“Nobody cheats me,” Father roared and startled Awa and her tormenters. “Not even you. I’m a good Empire citizen.”

“I know what you are.” Hezram shook his silky brown beard and mane of hair. He was muscular and handsome, in his prime. Awa wanted to curse him to a slow death.

“You stingy barbarian, I deserve more than a few sky rocks.” Father shook a bag of turquoise. “To build gates around the capital city will take more than a year. You must pay three times this much.”

Father built stone bridges and cathedral-tree towers for priests and barbarian thief-lords. He hewed transgressor huts from mountain rock. He’d learned in an enclave to build anything with stone, metal, or wood. Perhaps he’d made the hovel Awa lived in. She wanted to curse him along with Hezram. Resisting the urge made her flame hot. The acolytes let her go and shook burning hands.

Father thrust the bag in Hezram’s face, distracting the acolytes again. “You need me.” He was foolhardy to challenge Hezram, who cheated everybody and locked up or tortured those who protested. Maybe Father had lost his wits. Mother could be using a slow poison, a few mushrooms in the bread each day.

“If you didn’t need me, I’d already be dead.” His eyes were bleary, his words slurred, maybe he was drunk. “I knew you when you were a common witchdoctor peddling tricks at carnivals.”

The acolytes smirked and jabbed each other, hoping for torture. They dragged Awa to the caldrons. They meant to take her in a cave on the other side of the Gates while Hezram dispensed with Father. Tembe, Iyalawo of Ice Mountain, found a mutilated dead girl yesterday in the temple—she was stripped naked with a head wrap stuffed in her mouth.

Priests claimed transgressors had done this. Awa knew better. Acolytes liked to cut souvenirs, brag about their exploits, and leave transgressors to bleed out. Awa wasn’t dying like that. She cackled alarm at crows roosting in the crisscross of high beams. They cackled back. Swooping low, several shat on bald acolyte heads.

Awa observed the scrambling and shrieking placidly until she recognized snub-nosed Jod, grown muscular and bearded. Jod’s lion eyes glowed in the dark as he punched the shock on her face—yet he didn’t remember her from Sprite days. Awa wasn’t Bal.

“Enough.” Hezram hauled her away from them. “Tembe says you lot go too far. In the temple!”

“Just a bit of fun,” Jod said.

“No more fun like that,” Hezram replied.

Jod stood eye to eye with him. “You have Tembe to cushion your bed.”

“Iyalawos marry their mountains.” Hezram circled him.

“A stout-hearted woman could love a mountain and a man, if…” Jod took a breath. The other acolytes cringed. “If the man is worth the risk.”