“You would have died.”
“I felt her healing.”
“Blood loss, deprivation of oxygen and reality.”
“What more do you want from me? I said I was wrong, on the record no less.”
“You said you were wrong. Do you believe you were?”
She suddenly found the window and its view more interesting than the blacks of Jace’s eyes. Ships rocked under heavy winds in the harbor. He let the silence weigh on her—respectful, maybe, or petty depending on how you looked at it.
“I heard something,” she said at last. “Before the idol died. In the pool.”
“What?”
“A voice. It said, ‘Howl, bound world’—or something like that.” The last equivocation added due to the weight of his silence, of the still air in the emptied room. She did not doubt the words, only her rightness in repeating them. “Have you ever heard things in there? Underwater? Words, I mean. I never have, before. The idols don’t speak.”
“Of course not,” he said. “Are you sure you didn’t dream these words later, or imagine them at the time? You were far gone when we pulled you clear. And the healing process can cause hallucinations.”
“I know my own ears.”
“And I know mine enough to doubt their evidence. Never trust an eyewitness, Kai. Or an earwitness, I guess.”
“You think I’m making this up.”
“You didn’t mention it in the deposition. Or in your report.”
“Has everyone read a copy of my deposition? I really did think those were private.”
He shrugged.
“I wasn’t asked,” she said. “And I wanted to talk to you before I wrote down anything someone else might discover. I thought you might care.”
“It’s an anomaly.”
“Which means you aren’t worried, because you don’t think I’m telling the truth.”
“Which means we both have more pressing concerns.” Jace sat in his chair, and leaned back. Wheels rolled over stone, and leather creaked. “What do you know about the Grimwald family?”
“I don’t study our pilgrims.”
“I wish I had that luxury. I’d sleep better.”
“I saw one of them at the deposition. A man in a white suit, all shadows and teeth.”
“The Grimwalds turn up everywhere, on boards, at parties, in high halls of the Iskari Demesne. Their fortune travels through so many idols no one knows where it comes from in the first place.”
“Important pilgrims.”
“Dangerous pilgrims. They eat people.”
“You’re speaking figuratively.”
“I wish. And as far as they and their Craftswoman are concerned, it looks like we’re either incompetent, or mad, or playing them. What would you do, if you were me? What would you tell them?”
“That one of my priests made a mistake.” Out over the ocean an albatross—she thought it was an albatross—beat west to the distant continent. “I gave you the opening in my testimony. Dock my pay. Put me on leave. Mandatory training.”
“You think that would convince them?”
“What do you think?”
“They expect me to fire you.”
That turned her from the view, and from the albatross. Her tongue felt like a piece of dry meat. “Will you?”
He watched her over his steepled fingers. “What do you think?”
“I love my work. I love my island. But sometimes people need to make sacrifices.” She held out her hands, wrists together, offering them to be bound. She tried to smile. Her hands only shook a little. “Go ahead. Throw me into the volcano.”
He laughed, once. “That’d convince the mainlanders of something. Not, I think, that we’re a reliable investment venue. You’re a great priest, Kai. Maybe a half-dozen people in the Order could have done what you did and come out alive. I respect you, I like you, and I can’t keep you.” He unlaced his fingers, stood, spun the chair around, and gripped the back cushion hard enough to dimple the leather.
“Because of Kevarian.”
“In part.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that even without Seven Alpha we would have had this conversation sooner or later.” Before, she hadn’t realized how dim he kept his office in daytime: no ghostlights, only the sun filtering through the window. “This isn’t the first time you’ve run big risks. During the Kos situation two years ago, you stayed in the pool until the whites of your eyes stained black.”
“That was a crisis.”
“This spring solstice you danced for three gods at once. Almost burned yourself to a cinder. On the cross-quarter you negotiated a loan with the Iskari pantheon, solo. The squid gods just about took over your mind.”
“We lose every exchange we make with the Iskari because we’re too hands-off. Everybody knows it. That costs us clients.”
“You’re the last down off the mountain every night. You should have been home hours before Seven Alpha died. Even Gavin worries about you, and I don’t think he’s seen sunlight since he took holy orders. Do you see a psychologist? Any kind of head-shrinker?”
“You know I don’t.”
“When was the last time you went out?”
“Out?”
“For fun. To a bar. A play. Surfing. Whatever.”
“I go to the gym every day. Went, I guess, before…” She indicated her healing body with a dismissive wave.
“With people, I mean.”
“There are people in the gym.”
“Kai.”
“It’s been a while.”
“I spoke to your mother, when you were injured. She hadn’t seen or heard from you in months. The island isn’t so big you can hide like that without meaning to.”
“Say what you want to say.”
“I think you’ve been on a hard road for a while, and it’s grown worse since you and Claude broke up.” He waited for an answer that didn’t come, and watched her, and she hated his watching her, because she knew he could see things she did not want to show. “You’ve always been brave, but this is something else. You stare alone into the abyss.”
“That’s what you pay me for.”
“You’re the best. Nobody’s arguing. But the pool isn’t all that makes a priest.”
“Then what does?”
“People. Human beings who trust us to solve their problems, protect them from gods and Deathless Kings.”
As a child, she’d built card houses with her sister. After a few thousand microcosmic catastrophes they learned to recognize the tremor of impending collapse, not in the structure but in the builder: first in her fingers, then in the bones of her forearm, and at last in her chest. She felt the same change now. She tried to ignore it, and failed. The room was too spare, Jace in his black suit too slick, to give her senses other purchase. As he spoke she heard an edge in his voice that had not been there before.
“You are a genius in the back room. You’re destined for great things. But keep on this path and one day you’ll dive into that pool and we’ll never find you again. You run risks. Now you hear voices. Who knows what happens next?”
“I heard what I heard.”
“That’s what worries me,” he said. “And that’s why you cannot stay.”
“You’re reassigning me.”
He must have heard the poison in her voice, but it did not sting him. “I am developing you. You’ve spent your professional life up here, hiding in numbers and mythography. That ends today. You’ll move down the mountain to the front office, work with Twilling’s people. Receive pilgrims, make them clients. Preach to the seekers.”
“And in the meantime you tell Ms. Kevarian that I’ve been sidelined due to mental instability. Moved to a noncritical position due to”—she had to inhale in the middle of the sentence—“a pattern of irrational behavior. And you won’t be lying.”
Jace didn’t move. He certainly didn’t nod.
“What happens to my idols while I’m away? To my clients?”
>
“We’ll take care of them.”
She pointed to his bare desk. “How much of my memory do you take when I leave?”
“None of it. No nondisclosure agreement, no memory loss. You’re not leaving. You keep your memories until you’re ready to come back. I don’t want to disturb that beautiful brain without cause.”
“How long will I be gone?”
“As long as it takes.”
Not a good sentence. Not a good sign. “I’m bad with pilgrims, Jace. I’ll mystify them with jargon until they run screaming. Look at my personality profile.”
“The profile’s a guide for growth, not a list of limits. You’ll work first with pilgrims we don’t need: fat old men trying to hide their souls from profligate children or twentysomething brides. Prove yourself there and you’ll get more interesting work. In the meantime you’ll be out of sight. And safe.”
He held his hands toward her palms up, not quite wide enough to invite an embrace. Did he know he was approaching her as he would a startled animal? Claude. Gods and hells, why’d he have to bring Claude into it? She remembered fallen cutlery, overturned tables. They only threw words at each other, but once Claude stepped on a broken glass and cut his foot, had to go to the hospital. You’re damaged, Jace might as well have said, or: you are damage.
“It isn’t that bad, Kai. I know you. Give you a goal and you’ll chase it until the sun burns out. The only mistake we’ve made so far is to offer you tasks you knew you could handle.” He approached. She resisted the urge to draw back. He almost grasped her left shoulder, stopped in time and before her flinch, and took her right instead. “Do this for me. Please.”
“I will,” she said.
“Good.” Relief spread across his face, plain and slow as a cloudy dawn. “Twilling knows you’re coming. He’s excited to have someone with your skills on board. You see. Cross-pollination’s good for everyone. We’re much more siloed than we should be around here.”
“I’m not crazy.”
“I know.”
“Okay,” she said, and turned to leave.
“I’m sorry.” His words chased her out the door.
8
In a week Izza stole three purses, twenty wallets, one piece of wheeled luggage, a handful of religious symbols, a china cat, a hammer, two watches, and three rings. The last ring was the one that got her caught.
Rings were great for stealing—ceremonial rings especially, wedding rings or confirmation rings or university rings or pledge rings to religious orders, rings people wore for years at a time, rings that if they slipped off a finger in a cold bath the bearer would notice at once. Rings that became part of your hand, part of your dreams. Soulstuff nested in that kind of ring. Steal one and you could even pull more of the owner’s soul along, if you were careful and took your time.
To get a ring like that, you needed a mark so far gone they wouldn’t notice a part of their hand being cut off. Which meant opium, or dreamdust, or something else as sharp. Even the hardest of hard-up sailors didn’t do those drugs in public. Private establishments catered to the rich, the kind of places with white silk covers on the cushions to show they were changed after every client, and girls and boys on call for play even if most of the customers were too far gone to get it up. Addicts with less to spend settled for cheaper, less reputable dens.
She knew a few places in East Claw, close enough to the Godsdistrikt for their customers to smell the incense and feel the heat. Knew them well enough to keep clear: dens didn’t stay open long; the Watch always came to wrap them up sooner or later. Those that lasted long enough to build up clientele posted lookouts on the street and on the roofs, and they weren’t kind to kids who drifted close.
The den on Palmheart occupied an old Contact-era three-story house. The roof was heavily sloped, and the widow’s walk at its peak just big enough for two guys, one fat, one thin, one looking west, one east.
Guards in hophead joints didn’t tend to stay too clean themselves. So Izza waited until after dark, a few roofs over, for the telltale flick of a lighter and the bright spark of a flame on the widow’s walk, which gave birth to a fat smoldering ember on the end of a thick joint. The fat guard took a drag, and passed to the thin guard, who took his own. She didn’t need to smell the dope to know, but she could, and did.
They started talking soon after, telling bad dirty jokes she’d heard through the doors of a hundred bars, the one about the djinn and the traveling salesman and the twelve-inch piano player, and the one about the cat that wasn’t coming in but going out, and when one of them broke into a braying hoarse laugh she ran and jumped. Landed on red tile, skidded down a few feet toward the roof’s edge, but didn’t fall, and didn’t make enough noise to be heard over the laughter.
Dangling by one hand from the gutter, she slipped down between window boards into the top floor’s haze of bad dreams and sick sweet smoke. The room was big, and hot, and dark. Prone bodies lay on a labyrinth of narrow cots. Unlit pipes dangled from fingers. Rolling eyes flashed white through slitted lids. Off to her left, in the dark, a man moaned. She broke into a sweat as she began her search.
Most of these guys—and most of them were guys—didn’t have the kind of jewelry she wanted. Rings too new, or the metal too cheap to hold much soul. This one with the long mustache had a nice ring, but he was too fat to pull it off. When she tried, he reared out of the dark like an albino whale and grabbed her, groaning in a language she didn’t know. She slipped from his clammy grip, and continued through the labyrinth as he settled back into drug dreams.
In a corner she found a dark man with dreadlocked hair and indigo tattoos on his wrists, of suns flanked by geometric symbols. He wore a thick gold ring on his forefinger, inlaid with cursive Talbeg script in mother-of-pearl. The inscription: Hassan, with a love constant as wind. Ring and tattoos didn’t match—the tattoos from the Southern Gleb, the ring from the north, the script a dot and slant off from the one Izza’s mom had taught her.
Which by itself meant nothing. Dead men’s jewelry was stolen and traded all the time. A sailor stopped in port might buy a bauble he fancied and not know what it meant. One way or another, this was the ring she wanted. Well-worn, scraped by time. Full of hardened soulstuff from hungry and desperate owners. A find.
She touched the ring. The man snorted in his sleep, snored, moaned a long, drawn-out “Yes.” The ring twisted fine, but when she tried to pull it over the knuckle the band stuck. The dreaming man brushed his free hand toward her like a kitten pawing at string, fingers and wrist limp. He didn’t hit her. She spent a few seconds not breathing.
A light flickered in the stairwell, and she heard footsteps. A tender or a guard, come to check on the clients. They had three floors to check, and were rising up to the second now. A few minutes, no more.
She slicked the man’s finger with oil from a vial she kept in her pocket. Two drops wet against his skin, and a light touch to either side of the ring, holding his finger in place so she could guide the gold loop gently, gently over the knuckle. He was feverish, and dreams tossed through his head.
She pulled at the ring with her body and with her soul, making it theirs, this bit of gold, this shared moment in the dark. To steal a man’s wallet from his front pocket you pressed against his thigh in place of the wallet’s weight. To steal a man’s soul, you pressed against him with your dreams and visions, so he wouldn’t notice when his own lost color. Moving the ring, she remembered home fires, and her mother’s smile with the one broken tooth in front, and her first breath of free ocean, and her dad’s stories about the rabbit in the moon. Dreams they could share. He answered her, confused, confusing, currents and colors of dream all blended into opium brown: blood-tinted waves, a high winding wail on seashore, a girl’s lips soft on his, her hands on his skin, and fire, everywhere, the smell of human meat like seared pork—
The ring came free, and she staggered back. The man groaned in the dark, and groped blindly for something he couldn’t remember having l
ost.
Izza stumbled, struck a cot, and the thin man within it cried out in Iskari, “No, don’t, not the kitten, not the kitten, not her!” Across the dark room, a voice lower than she’d thought a human voice could be moaned like the breaking of the world.
The ring burned in her hand. She forced it into a pocket, buttoned the pocket. Tried to remember who she was, where she was. Izza. Five foot six or so. Thin girl from the Northern Gleb. Not a sailor, not a soldier, not a man, not—
“Who the hells are you?”
Shit.
She’d forgotten about the stairs.
A broad Kavekanese woman stood in the stairway door, lit by the lantern she carried. She stared at Izza with wide black eyes.
Izza held up her hands, and stepped out from the shadows. The stammer she needed wasn’t hard to summon. “Cap’n Deschaine sent me. Looking for a pilot of ours gone missing. We ship out come dawn and no one’s seen him since he snuck off to get high a few days back.”
“They let you upstairs?”
“They had his name on the roll down at the door.”
“Who let you up?”
“Fat guy, I dunno who.” Most gangs had a fat guy, and most crooks had no problem blaming the fat guy when something went wrong.
“Let me see the key he gave you.”
Most of these places used chits of some kind to separate the folk that paid from those that didn’t. A key made sense—easy to check. Then again … “Didn’t give me a key.”
“No. Of course not.” A good guess. Lucky amateur, that was all. So knocked around by stealing soul that she forgot to check the exits. Good thing Nick wasn’t here, he’d never let her live this down. “Let me see the token.”
She’d crossed half the room, winding through cots and past men twitching and groaning in their nightmares. Some babbled echoes of their conversation: “no key,” key, “key,” some token, “give name on the roll roll roll” …
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