Izza Jalai’s Story So Far
Some of this is adapted from other essays, some is brand new. Enjoy!
Refugee. Thief. Prophet. Jalai’iz (or Izza Jalai in Kathic) cuts an unusual figure in the Craft Sequence. Not only the youngest of our protagonists, Izza also has an extremely different life experience that has placed her outside the Craft and religious institutions most of our characters find themselves in. Across the series we meet her first as a refugee street kid on the margins of Kavekanese society, see her grow into the role of the Blue Lady’s Prophet Thief, and ultimately help overthrow a colonial government in Alikand.
In only two books, Izza has had a outsized impact. So, as we approach the publication of Dead Hand Rule, let’s take a look at Izza’s story so far.
Izza before the series
We don’t know a great deal about Izza’s early childhood. She’s from a small village in the Southern Gleb (which seems to be a Craft cognate for Africa), and had a relatively happy life until foreign warlords invaded and massacred every adult in the village. She escaped, and has been running ever since.
She ended up in Agdel Lex “as a refugee fresh from the Gleb, emerging from a smuggler’s container after days’ sweaty stinking ride through the Wastes, after days spent learning songs sung by kids from other villages that no longer existed either” (Ruin of Angels, page 257). Alone in a foreign city, hiding from the eyes of the Iskari, Izza had to build a new life on the streets. There was no one there to help her. There were plenty there to try and trap her and send her to a squiddy orphanage, or whatever worse option there is for a refugee child alone. She spent enough time in Agdel Lex to know the city and its secrets, to have contacts in low places, and understand the Alikanders and their secret city - yet she ran away from the city when she was barely twelve, after seeing the Wreckers burn out six hundred hunger strikers. She had no future in Agdel Lex, so she ran to find another one.
Izza describes Agdel Lex as a palace in which she was trapped. The seeming paradise of Kavekana quickly became another such place for her. Kavekana was somewhat safer, though still unpleasant, for street kids. Penitents only took you when you were sixteen or so. Izza found something of a family of other kids there, but found herself trapped by their expectations and their hopes. After an older girl was taken by a Penitent, she became the kids’ de facto leader and storyteller of their gods.
Now to the main series.
Full Fathom Five
We meet Izza in Full Fathom Five, a refugee street kid on the tropical paradise slash offshore tax haven island of Kavekana. Our youngest protagonist in the series, she is also the first to have fallen through the cracks of the Craftwork world.
She shows up in the Godsdistrikt, using what little is left of her soul to buy religious incense to mourn her recently deceased goddess, the Blue Lady. The Blue Lady is just the latest in a series of gods worshipped by the street kids who has died, killed in their theology by Smiling Jack. This is the last time she’ll bury a god, Izza decides. She’s going to leave the island. She can’t go back where she came from, as the Gleb is burning and everyone she knew there dead, but she’ll go somewhere. But first she’s going to stockpile supplies for her little gang of street kids.
Wandering the streets, she comes across a winged silver woman fighting Penitents - the terrifying stone enforcers of Kavekana, each hosting a criminal and re-educating them. She intervenes, and helps the injured and seemingly drugged up woman back to her secret temple warehouse. It turns out this woman is Cat Elle, who most readers know as a Blacksuit back in Alt Coulumb, but whom Izza knows nothing about. Izza helps Cat through her recovery while stealing as much soulstuff as she can as part of her leaving plans. Cat says they can escape together.
Izza gets in trouble with the police (she’s a little too young to be locked in a Penitent), and is surprised when Iskari poet Edmond Margot comes to help her, lying to the cops that she’s his apprentice. It turns out that he, too, was a devotee of the Blue Lady, and received a vision to go and help Izza.
First, the Blue Lady is dead. She can’t send visions anymore. Second, she was the street kids’ god. How in the hells did an Iskari poet find out about her? In return for his help, Margot asks Izza to tell him what happened to the Blue Lady.
Izza leaves, but returns in secret to spy on Margot. She sees Kai Pohala visit him, and becomes suspicious of her. This suspicion seems well-founded when Izza witnesses Margot be murdered by a Penitent - she’s sure Kai was behind it, and sneaks into Kai’s house to confront her.
Kai, of course, was not behind it, and manages to convince Izza. They slowly realise they’ve been seeing two sides of one conspiracy, and share information to work out what is going on. Izza shows Kai the temple to her gods, and Kai realises that Izza, somehow, has replicated the caldera of Kavekana’ai, including the pool of idols. Kai begins putting things together - somehow, the Blue Lady and Seven Alpha were the same. Somehow, the street kids (and Margot) unintentionally broke into the pool with their prayers, and an idol somehow answered, dispensing grace. Izza and the other street kids became these gods’ first congregation. In their times of need they prayed a desperate prayer, and the god that became the Blue Lady hears, and answers. Izza is the one who tells the gods’ stories, becoming a proto-prophet for a god with no voice.
“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. A cave made by human hands, starlit through gaps in the roof.
Nick’s paintings watched from the walls. Kai saw them, now: brightly coloured figures eight feet tall, so rough they seemed arrested in mid-motion. Simple, vague, and vivid. “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 kills her. She thought she could. “The gods.”
Izza tracks Kai as she goes up to Kavekana’ai, then goes back to the warehouse temple to speak to Cat. She shares everything that’s happened with Margot, and the two decide it’s time to run away. But first, she needs to work out what’s going on with Kai up the mountain, and Cat needs to finish her mission.
Izza realises that Kai has been trapped in a Penitent, and goes to Kai’s friend Mako for help. Somehow, the old man is able to open Kai’s Penitent and save her (and Teo, who Izza hasn’t met yet but who has been a key part of Kai’s side of this book). Together, Kai, Teo, and Izza run. Teo leads them out into the sea, to a warded boat - where Cat waits. It turns out she and Teo have been working together the whole time. Cat was sent here by Seril to retrieve a moon shard that had been locked in the pool; Teo dropped in a bracelet as a sort of homing beacon. Together, they break in, retrieve the shard, rescue the Blue Lady, and bring down Jace by calling in Elayne Kevarian in (who has also been a big part of this story, but not from Izza’s point of view).
And so this story ends with Izza telling stories of the Blue Lady, and building Her theology as Her first prophet.
Over the next couple of years, we later learn that the Blue Lady’s church is going from strength to strength. Izza has stayed on Kavekana with Kai, cultivating Her congregation and mythology. Unbeknownst to either of them, the religion has spread across the world, with Izza a figurehead called the Prophet Thief.
Which brings us to Ruin of Angels, and Izza’s return to Agdel Lex.
Ruin of Angels
Agdel Lex is a particularly weird, broken place in a world of weird, broken places. The city is, in fact, three cities, somehow layered on top of one another. The first Craftsman, Maestre Gerhardt, broke the city 150 years ago, and the Iskari came in to shore it up. There are indeed three cities: the modern Iskari city of Agdel Lex, the dead city beneath it, full of monsters and ice and dying angels, and a secret - illegal - in-between city of Alikand made by locals in defiance of the Iskari. This is the place Izza spent part of her childhood, avoiding the particularly creepy Iskari police force, and a place she doesn’t particularly want to come back to.
We don’t see Izza in person until halfway through the book, but we can glean her perspective through communication with Kai. As prophet and priestess of the Blue Lady respectively, they can speak to each other long distance through prayer. Kai has been on a work trip, and diverts last minute to go to Agdel Lex rather than returning home. With her background in Agdel Lex, Izza is not happy at this unilateral decision. Unfortunately, their conversation is cut off by a flight attendant, and we don’t hear a great deal from Izza for a while.
Then Kai catches Ley red-handed in the middle of a sort-of-murder.
We get two conversations with Izza, one by long-distance-prayer-call, and one where Izza breaks into Kai’s dream as she reviews her memory of the murder scene. Izza is incredibly worried. Kai doesn’t know Agdel Lex, doesn’t know the disappearing streets or Iskari laws or how to keep her head down. So, against Kai’s wishes, Izza sneaks her way into the city to help, despite the danger she know she’ll face.
A lot of her contacts have moved on or been killed, but she finds an old friend Isaak, a tough street kid now massively augmented and superhumanly strong. Through him, she gets in on an illegal job into the God Wastes, working alongside Kai’s sister Ley and her team of delvers - but is taken aback to realise Isaak is a devotee of The Blue Lady. She doesn’t want him to look at her differently, so doesn’t reveal she’s the Prophet Thief.
Kai and Tara (who’s also here, but pretty irrelevant to Izza) get on the same train as the delvers, only to be confronted by Iskari Lieutenant Bescond, here to arrest the delvers.. Kai manages to pray to Izza that it’s a set up, but it’s too late and the Wreckers arrive. Izza and the delver crew, using Ley’s magical/Craftwork-y knife, walk through the desert to a facility holding the item Ley needs. There’s a big fight, and most of the delvers are arrested. Izza and Isaak are sent to an orphanage as they’re technically kids still. This is lucky, as two others are tortured.
Izza is thrilled to have the opportunity for a jailbreak from the creepy squiddy orphanage. Despite some new weirdness between them because of Izza hiding her Prophet status, Izza and Isaak break out of the orphanage. She goes to the Temple of All Gods, a small refuge she used to hide in, and Isaak goes to get back-up.
There’s a big plot where the Iskari are trying to destroy Alikand and the dead city, allowing the God Wastes to flood them, and make Agdel Lex the only city. Izza, Kai, the delvers, and Tara are all trying to stop this. Kai goes into space, and the world gets weird. Or, rather, even weirder.
As the God Wastes flood into Alikand, the anti-Iskari rebels fight back. At the Temple of All Gods, Izza joins Tara and priests Hasim and Umar to pray and fight back; they are joined by Isaak and dozens of street kids, all wearing the Blue Lady’s token. The forgotten, the unwanted, and the invisible are here to fight alongside their Prophet.
But gods have to work in ways that are theologically consistent. The Blue Lady isn’t one for last stands. She’s a thief. She runs. So Izza runs, and the gods of the Wastes chase her - and the Blue Lady makes them Hers.
As the battle ends, Izza confronts the Iskari and the angels of Alikand - she and her people are going to be part of building the new future here. It won’t just be a return to the old ways, with Fifty Families ruling everything, or a continuation of Iskari rule.
“A girl stepped forth from among the angels. She glowed from within, and swirls of blue light rose where she set her feet. “This isn’t just the old guard talking. The city stands, or falls, through its people. All of them. And the Fifty Families will listen.” Izza looked uncomfortable in the centre of so much attention, uncomfortable with the way space warped around her. But she stood anyway. “I don’t know what we’ll build. We’ll sit down: the old families, my people, the folks at the Temple of All Gods, the guilds and the gangs and the folk who don’t belong.”
Thus ends Ruin of Angels. We haven’t seen Izza yet in the two published Craft Wars book, so…that is Izza’s story so far.
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