hand nearly sliced Kai in half; Seven Alpha was desperate and almost dead, scared as a lamb on the butchering floor, but still, here, strong as a god.

The next time the idol clawed in her direction, Kai caught one of the lightning-wires that formed her wrist.

Her shoulders jerked in their sockets as the idol’s arm dragged her along. She rushed through empty space, and its hidden edges tore her flesh and mind. Around her in the black, paper-thin mouths peeled back lips to bare white fangs. Hungry ghosts, ready to descend. The idol’s death called scavengers to whom a soul wrapped in flesh was a chocolate wrapped in foil.

Kai could not get Seven Alpha’s attention this way. She was a gnat, a flitting nuisance. She needed perspective.

She held a piece of the idol’s wrist, but that piece moved with the rest of the wrist, and so by holding it she held the wrist itself, and if she held the wrist her hand had to be large enough to hold it, and if her hand was large, then, since the rest of her felt proportional to her hand, the rest of her was also large. Mountainous in fact, and strong, but still struggling against the whirlwind of Seven Alpha’s death.

Never, ever (Kai’s mother’d told her when she was four and emerged dripping from the water with a half-drowned boy in tow) grab a drowning man. Death’s approach lends strength even to the weak. A drowner, crazed, will pull you with him. Hold back, find a rope or plank or life preserver, and let the poor bastard save himself. Herself. Itself.

Seven Alpha kicked Kai in the side and she felt her rib break. The idol cut her, and burned her, as she pulled her into an embrace. Up so close, the idol’s face was all geometry, perfect planes and curves. She spasmed in Kai’s grip, transformed to fire, to thorn, to stinging jellyfish, to billion-armed insect, and back to woman, final form no less painful than the rest. Goat legs sliced Kai’s calves and thighs to the bone. Blood seeped into the water.

The idol buried her teeth in Kai’s left shoulder. A scream bubbled from Kai’s mouth and bloomed, rising. The god-realm’s darkness rushed into her lungs. She gagged and felt her body start to die.

The idol withdrew her teeth and pressed Kai in flaying embrace as they fell. Worlds’ weight crushed them together.

No time to waste. Kai kissed Seven Alpha on the mouth.

Cold tangled her tongue. Hunger caught her. Desperation pulled at her soul. She let it. She gave, and gave, and sank. Her soul surged into the idol’s mouth, torn from her by need, an insignificant scrap against Seven Alpha’s vast hunger.

The idol took Kai’s soul, and pulled for more, but there was no more to give. They fell, dying, bound by flesh and spirit. The idol sagged. Anger gave way to loss.

Perfect.

Kai crafted a contract in her mind, and offered it to the idol. A simple trade: a seven million thaum line of credit, enough to save them both for a while, provided Seven Alpha return as collateral her only asset, Kai’s stolen soul. Jace may have forbidden Mara from using the Order’s funds to save this idol, but he’d said no such thing to Kai.

Seven Alpha was about to die. She had no choice but to accept, and save them both. Simple self-preservation.

Any minute now.

Thought came slow to Kai at such depth, weighed down by dream and deep time. They’d fallen so far even acceptance might not save them. Too late, too deep. Stupid. Her spinning mind shuddered, slowed, and soon would stop.

Her spinning mind shuddered, slowed, and soon

Her spinning mind shuddered,

Her spinning mind

Her

Yes.

A key turned in the lock of the world.

Kai’s eyes snapped open. Power flooded from her, and her soul flowed back along the contract that now bound her to the idol. Light broke through her skin. Seven Alpha spread her wings, pulled from their kiss, smiled a spring morning. The idol’s tarnished heart began to heal, to shine.

Kai shook with joy.

Then everything went wrong.

Arms seized Kai from behind: human arms, fleshy, strong. They pried her from the idol, pulled her back and up. Seven Alpha tried to follow, but slow, too weak to resist the not-water’s weight. Kai fought, but the arms did not give. She knew her betrayers by their grip. Mara, slender and corded with muscle, fingernails biting Kai’s wrists. Gavin, an immense weight of skin and meat. Jace, too, their master. He was the one who held her neck.

“Get off!” She yanked at their fingers. “Let me go!” They did not.

Seven Alpha fell as Kai rose. The contract that bound them stretched, frayed. Star eyes beneath curling horns stared up at Kai in dumb hope. The idol did not begin to scream until the cord snapped, and water closed in to crush her.

Fighting and clawing and biting and bleeding, Kai heard sense inside that shriek. There were words amid the fury and the fear, senseless and mad, impossible words, but words nonetheless.

Howl, bound world, Kai heard as the idol fell, as she died.

Kai cried out in answer, in frustration, in rage. Still they pulled her up, as Seven Alpha dwindled to a distant ship on fire, a cinder, a spark, a star, then gone.

Kai’s friends dragged her to shore. She screamed them back and lay curled on sharp stone, bleeding, coughing, vomiting dreams. Warmth returned, the shadow bound once again to its wall. Traitor hands wrapped her in a sheet and lifted. Jace held her. His chest pressed through the sheet against the wound the idol’s teeth left in her shoulder. Bloody fabric rasped over her wrecked skin.

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.

“Twenty thaums gets you nice.” His head bobbed. His neck was freakishly long, and spotted like a giraffe’s. “What kind of nice? We have Dhisthran sandalwood here all the way from the other side of the Tablelands, send men into rutting elephants’ heat.” Her face must have twisted, because he laughed, creaking like a rusty dock chain. “Smells for all occasions. Murder, sacrifice, passion, betrayal.”

“I need incense,” she said, “to mourn a god.”

He lowered his chin and watched her through the bushes of his eyebrows. This was why Izza’d come herself, rather than sending one of the other kids: enough refugees had flowed through from the Gleb at one point or another that the request might not seem strange.

“Old festival coming up?” he asked. “Some god dead in your wars?”

“Give me the stuff.” She didn’t want her voice to shake. It shook all the same.

“Which one are you mourning? Or would I know its name?”

“A god that doesn’t talk much.”

He shrugged, and stepped into the back room, taking the machete with him. Thin trails of smoke rose from smoldering joss sticks, twisting in and out of light. Izza’s head hurt from the soul loss. She hoped that was the reason. Maybe the old man had drugged her with smoke. He might be out the back door now, running to call for the watch, for the Penitents. She had done nothing wrong, but that didn’t matter much.

She stayed. She needed this.

The man returned, machete in one hand and a slender black wood box in the other. He set the box on the counter and slid it across to her.

She reached for the box, but he placed the machete edge against the lid. His eyes were a lighter brown than Izza’s own.

She laid her coin on the glass beside. He snatched the coin, walked it down spidery fingers, up again, kissed the milled edge, then dropped it into one of his four shirt pockets.

She grabbed the box, but he pressed down with the machete and the blade bit into the wooden lid.

“How old are you?” he said.

“Fifteen.”

“Old for a street kid.”

“Old enough to take what I pay for.”

“You should be careful,” he said. “The Penitents start grabbing kids about your age.”

“I know.” If she could have burned him with her gaze, he would have been dust already.

He lifted the machete. She tucked the box into her belt, and ran into the street, trailing doorbell’s jingle and wafting incense and the old man’s laughter.

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