Dream Gates glowered in the dark behind the temple trees. The gates’ silver-mesh intrigued Awa: interlocking roads and spirals, shooting stars and spiderwebs—Vévés to call down crossroads deities, a dangerous lot on nobody’s side. A continuous circle of gates enclosed the entire citadel in Dream Gate conjure. Beyond the gates in the mountain proper, cauldrons of blood and oil bubbled in caves with holes in the ceiling to carry away smoke. Awa spat out the foul taste.

Griots claimed life in Holy City transgressor huts was worse than death. Awa tried to tell her own story. She let her mind go blank rather than take in horror. Survive. One day had blurred into another for several months, and she’d managed to forget blood and stench and pain. But she was also forgetting the touch of grace in Isra’s loom and the call to truth in Yari’s talking drum. She even found herself doubting Bal’s tricky harmonies. Could anybody have that many voices in them? Griot tales for children.

Awa did remember Mother promising to poison Father—yet for a moment, she thought she saw him, squatting in the temple, then her vision clouded. Acolytes sliced Awa on the stone floor. The pain was sharp at the slice but faded to a dull ache as blood oozed from her good arm into a metal bowl. Acolytes rarely cut her burnt arm for fear of tainted blood. Crows flew in the high windows.

“Probably hoping for dead meat.” An acolyte chortled.

Awa knew these crows. She fed them berries to spite priests whose flimsy bows and bad aims were no match for crafty birds. “No berries here,” she said.

“She’s delirious.” The acolytes laughed.

An inept or cruel acolyte jabbed Awa’s leg. Blood spurted on his stub nose. She fought to stay conscious. Father’s voice jolted her mind clear. Droopy-eyed, sallow, and paunchy, he haggled with Hezram, high priest of Ice Mountain and witchdoctor of dreams. It was Father. Here. Real. Awa swallowed an urge to yell, Save me, take me home.

A conjure woman had gotten her lover out of a transgressor hut. She taught Hezram a gate-spell, and he released the lover, a veson. Father hated Green Elders, but their spells were his treasure. He’d never part with a spell to rescue Awa. She closed her eyes on his haggard face. Fury would take too much energy. Calm helped her survive.

The acolytes dumped icy temple water on her head. “No sleeping.”

Transgressors had to know their pain to earn redemption. Awa’s thin shift clung to damp skin. She pressed ice on her burbling leg wound. The acolytes smacked her nipples and poked fingers in her navel. She let the ice drop. Bleeding out in the temple would be easy. “Death is a doorway,” she muttered in Lahesh.

“Jumba jabba.” The acolytes chortled at Green Elder nonsense.