Kai met the Craftswoman a week later in a nightmare of glass. She sat in a glass chair in front of a glass table and her fingers trailed over the slick armrests without leaving a trace of oil or sweat. In one corner a glass fern stood in a glass pot, glass roots winding through glass soil. Other identical rooms stretched above, below, and to all sides, beyond transparent walls, ceiling, and floor, and in those rooms sat identical Kais and Craftswomen. As Kai crossed her legs beneath the table her infinite other selves crossed their legs, too, a susurrus of stockings breaking the silence of the dream.
In the distant waking world, she lay bandaged on a bed. Here, no injuries bound her except the ones she earned herself.
She’d set her hand on the table’s edge as she sliced her palm to the pink, a long deep wound that healed at once. The blood on the table stayed, though. Millions of red streaks surrounded her on millions of tables, catching the nightmare’s sourceless light.
“Before we discuss the idol’s death,” said Ms. Kevarian, “please explain the services your firm provides.”
“Our Order, you mean.”
“Yes.”
Myriad reflections offered Kai a choice of perspectives on her interviewer: a severe Craftswoman in a gray pinstriped suit, with black eyes, short white hair, and a thin wide mouth. Ms. Kevarian sat statue still. Her eyes held neither pity nor humor, only a curiosity like Kai had seen in birds’ eyes, alien, evaluative, and predatory.
Behind Ms. Kevarian sat her client, a shadow in a white suit, a smudge of gray with a broad and gleaming grin. Fingers like wisps of smoke never seemed to rest. They laced together and unlaced, and trailed down his lapels and along the chair’s arm without seeming to care whether the glass edge cut. He hadn’t spoken since they shook hands; nor had the Craftsman Jace sent into the dream to protect and advise Kai, a round-chested skeleton who bore down so heavily on his note-taking pad that Kai wondered if he might be writing with rips instead of ink.
“I thought your clients would have told you,” Kai said, and the Craftsman shot her a sharp look. Don’t get cute, Jace had cautioned her. So much for that.
Kai wished she looked nearly so cool or collected as Ms. Kevarian. She had a choice of perspectives on herself, too, and didn’t like what she saw: tan suit rumpled, a few strands loose from her tied-back hair, her round face strained. Gray circles lingered under her eyes, and a haunted look within them. Her mouth was dry. A glass of water stood on the table before her, but she feared its sharp edges and didn’t drink.
“I am asking you,” Ms. Kevarian said. “For the record.”
She felt small in front of this woman, and hated the feeling. When she remade her body she should have made herself taller. “I’ve never worked with your clients directly.”
“In general terms, then. What do priests do here on Kavekana Island?”
“We build and sustain idols—constructs of faith—for worshippers.”
“Would you say that you build gods?”
“No,” she said. “Gods are complex. Conscious. Sentient. The best idols look like gods, but they’re simpler. Like comparing a person to a statue: the resemblance is there, but the function’s different.”
“And what, precisely, is the … function of your idols?”
“Depends on the idol and the client. Some people want to worship fire, or fertility, or the ocean, or the moon. Changes from client to client.”
“What benefits would a worshipper derive from such a thing?”
Even such a simple question might be a trap. “The same as from a god. A fire idol might confer passion. Strength. Return on investment in various heat-related portfolios.”
“Why would someone work with one of your idols, and pay your commission, rather than deal with gods directly?”
“Each pilgrim has her own reason. Why don’t you ask your clients theirs?”
“I am asking you.”
“The mainland’s a dangerous place,” she said. “If you live and work in the Old World, gods demand sacrifices to support themselves. If you’re in the New World, the Deathless Kings and their councils charge heavy fees to fund police forces, utilities, public works. If you travel from place to place, a horde of gods and goddesses and Craftsmen chase after pieces of your soul. You can give them what they want—or you can build an idol with us, on Kavekana, and keep your soulstuff safe here. The idol remains, administered by our priests, and you receive the benefits of its grace wherever you go, no more subject to gods or Deathless Kings than any other worshipper of a foreign deity.”
“So, you believe your idols’ main function is sacrifice avoidance.”
The water glass tempted, despite its sharp edges. “I didn’t say that. We offer our pilgrims freedom to work and worship as they choose.”
“And part of that freedom is the assurance you will care for the idols you create. That you will protect the souls with which your clients trust you.”
“Yes.”
“Is that why you jumped into the pool?”
“I thought I could save your clients’ idol,” Kai said. “She was drowning.”
“By ’she’ you mean the construct designated Seven Alpha.”
“Yes.”
“Were you familiar with Seven Alpha’s case history?”
“I was not.”
“Would you say your High Priest Mister Jason Kol is a competent judge of an idol’s health?”
“Jace? Yes. He trained me.”
“And Mara Ceyla?”
“Of course.” She’d said that too fast, she knew, when Ms. Kevarian made a note of it. Or else she hadn’t, and Ms. Kevarian was making notes at random to confuse her. “Our Applied Theologians are the best anywhere.”
“What made you second-guess your coworkers?”
“I didn’t.” She bristled at the implicit scorn. Jace had cautioned her, and their Craftsman, too: keep your answers short, within the limits of the question. As if she were a child to be led. She swallowed her anger, and it cut her stomach. “I thought I could do more.”
The Craftswoman’s client produced a full moon from his sleeve, walked it along his fingers, and vanished it again. His fingers left black trails in the air. Ms. Kevarian nodded. “What could you do that they could not?”
“First, I was willing to run a big risk to save Seven Alpha—I needed to let her take my soul so she would have collateral for the contract. That’s more than Jace could expect or ask of Mara. Second, I believed I could survive in the pool long enough to save the idol. There wasn’t time to contact your clients, but if I approached Seven Alpha just before she died, she might have accepted the deal out of sheer animal self-preservation.” She stopped talking. Wait for the questions, they’d said, even if you chafe at silence.
“Why could you survive longer than the others?”
“Because I’m better in the pool than most of them.”
“Better than your teacher?”
That cool doubt was bait, but bait Kai happily swallowed. “I remade my body there, completely—Jace didn’t. Not many people do, these days. As a result, I’m more comfortable in the pool than most. It’s in my marrow.” The Craftsman beside her tensed. Let him. “I thought I could last long enough to save her.”
“By ‘her,’ you are again referring to the construct. The idol.”
“Yes.”
“You imply that it has gender and personhood.”
“Language is weird like that,” Kai said. One corner of Ms. Kevarian’s mouth tweaked up, acknowledging, rather than agreeing. “Archipelagese has a fine set of gender-neutral pronouns, but mainlanders don’t like them for some reason.”
“What about personhood? Are the idols conscious, or self-aware?”
“No. Complex behavior doesn’t emerge from a simple system, any more than lumps of iron can speak. The idols we build have a few believers at most; however much soulstuff they store, their behavior only gets so complex. About the level of a dumb rat.”
And yet, and yet. What about that scream, and the words within it, the memory denied: howl, Seven Alpha said there at the end, howl, bound world. Words hidden within the death cry, steganography of fear between two beings that recently shared a soul. No, keep to the question. Don’t hesitate. Don’t hint. Ms. Kevarian did not ask about the words, because Kai had not written them into her report, and no one else had heard them. This was not the time, not the place, to raise the subject.
Anyway, Ms. Kevarian had already proceeded to her next question. “But you have affection for these constructs.”
Kai let the words go. Breathed them out, with her memories of the dark. “We build them by hand. We’re paid to worship them, to love them. We tell their stories. It’s easy to get attached.”
Another note, another nod. “You said you were stronger in the pool because you’d remade yourself completely. What did you mean?”
The Order’s Craftsman cleared his throat, a sound like gravel being stirred. “That’s a personal question,” he said. “I don’t see how it’s relevant.”
“I want to understand Ms. Pohala’s decision-making process.” Ms. Kevarian’s smile lacked the warmth Kai typically associated with that expression.
Kai met those black, unblinking eyes. “Back before the God Wars,” she said, “priests entered the pool during initiation—they met gods there, learned secrets, changed. Inside, spirit and matter flow more easily from shape to shape. Now the gods are gone, but we still go down. The first time priests dive, we change—we fix the broken bodies we inhabit. These days most changes are small: one priest I know corrected her eyesight; another cleaned up a port wine stain on her cheek. In the past more priests went further, like I did. That’s where the tradition came from, after all. These days full initiates aren’t as common, but there are a few of us.”
“How did you remake yourself?”
“I was born in a body that didn’t fit.”
“Didn’t fit in what way?”
“It was a man’s,” she said. Defiant, she watched Ms. Kevarian’s face for a reaction: a raised eyebrow, a subdermal twitch, a turned-up lip. The Craftswoman seemed impassive as calm ocean—and Kai knew how much, and how little, one could tell from an ocean’s surface.
“Ms. Kevarian,” she said, “I tried to save your client’s idol. I failed. Why are we here? Why not let this go?”
“You are bound to answer my questions,” Ms. Kevarian said. “I am not bound to answer yours. But I will, out of good faith. My clients, the Grimwald family”—a forked tongue twitched out from between the gray man’s jagged teeth—“suffered operational inconvenience due to their idol’s death. We’re investigating whether this inconvenience was avoidable. Your actions intrigue us. You believed the idol could be saved. Mister Kol did not. Do you think your judgment was wrong, or his?”
Kai stood so fast the chair toppled behind her; its edge sliced the back of her legs and blood seeped into her stockings. She didn’t need to be a Craftswoman to see the threat in that question: if Kai was right, then Jace was wrong, and the Order liable for Seven Alpha’s death. And if Kai was wrong, why did the Order employ priests so incompetent as to risk their lives on a lost cause? “I tried to help your people. So did Mara. And you want to use that against us.”
“Kai,” the Craftsman beside her said. “Sit down.”
Kai did not. Nor did Ms. Kevarian seem at all perturbed. “Many have sat, or stood, across this table, and claimed they only wanted to help. They rarely specify whether they wanted to help my clients, or themselves.”
“If you want to accuse me of something, say it.”
“I am not accusing you or anyone.” The Craftswoman ran her pen down the margin of her notes, nodding slightly at each point. “I am simply asking questions.”
Kai reached for the water glass. Its edges pressed against her palm, the blade of its lip against hers; she drank the pain, and when she set the glass down only a drop of blood remained at the corner of her mouth. She licked it, and tasted salt and metal.
“There’s no question here,” she said. “Jace and Mara were right. I was wrong. I made a mistake, and put myself in danger.” Strange that she could keep her voice level as she said the words. Humiliation was like ripping off a bandage: easier to endure if you took it all at once.
“And yet you have not suffered a formal reprimand. You still hold your position in Kavekana’s priesthood.”
“That’s not a question.”
“Based on your actions, do you think you deserve disciplinary action?”
“I’m still in the hospital,” she said. “It’s early. Do you have any more questions?”
“There are always more questions, Ms. Pohala.”
“Get on with it, then.”
Ms. Kevarian lowered her pen.
Time broke after that, and she tumbled from moment to moment through the dream. Questions flowed on, in that same round-voweled alto voice. Light pierced her from all sides at once. She drank, and was not sated; turned from Ms. Kevarian but found herself staring into another Ms. Kevarian’s eyes. She sat not in one room reflected to infinity, but in infinite rooms, asked in each a different question, her answers blending to a howl.
She woke in her sickbed in Kavekana’ai, panting, tangled in sheets. Ghostlights glimmered from panels and instruments on the walls. A metronome ticked the beats of her heart. The ticks slowed as she breathed. In the polished ceiling she saw her own reflection, a sepia blur swathed in hospital linen.
Paper rustled. She was not alone.
Jace sat in a chromed chair by the wall. He folded his issue of the Journal so Kai couldn’t see the date. He looked worse than she remembered, thin and sunken, clad all in black. He set the paper down, poured her a glass of water, and lifted it to her lips. She tried to take the cup from him, but bandages wrapped her hands. She drank, though the taste of glass shivered her.
“How’d I do?” she said when he pulled the water away. Her voice sounded flat and dull, an instrument left too-long idle.
“You were great,” he said. “Rest, now. If you can.”
She lay back, and knew no more.