Djola leaned against a metal-mesh building that looked like an overturned basket—a merchant dome. “Lahesh tinkerers still make sure the cities don’t fall apart or get swallowed by the sea. My wife has Lahesh blood and wisdom. She kept our reeds singing.” A blast of white light blotted out Orca’s face. Djola shut his eyes. Heat burned inside his chest. He wanted to call fire and incinerate the island paradise. What had they done against void-storms to help his family and all the families on the mainland? Who in the floating cities spent a breath on Samina, one of their own daughters, who gave her body to him so that pirates might live in peace?

“Are you all right?” Orca held him up.

“Yes,” Djola lied. “Let’s buy conjure supplies first.”

The merchants stocked everything: Anawanama herbs and dyes, cathedral seeds and pulverized cloud-silk for Lahesh potions, barbarian dried mushrooms and holy water, Lahesh metal-working tools, Smokeland honey, wax, and herbs, rare earth compounds for acid-conjure, cloud-silk bandages, shadow-warrior spider cloth, even fermented midnight berries that cured night-blindness. Prices were fair, low even. Djola wasted no time haggling. He hired ferryboats to transport purchases to Pezarrat’s ship.

Business complete, Djola led Orca across a sweetgrass bridge to a garden barge where Babalawos—the twelve wisest men in the world—and two Iyalawos gathered among voluptuous flowers to talk, argue, or let their minds wander. They wore violet robes and a weave of tight braids on their scalps. They sat on stools with Smokeland scenes carved on the sides and brandished iron staffs to evoke mountain and water deities. Speaking Lahesh, they welcomed Djola and Orca with fruit, nut-cakes, and honey wine.

The two oldest Babalawos remembered Yari’s and Djola’s visits many years ago. Djola let them think he’d become a Green Elder and Orca was a Garden Sprite. The old men were eager to hear his reports of the world—the women too. A drummer thanked the crossroads gods and called for silence. Djola told stories of void-storms popping up from nowhere, from static and shimmer, to devastate the land. He noted range, frequency, and severity then offered his folded-space theory. They snapped fingers, approving of his insight.

As he tallied animal and crop loss from poison desert, Orca held up scrolls of storms devastating green lands, painted in a vivid Anawanama style. Silver static and black ash made everyone itch.

“How do you know all of this?” asked a Babalawo who was Djola’s age.

“I’ve seen it,” Djola replied. “Kyrie gets reports to me.”