Kai woke to find a folded letter on her sickroom sheets, parchment marked in spindly writing that faded as she read: “My office, one hour. —J.” Economical. She placed the paper, folded again, on her bedside table, stood with aid of cane, and staggered to the bathroom. Sleep gummed her mind and body. At least Jace didn’t come to her by nightmare. Her dreams the last few weeks had been dark and drowning.
Mara and Gavin had enlivened the bathroom with a few touches from Kai’s house, but purple duck-shaped soaps and green towels did not soften the sterile white and chrome. Her hospital gown husk lay discarded on gray tile. Too-bright ghostlights reflected off her skin and off the mirror to her eyes: a worn, ill-used body made of meat, webbed with old and new scars. The bite wound on her shoulder looked like the angry outline of a blinded eye. More scars on her back, from the idol, as if she’d once had wings and someone sawed them free. They’d cut her hair short to operate, the clipped black fuzz grown out since to something like a pageboy cut. Mapping her scars, she imagined her next trip to the beach, once she’d healed.
What happened to you? the boys and girls would say.
Myself, she thought, and showered, and gritted teeth rather than accept the pain.
* * *
When Kai reached Jace’s office he was in a meeting. She waited in the leather-cushioned foyer, paging through a two-week-old copy of The Thaumaturgist (garish lede: The Helmsman’s Mistake, with accompanying full-color cartoon of an embarrassed Shining Empire theocrat draped in the kind of quilted robes no Imperial official had worn for two hundred years). Someone had left the door ajar, and she paid more attention to the argument within than to her article.
“Other members of the island council appreciate the merits of our proposal.” She recognized the Iskari accent, nasal on vowels and heavy on consonants.
“Other members of the council,” and that was Jace, “are more concerned with real estate profits and construction contracts than with theological security. That’s where I come in.”
“No one’s proposing missionaries. We want a cathedral for our own merchants and diplomats to worship. The Communion of Iskari Faith will pay for construction, and land.”
“I’d be more interested in your proposal, Legate, if your gods didn’t have a way of wriggling into people’s heads.”
“The Old Lords do not corrupt. They call, and those blessed to hear decide whether to answer. I expected more than slurs from you, High Priest.”
Jace’s secretary cleared her throat; Kai was no longer even pretending to read. She returned her attention to the magazine, and tried to look as if she weren’t listening. “Kavekana is neutral,” Jace said, leaning into that last word. “We don’t allow Craft firms to own land here, either. Even shipping Concerns rent their piers.”
“A formality. Craftsmen’s crystal spires stand three miles outside the harbor’s mouth.”
“And the nearest Iskari military base is fifteen minutes away on dragonback.”
“That’s hardly the same thing.”
“Rent an office in the Palm, like everyone else. Or buy a skyspire suite. My duty’s to keep this island safe until our gods return, and to protect our idols in the meantime. I won’t risk exposure to mainland proselytizing.” Jace checked his volume; his next words were so quiet she barely heard them: “I’m sorry, but it is what it is.”
Kai couldn’t make out the cleric’s answer, if one came. She browsed business news until the Iskari legate swept out of the office, his purple robe trailing over stone. Gems glinted from the eyes of the squid god stitched into the robe’s back. An attaché jogged after him, suited, holding a briefcase. Kai felt a pang of sympathy, watching the attaché go. Hell of a job. Sometimes literally.
She leaned onto her cane, pressed herself up, straightened her jacket and shirtfront, and stepped into Jace’s office, closing the door behind her.
The High Priest’s chambers stared south from the volcano summit over a more elevated version of the view from Kai’s balcony: the slopes of Kavekana’ai, the city, East and West Claw pinching the harbor between them. The window was not made from glass, but rock transmuted transparent.
The office was almost empty. Upon his accession to the post, Jace had spent a week moving out his predecessor’s junk. High Priests clung to life a long time, and most accumulated office mess like moss. Much of the cleanup was standard shred-or-store, but Jace’s predecessor left arcane knickknacks in drawers and cabinets and trophy cases. An onyx statue of a beetle, when touched, came to life and began carving the mountain’s stone into new beetles, who copied themselves in turn. A stack of papers in one corner had proved impossibly dense: seven hirelings strained to lift a single sheet. The papers had to be burned in place, and the resulting stink—of burnt hair and melted flesh and not of paper at all—lingered in the volcano’s executive levels for a week.
After all that trouble, Jace kept his chambers spare. No furniture save for the magisterium wood desk, the leather chair he rarely used, and a small glass table. Four statues flanked the room, old Kavekana make, gem eyed and flat featured. No books. No pictures. Nothing to shield him from the demands of the job. Nothing to shield the job from him.
The chair was empty, the desk polished. Jace himself paced behind both, swift-moving silhouette against and above the island. He kept trim despite his desk job. Age showed only as frost in his short hair. She let the door close behind her; a pressurized arm guided it to soft rest in the jamb.
“Tough talk,” she said.
He pressed his fingers together in front of his chest as he turned. “Gods spare me from priests. The Iskari have lobbied two decades for their cathedral and every year they get closer, no matter how many times I tell the council their gods’ presence would warp our idols beyond repair. And the Iskari aren’t the worst, either. You should see my inbox. Alt Coulumb keeps petitioning us to return a bit of their goddess they say we have. Same claim as all the others: back in the God Wars someone stole from them and stored it here. Their gargoyles ship us these big slabs of granite carved with their demands. Return the shards of Seril. I wish someone’d tell them paper was cheaper.” He laughed. “I’m sorry. I love my job. How are you?”
“Ready for work,” she said.
“What work?”
So that was the game. Since he wasn’t sitting behind his desk, Kai saw no reason to stand in front of it. She joined him by the window and watched him oscillate, toward her, then away. “Building idols. Structuring trades. Solving problems. Your doctors have kept me prone as a roasting turkey for a month, and if you had your way they’d probably truss me like one. I’m ready to do my job.”
“This isn’t a job. It’s a calling.” He reached the apex of his round, and stopped, half in shadow and half out. “You’re feeling well?”
“I am.”
“You can walk without the cane?”
She tapped the bamboo against the floor. “Not for long. Physical therapy is slow.”
“You haven’t cooperated, I hear.”
“It’s hard to take seriously.”
“You could have died. You almost died on the operating table, and before.”
“I almost saved her.”
“Saving her wasn’t your job.”
“This isn’t a job. It’s a calling.”
“You plan to snap back at me. In this conversation.”
“If you had good news, you would have told me; if you wanted to commend me, you would have. You owe me straight talk, Jace. Don’t walk me through it like I’m some slave you’re trying to teach math.”
“I don’t think you’re a slave.” His voice softened, and he approached her. His fingers trailed over the varnished surface of his desk. Easy to forget that he was a father, a lover, a leader. Easy to forget he was anything but a master. “I think you’re dangerous.”
“This is about Kevarian. And the Grimwalds.”
“Of course.”
“They won’t win. We acted in their best interests, all the way through—Shining Empire debt looked like a safe investment, especially with the People’s Congress coming up. No one expected the Helmsman to try to open the soul exchange over his own cabinet’s heads. And we—I—went above and beyond to save their idol. I almost did.”
“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.