She flexed her fingers, letting a single strand of sovereign silk pass between them. It was finer than a hair. She drew it across the edge of the basin, and a curl of stone peeled away beneath it.
"I was rather looking forward to seeing what I could do with this outside." Her voice sounded small in the empty room.
A thought occurred to her. "If I give it up, how many people go free?"
No letters appeared. She kept her fingers on the rim until, beneath her hand, one short answer formed.
None.
Kali smiled without much amusement. At least the damned thing was honest.
She would purchase the chance to continue. There remained another trial, and beyond it a problem that a god, at the height of his strength, had failed to solve to anyone's satisfaction.
She might give up her foundation, fail before the end, and leave a hundred thousand people considerably worse off than if she had accepted those three thousand years.
