Full Fathom Five (32 page)

“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.”

“I didn’t know.” Kai’s voice sounded hollow.

“She helped us,” Izza said. “Everyone told stories about her, but mine were the best. I took Sophie’s place. I liked the Lady, and she liked me. More than liked, over time. I taught her to run and hide. Turns out gods don’t know that stuff unless they learn from us: she was like a kid, only bigger. She lasted longer than the rest, maybe because she listened better and learned more. The Lady helped us set our feet in the right place at the right time, gave us that tickle lets you know someone’s watching when you think you’re safe.” And this was the hard part. “She was a partner. A friend. You’re a priest. You know how it is.”

“I don’t,” Kai said. “Not like that.”

“She died three months back. I heard her scream at night.”

Kai sat down hard, facing the Blue Woman. “And Margot.”

“Him I only met him a little while ago. We thought the Lady was just ours, but I think we were wrong. He saw the Green Man, too. That one didn’t last long; him and the Great Squid were big, flashy, visible. Smiling Jack caught ’em easy.”

“And no new gods since … since the Blue Lady?”

“No. Maybe someone’s met the next, and kept quiet about it. But I don’t think so. People tell.”

“It doesn’t make sense.” Izza recognized Kai’s expression, and her tone of voice. Gamblers looked that way sometimes when they wandered swaying out of card halls and leaned against a wall and gazed into the earth, like if they stared hard enough it might open underfoot to swallow them. “I know these figures.” She pointed to the gods on the wall. “I’ve seen them, sketched in a notebook. These are idols. The one you call the Green Man—a guy named Ruiz built him, and the Squid, too. The Blue Lady, my friend Mara made her. And you say Smiling Jack killed them all.”

“That’s the story.”

“It doesn’t fit. These idols died because of bad business deals, not because someone hunted them down.” Kai limped from one painting to the next. “And they couldn’t talk. Or think for themselves. You’re describing intelligent systems. These idols weren’t complex enough for that. Simple myth machines, that’s all.”

“I don’t know how,” Izza said. “I just know what was.”

“So did Margot. And he’s dead.” Kai hugged herself, and watched the Blue Lady on the wall.

“Your Watch killed him,” Izza said. “And they’ll go on to kill my friends. My gods. Unless we stop them.”

“No,” Kai said. “The Watch didn’t kill him. I know you saw what you saw, but if a Penitent killed Margot it wasn’t working for the Watch. Something else is going on. I don’t know if that means the Craftsmen, or the Grimwalds, or my people, or what. I don’t know,” she repeated, and turned away from the Blue Lady.

Izza waited awhile, but the woman didn’t speak again. “What do we do?”

“This is deep Craft. Impossible things all happening at once. The key is up the mountain, in the pool. I have to find it.”

“You’re not going anywhere without me,” Izza said.

“I can’t bring you into the mountain. I don’t even know how I’ll get in, let alone take you along.”

“I could dress up like a client.”

“We don’t have teenage clients.”

“I can look older.”

“But you can’t fake belonging to a Concern rich enough to need our services.” Kai looked down at the sacrifices piled on the altar. Pocketbooks, purses, novels left towelside, three gold necklaces. A handful of rings. Coins stolen from a bliss-dealer at a topless club. Three tiny porcelain cats from the Shining Empire. Light seeped through chips in their enamel eyes. “Look. You want to find out the truth. But you’re worried I might betray you.”

“Yes.”

“Well,” Kai said, with a smile Izza didn’t quite understand, “if you can’t trust me, why don’t you hire me?”

“What?”

“Priests sometimes consult on the side. This qualifies: I’m consulting you about your gods’ nasty tendency to die.”

“What.” This time Izza’s voice stayed flat, rather than rising with the question.

“Here’s the deal: You hire me. I investigate your gods. The consulting agreement binds me to secrecy. If I betray you, the contract hurts worse than any torture you could invent. Old Island stuff. Sharks gnaw my bones. Vines twine through my eyes. My guts strangle my lungs; my blood turns to lava. Figurative, mostly, but the pain’s real.”

Silence, and water.

“You need my help,” Kai said. “All you need to do is pay me for it.”

“You’re asking
me
to pay
you
.”

“A contract requires payment, or it doesn’t take.”

Gods watched from the walls, but the room was empty save for Kai and Izza. Candles flickered. Waves lapped at the dock. Kai dripped on damp floorboards.

Izza reached to her neck, untied the leather string there, and advanced on Kai. “Sit down.” The woman sat. “Here.” Kai’s breath stilled as Izza leaned in close. She sank a bit of soul into the necklace, into the pearl, and tied it around Kai’s neck, tight enough the other woman couldn’t slip the string off over her head.

“Thank you,” Kai said. She touched the gray pearl at her throat.

“Is that it?”

“We shake hands, now.”

They shook. Izza felt the agreement spiral up her arm from Kai’s, and bite her wrist. The other woman’s eyes glowed briefly, then faded. Izza stumbled back and sat on a bench. Her world grayed out briefly before she adjusted to the lost soul.

Kai looked small, under the gods’ gaze, in the starlight.