The rest of the day Kai pretended to be productive: reviewing intake forms and trade requests, directing each to the relevant priest. Her thoughts throbbed with conspiracy. When time came to write up her meeting with Teo, she scrawled “theological differences” in the form’s comment box and stuck it amid the others, hoping it would be overlooked. She had more important things to do than a postmortem with Twilling.
At sundown she strolled down Epiphyte, east first, then south, to Makawe’s Rest. The club wouldn’t open for hours; poets slept late on weekdays. The stage stood empty, and the tables with upended chairs looked like pictures she’d seen of Shining Empire tombs. Penitents watched the water, their prisoners asleep. She heard no screams.
Mako stood on the beach between two Penitents, hitting golf balls into the ocean. He’d spread a carpet of fake grass at his feet, stood the clubs in the sand beside him, and placed a tee upright on the carpet. Kai watched him swing three times, and miss. His fourth swing connected, and the ball arced twenty degrees to the swing’s right. Kai squinted, and thought she saw a splash fifty yards out on the still blue bay.
She shouted from up the beach, reluctant to approach. “If Eve catches you doing that, she’ll tan your hide.”
“A man’s still allowed to play golf on this island.”
“You could hurt someone.”
“This time of day? Anyone who works for a living’s back in port, and anyone who doesn’t could use a golf ball to the head once in a while.”
“Wait until they stick you in a Penitent for killing a tourist.”
He groped into his golf bag, found a ball, and knelt to the mat. He placed the ball on the tee, but as he stood, it fell. With an exaggerated sigh he knelt again, replaced it, and rose slowly to his feet. The ball rocked left and right, but stayed. “Nothing they could do to me someone else hasn’t done already.”
She approached, keeping well clear of his arc of fire. She stopped beside the Penitent to his left, sat down, and leaned against its calf. The stone was warm. “I hear it hurts the mind more than the body. These things make you move the way they want, think the way they think. And the way they think isn’t human.”
Mako swung, and missed the ball by a foot. He frowned. “Lots of things force folk to think in ways that aren’t human. Try joining an army someday, if there’s ever a war for you to fight. Hells, I bet you thought at least five inhuman thoughts before work this morning.” Another swing, another miss. The club slipped in the old man’s hands, and Kai flinched. Mako reset his grip. Sunset transformed his face, scarred and cragged and wrinkled, into a landscape of flame. Not for the first time, she wanted to ask what he’d done in the war. Not for the first time, she decided against it. “You shouldn’t be here yet,” he said. “What’s brought you?”
“You expected me?”
“Always do.”
“You’re often disappointed, then.”
He swung. The golf ball tipped off the tee, and rolled to rest in sand.
“It’s by your feet.”
“I know where it is.” He knelt again, and patted about his knees until he found the ball.
“I can’t believe Eve lets you keep those clubs.”
“She doesn’t know I have them.”
“Somehow I doubt that.”
“Doubt what you like.” Back on the tee, and standing. He adjusted his feet.
“A little to the right.”
He grunted, and bent from the waist, wagging the club. “What’s up?”
“I’m in a fix.”
“Must be hard for you.”
“No harder than for a blind man to golf.”
“Great thing about the ocean,” he said, “is that it’s one big hole. Easy to hit.” He draped the club across his shoulders, hooking his wrists over its either end. He twisted his torso sharply left and right, and his back popped like festival fireworks.
“Oh my god.”
“Yes?”
“You should get that checked.”
“Eve sends me to a masseuse every other week. Says it’s the least she can do for all the pain I cause her.”
“I don’t think a massage counts as revenge.”
“You haven’t been with my masseuse.” He laughed, and coughed, and spit. His spit landed with a solid fleshy sound in the sand, startling up a seven-legged sand-colored beetle that reared, bared sickle mandibles in protest, then scurried away. “She’s from those jungles south of the Shining Empire. Girls there are born with chisels for fingers and pistons for arms. Every other Thirdday she avenges each acre of forest I burned in the God Wars.”
“She know you talk about her this way?”
“Hells, I talk about her this way to her face. She only really opens up on the back when she wants to hurt me.”
“You’re a horrible human being.”
“Never have been any good at it.” He thrust his hips forward and bent back. His shirt rode up, revealing stomach roped with scars. “And yet you come to me for advice, so what does that make you?”
“A horrible human being,” Kai said with a sigh.
“What’s the problem?”
She pressed her fingers into the sand, past the warm top layer, into the damp cool beneath. The beetle marched past, and saluted her with its mandibles. She flicked it, and it hissed at her. “You know Jace sent me away from the mountain.”
“You may have mentioned it a few hundred times or so when you were drinking.”
“He wanted to appease some clients who are suing us because their idol died. They don’t have a chance—but they keep prying anyway. I think they’re looking for something.”
“Like what?”
She heaped the sand beside her into a fortress, and carved a moat around its walls. “The idol that died was tied to a lot of others. If the Craftswoman gets those records, she might be able to learn about our other clients—who they are, how they spend their souls. And if that happens, we could all be in trouble.”
“Is that possible?”
“Maybe.”
“So tell your boss.”
“Who will call me obsessed and maybe he’s right. I might be making things up to compensate for being reassigned. Seeing conspiracies everywhere. I don’t want to be the girl who cried kraken.”
He adjusted his grip on the club, and held it out to her. “Are my V’s pointing in the right direction?”
“I don’t even know what that means.”
“Just say yes or no. You have a fifty-fifty shot at being right. Better than most coaches in my experience.”
“No.”
“That’s what I thought.” He shifted his hands, and turned back to the artificial green.
She demolished the fortress she’d built, and filled the moat with its sand. “I should trust Jace to deal with this.”
The club rose without tremor or hesitation. The old man’s body was a perfect line. Then the club fell.
A sharp clean crack echoed across the beach and back again. The ball flew out, and up, and straight, until it disappeared into the sunset-singed sky. Mako nodded. “That look as good as it felt?”
“Yes.”
He fished for another ball. “Find what’s wrong with the foundation, then fix it.”
“You think I won’t be able to move forward until I settle this question.”
“I was talking about my swing,” he said, fishing for another ball. “But why not?”
She stood, slapped sand off her skirt, and leveled her fortress’s ruins with her shoe. “Guess I better get to work.”
“What’s your plan?” Mako asked.
No one remained to answer him. He shrugged, raised his club, and swung again, missing.