The worshippers sprang out of the pews, leaving behind hymn books of the Cantos and their own personal effects. When the last person was gone, and the imposing doors swung closed with a thud, Ana sighed and holstered her pistol again.

“That worked a little too well,” she commented to herself, and turned her eyes up toward the fifty-foot statue, and the Goddess’s outstretched arms, hands cupped together. It looked a lot higher than she rememebred, she thought, shrugging out of the Valerio uniform to a dark undershirt, and tossed the jacket into the pews. Then she climbed up onto the pedestal where the Goddess’s feet were planted.

The base of the statue was as thick as five tree trunks, but there were handholds to climb up the side of her, oddly enough. Someone had to light and change out the candles covering the Goddess’s hands, arms, and shoulders, but she’d expected a ladder or something. Not footholds in the statue’s dress.

She scaled the Goddess, careful to listen to her comm-link for any chatter. It had been increasingly quiet, and she didn’t like that at all. She didn’t look down, mostly because she knew what she’d find. The floor. Very far away. It wasn’t that she was afraid of heights, but she was afraid of gravity at this height. Wax covered most of the statue, rubbery and soft. She found herself sinking her nails into it as she climbed up onto the arms and started to crawl across, trying not to knock the candles down as she went. The wax accumulated for centuries, because no one ever scraped it off, only ever adding a candle for each year since the Goddess’s death. She knew that because of Di. The main character in his favorite book, The Swords of Veten Ruel, was raised to be a priest of the Iron Shrine, and so Ana learned that the candles were changed every three days, when the wicks burned low.

“It is interesting,” he had once said. They were on a stakeout in the humid city of Ventura on Eros, hunkered down in a skysailer to wait for the leader of the Red Dawn to leave his cushy hideout. He owed Siege money. “There are magic spells and tactical battles and the very precise use of the trajectory of a turtle. It is quite thrilling. Are you interested yet?”

She quirked an eyebrow. “How exactly does it use a turtle?”

He began to answer, but then he must’ve thought better of it and said instead, “You will have to read it to find out.”

“That’s infuriating—read it to me, then.”

“I do not have it with me.”

“Then recite it,” she had said, fanning herself with a piece of paper from the glove compartment. Anything to keep her mind off how miserable she was. It had been so hot, condensation began to collect on Di’s metal body. “I know you know it by heart.”

He had been quiet for a moment, but then he cocked his head and said, “In a time before our time, in the far weathered north of the Bavania Range . . .”