Izza shook beside her.
“Are you laughing?”
“You really think that might happen?”
“People earn a living that way, in my world.”
“You live in a strange world.”
“I guess.”
“A key’s the last thing I want.”
More silence. Another turn, down an alley that smelled of cat piss.
“What do you have against keys?”
“People with keys worry about keeping locks locked.”
They walked hidden paths behind and beside the streets Kai knew. Twice they crossed a main road only to dart again into cover. When other people neared, even beggars, Izza pressed the knife into Kai’s back. Kai didn’t need the reminder.
They smelled smoke four blocks from Margot’s apartment, and met the crowd soon after. Izza hesitated, but at last steered them into the human current. Drunks and salesmen and grandmothers squeezed her and Kai together. Men cried and men sang. Three women shouted at a crying girl. Boys scuffled on the sidewalk until the crowd forced them so close they had to make peace or bite each other. Sour-sweet musk of striving bodies, acrid breath, sandalwood and rosewater and leather. And smoke, always, beneath the other smells.
The crowd thinned and smoke thickened as they turned onto Margot’s street. Black billows dwarfed human works below. The curious crushed in a ragged line against a Penitent barricade. The house where Margot lived was a fire-licked ruin. A bucket line fought the flames. Across the street, a clutch of watchmen surrounded a bent gray-haired woman in a nightdress; others knelt beside a prone and shrouded body.
Kai and Izza reached the front line, and held the yellow barricade to bolster themselves against the crowd.
“You didn’t mention a fire,” Kai said.
“It wasn’t on fire when I left.” Penitents paced in front of them. Rock ground against rock as their heads moved, scanning the crowd. “We need to go.”
“We need to learn what happened here.”
“I know what happened.” She pressed close so she could whisper in Kai’s ear. “They killed him. Then they set the fire to cover it up.”
“If the Watch killed him, why set the fire? They don’t need to find any evidence they’re not looking for.”
“Let’s go.”
A watchman kneeling behind the body stood and wiped smoke from his eyes: Claude. He turned a slow circle from old woman to fire to body to the crowd—and saw her. His eyes widened, and he jogged toward them both.
Izza tugged Kai back into the surging crowd, but Kai resisted. “Come on.”
“No. That’s the guy I asked to arrest Margot.”
“He’s in on it.”
“Can’t be. He did time inside the Penitents. He’s reformed. Straight as light.”
“I told you, the Penitents killed him.”
“Claude’s seen us. Leave now and he’ll think this is my fault.”
“Isn’t it?” The knife dug into her skin.
“Go on,” Kai said, and hoped she sounded less afraid than she felt. “Kill me, and you’ll never get to the bottom of this. Or trust me, and we might.”
Telepathy, she knew, was impossible. Minds could be read, but only once extracted, and extraction broke them. She could guess Izza’s thoughts, though, from the twitch that moved through the girl like a ripple over a horse’s hide. If Izza slipped away, escaped into the crowd, she would leave Kai in the shelter of coconspirators. If she stayed, Kai might turn her over to the Watch.
Nothing Izza had said or done so convinced Kai of the girl’s innocence as that moment of fear.
“I won’t turn you in,” Kai said. “Trust me.”
Izza did not move. Nor did she answer.
Claude pushed between the Penitents in front of them. “Kai.” Soot streaked his face. The crowd shouted questions, and he ignored them. “Kai, what are you doing here?”
“I was in the area. That’s Margot’s house.”
“I brought two Penitents to arrest him. Found the place burning. The old woman, the landlady, almost choked to death.” Claude turned to Izza. “Who’s this?”
The blade bit her back. Trust me. “I was drinking in the Godsdistrikt. Saw the smoke. I ran here. Lost my cane in the crowd. Almost fell. The girl helped.”
“Out of the goodness of her heart I’m sure,” Claude said.
She pointed to the shroud. “Is that who I think?”
“It’s Margot. Landlady identified the body, even all burned up like that.”
“Dead in the fire?”
“If so, fire’s developed a bad habit of snapping necks. Maybe doctors will know more.”
“Shit.”
“Come with me, Kai. We need to talk.”
“I asked you for help this morning. I asked you to arrest Margot. I asked you not to tell anyone.”
“I didn’t,” he said. She couldn’t tell whether he was lying. “I didn’t, Kai.”
“What happened?”
“The place was torn to nine hells. Door broken off the hinges. Walls shattered.”
“Who could do that?”
“Best guess?” he asked, rhetorically. “A woman snuck onto the island about six weeks back, an unlicensed avatar—we figured a missionary, or a joss smuggler’s muscle. We almost caught her when she came ashore, but she broke a couple Penitents and went underground. Maybe this is her work. In which case you’re in danger, too.” He reached for her. She retreated. “Come on, Kai. We can help.”
“You fucked this up. And he’s dead.”
“Don’t make this difficult.”
“You want to arrest me?”
“We’ll call it protective custody if we have to.”
So easy to take him up on his offer. Let Claude take care of her. Let him and his Penitents save her from this mad girl with a knife.
“Protect me like you protected him?”
“Kai. Trust me.”
“I’m leaving, Claude.” She turned away. Her arm lagged behind: Izza, slow to believe Kai would pass this chance at safety. Her hesitation only lasted a moment. Claude watched them go.
* * *
They found an abandoned bench by the bay. Dark water rolled between the Claws. Dots of light drifted in the black: boats with lanterns lit, under the stars. Kai suggested they sit. Izza released her, and she lowered herself onto spray-wet wood. Izza sat at the opposite end of the bench. After their quadruped wandering, the few feet gaped between them.
Waves washed against pier and land, bearing their tithe of eroded soil out into the World Sea. Kai wondered if mainlanders knew they lived under siege. Or did they rest in comfort atop their continents, and ignore the gnawing doom of water?
Perhaps her father had seen the ocean differently. Perhaps Kai would have, if she’d taken to the sea. But these days Kavekana’s children swam in other oceans.
“I’m sorry I didn’t believe you,” Kai said once the waves lost their mythic depths and became waves again.
“I wouldn’t have believed me,” Izza replied.
“You knew him?”
“Not well.”
“That was him, under the shroud.”
“Yes,” Izza said. “Was that watchman your friend?”
“A kind of friend.”
“The kissing kind?”
She laughed, and heard the bitterness in her own laughter. “Once. Not anymore.”
“Why did you go to Penitent Ridge this morning?”
“You were following me.”
“Yes.”
“I asked him to arrest Margot. For his own good.” When she closed her eyes they burned from smoke.
“Tell me more. Tell me what you know, or think you know.”
“These are sacred secrets. I can’t tell anyone who’s not a priest.”
“I’m a priest,” Izza said, slowly. “Of a sort.”
Kai didn’t answer.
Izza stood before the ocean, and raised her right hand. “I won’t betray you. Blue Lady forsake me if
I lie. Smiling Jack gnaw my bones.”
Kai heard the weight of her words. Belief, deep held. “I don’t recognize those gods.”
“You don’t know all the streets on this island. Or all the gods.”
“Those aren’t Gleb gods, I mean.”
“I didn’t say they were,” Izza said. “Now I’ve sworn. Tell me.”
Kai looked up and down the road, and behind them. Dockside was as empty as it ever got. Cargo wagons rolled past. “There’s a pool at the heart of Kavekana’ai where our idols live. Only priests can enter, but somehow Margot got inside. He drew the idols’ power, and used it to write great poems. Thing is, people only bring their fortunes to Kavekana because they believe we’ll keep them safe. The fact that he could do this is dangerous to us. And the people he stole from aren’t nice. If they found out, they might have come for him. Maybe they sent someone to do their dirty work. Could have been that woman Claude was talking about.”
“Not her,” Izza said. “I know the woman he meant. She didn’t do this. The Penitents did.”
“They don’t kill.”
“I saw it.” There was a fire in Izza’s eyes that Kai didn’t dare contradict. “And it saw me. I heard Margot’s neck snap. A Penitent chased me halfway across town. Its eyes burned. I am not lying to you.”
“And yet the Watch is there, investigating his death.”
“Pretending to,” Izza said. “They won’t find anything. They killed him because they thought he was stealing from your people. Even though he wasn’t.”
“He was,” Kai said. “I have proof. Records. Documents. Margot stole from our idol. That’s certain.”
“His poems didn’t come from your idol. They came from his Lady.”
“That’s just the name he called her. He grabbed the power, made his poems however poets do, and convinced himself the idol spoke to him. Artists are liars—they lie to everyone, especially themselves.”
“No,” Izza said. “I know he spoke to her. Because I did, too.”
Kai felt she was looking at herself through a distant lens, so the dock seemed a clay diorama like the ones she used to make at school. A woman on a bench. A girl leaning against a metal rail. Dollhouse buildings. A mountain of papier-mâché. Ocean of torn paper, or cotton balls. “Idols don’t talk,” she said. “They don’t think.”
“I don’t know about idols,” Izza said. “But my Lady lives. Lived. And she gave Margot his poems.”
The words seemed so simple in Izza’s mouth. Entering Kai’s mind, their implications scattered to infinity. “Some foreign god, you mean. Margot was in touch with some kind of underworld demiurge from the Gleb.”
“She wasn’t foreign,” Izza said. “Foreign gods couldn’t make it onto the island without setting off your wards. My Lady came from the sand, from the mountain. She’s as Kavekanese as you are.”
“There are no gods on Kavekana.”
Izza didn’t respond. Kai felt the heat of her silence, of her anger. Kai wasn’t listening. She hadn’t listened to Izza all evening. Or to Margot, this morning, when he tried to explain. How much had she heard and failed to understand?
Jalai’iz. Talbeg female diminutives took the given name, added a long vowel. Izza.
This isn’t your dream.
“You had a goddess,” Kai said. “And she spoke to you.”
Izza nodded.
“But she hasn’t in a while.”
No response.
“Not for a couple months now, I guess.”
Izza’s eyes glittered black ice. She did not move. Storm tossed, Kai thought, by Edmond Margot’s death. By a life of secrecy, of flight, all exposed at once. She waited for a prompt from some higher power, a voice that would not come.
“I want to help,” Kai said. “But first I have to understand.”
Izza hesitated, but at last she held out her hand. “Follow me.”
45
“Can you swim?” Izza asked when they neared the warehouse.
“Yes,” Kai said. “Though not well since I was hurt.”
“You don’t need to swim well. Just deep.”
Slick stairs led down the wharf into water. Izza took a coil of thin rope from her belt pouch, and tied one end around her ankle. “Hold this, in case we’re separated.”
Kai began to tie the rope around her wrist, but Izza stopped her. “No. You tie it, and we might drown together. Hold, and follow.”
Kai looked from the water, to her clothes, to Izza, and said, “Okay.”
Water’s embrace was the best Izza had ever known: smothering, slimy, and sharp with seaweed, but it never held you hard enough to bruise. The line on her ankle went taut, and she waited for Kai to catch up. Izza skimmed the surface until they reached the warehouse wall. Then she dove into murk.
Groping blind she found the gap in the wall, and slid between decaying struts. She rose from the depths, lungs aching.
Izza broke free of the black and pulled herself up onto the planks that ringed the hidden chapel’s entrance. She wiped water from her eyes and breathed air sweet with old incense and rotten wood. Checked the waterproof pouch where she’d slipped Margot’s notebook: still secure.
Then she realized that the rope hung slack in the water. When she pulled, it came up without resistance, all the way to the frayed far end.
Kai must have let go, and run to her friend the watchman. Or else she was caught in the hole, in the water, drowning.
The chapel loomed empty above her. She wondered if Cat was sleeping now, beyond the debris wall in the warehouse’s front chamber. What would the mainlander think of this—of Izza showing her underbelly to this woman she barely knew. This woman she’d almost killed not two hours ago.
This woman who might be dead already.
Kai surfaced, coughing. Izza waited for her to open her eyes, then held out a hand to pull her up. The woman panted, on her knees for a while, then stood, wrung out clothes and hair, and looked around, almost blind. She wasn’t used to this kind of dark. “Where are we?”
“Our church,” Izza said.
She’d built this room herself: the low benches around the hole in the floor, the ragged altar piled with the proceeds of her last several weeks’ theft, along with Nick’s ill-conceived contributions. A cave made by human hands, starlit through gaps in the roof.
Nick’s paintings watched from the walls.
Kai saw them, now: brightly colored figures eight feet tall, so rough they seemed arrested in mid-motion. Simple, vague, and vivid. “You did all this?” Kai whispered.
“We did.”
“Who?”
“Me, and other kids.”
“Those paintings. The pool in the center.” Kai paced around the entrance, examined the altar. “Why did you build it like this?”
“It seemed right. And they asked us to.”
“Who?”
She’d betrayed so much trust, bringing Kai here. Betrayed, or displayed. Why stop now? She could always kill her. She thought she could. “The gods.”
“Tell me about them,” Kai said. Izza heard fear in her voice, or desire, or both.
“A couple years back,” she said, “I got in trouble. You know how it is.”
Kai shook her head. “I don’t think I do.”
“It’s not just kids in the alleys. We’re safer here than most places, usually, because the Penitents take older crooks. Nick says they tried stuffing kids in Penitents once, but it didn’t work. We break different.”
“I’m sorry.”
Weird thing to say. “Some grown-ups caught me. I fought back, I ran. They cornered me in an alley. I was so scared I couldn’t think. Then she came.”
“The Blue Lady,” Kai said.
“No. Blue Lady was later. The Wind Woman was first. She swept me away, hid me. Whispered in my ear.” Izza walked to a white drawing on the wall, overlapped now by a towering red eagle and a one-eyed man in a scraggly robe. “She was my first. I’d heard about her from other kids, but I didn’t believe
’til then.”
“You became a believer.”
“No. Believers just believe stuff, doesn’t matter what. They don’t look too close. I didn’t become a believer. I believed.”
“And the … the Wind Woman talked to you.”
“Not much, but yeah.”
“What did she say?”
“She was scared.”
Kai blinked. “Gods don’t scare.”
“Sure they do. When they see what’s after them.”
“What’s after them?”
She didn’t like saying the words in here, but there was no other way to tell the story. “Smiling Jack. He hunts gods.”
“Why?”
A good sign, Izza thought. Kai was asking the right questions: the story questions. “We don’t know. Doesn’t like them. Maybe he’s hungry.”
A pallor crept spread across Kai’s skin, the kind of fear that came slowly and didn’t leave easly. “You worshipped the Wind Woman.”
“I thanked her. I listened to the Wind Woman stories Sophie told. I missed her when Smiling Jack got her. Cried awhile. First time I cried in years.”
“You saw her die?”
“Don’t need to see a goddess die to know,” Izza said. “You feel it in your heart.”
“When was this?”
“Two years back, after the rains.”
“And after that, the Blue Lady came?”
“No. After that, the Red Eagle.” She pointed.
“How many gods do you have?”
“As many as show up. As many as you see here.”
Kai turned in a circle, counting paintings. “How long has this been going on?”
“The Wind Woman came first, I think. Sophie would know, she was the first storyteller. Priest, I guess you’d call her. She got old, though. Penitents took her last winter.”
“Gods.”
“It happens.”
“Tell me about the Blue Lady.”
“I was the first to hear her. After they took Sophie I climbed the mountain alone and waited, watched the sky. This was early spring. The Lady stepped out of the stone and sat next to me.” She pointed to the blue outline on the wall behind them both, the woman with horns and wings and backward-pointing legs, sharp blue teeth bared in a defiant grin. “We talked. She needed to run. I needed, we needed, someone to hide us. Back in spring, you know, there was a big purge. Watch tried to round up all the kids and send ’em off to work camps on the outer islands.”
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