The sun was setting behind the jagged peaks of the western horizon. Gyre, loitering in the street opposite the swaying rope bridge, watched the sky go from burning crimson to a faded, bruised purple and straightened his borrowed linen coat. His scar itched something fierce, but he didn’t dare scratch.
Well. Here goes nothing.
*
He’d spent much of the day getting ready, in between arguments with Lynnia.
“You don’t think I should go?” Gyre said.
Lynnia scowled. “Of course I don’t think you should go!”
They were in the alchemist’s workshop. Gyre sat in front of a section of worktop that sported a large mirror, mixing a gooey powder in a metal dish. Lynnia sat in her chair, swiveling irritably back and forth.
“What’s the problem?” Gyre said.
“You mean, apart from how this is obviously a trap?”
“I would say that it’s only probably a trap.”
“Gyre. Who goes to the Smoking Wreckage?”
He shrugged. “Servants looking for a good time. Merchant combine guards. Caravaneers.”
“And Auxies,” Lynnia said. “The place is practically their second headquarters. You might as well walk into the Spike and offer Raskos your head.”
“Hence the disguise,” Gyre said, testing the consistency of the goop in the bowl with one finger.
“Which you’re going to blow as soon as you use this idiot code word to announce yourself.” Lynnia leaned her head back and sighed. “I know how much you want this, Gyre. You’ve been looking for Doomseeker ever since you first heard his name. But all this means is that the dux knows it, too.”
“Maybe.” Gyre scooped the goop onto his finger, squinted in the mirror, and started layering it across his face. “We’ll find out.”
“I have no idea how you’ve survived this long.” Lynnia glared at him. “And if you don’t come back, what am I supposed to tell Yora afterward?”
He paused, goop dangling from his finger. “The truth. That I got myself killed doing something stupid.”
“All right!” Lynnia got to her feet. “Don’t listen. Not that you ever do. And”—she glared at his pack—“not like you ask before borrowing my supplies. I’ve been keeping you out of trouble since they dumped you half dead on my doorstep, but what do I know?” She clomped up the stairs.
Gyre turned back to the mirror and reached for more goop.
Disguises were hard when you had a twenty-centimeter scar through your left eye. People tended to remember a thing like that. The muscles around the socket were too badly damaged for Gyre to use a glass eye, and in any case the vertical cut Va’aht’s power had drawn across his face twelve years ago was clearly visible as a long, raised line.
Fortunately, among Lynnia’s many alchemical interests were the pastes and powders used by stage actors, and she’d taught Gyre a few of their tricks. About the only way to cover up a highly visible facial scar was with a bigger, even more visible facial scar, and Gyre had gotten quite creative with these. His current attempt was shaping up to be a masterpiece of the genre, a mottled mess of badly healed burns that covered his eye, his cheek, and part of his jaw. He combined it with a silver wig and a bit of facial hair backed with sticky gum, and he was fairly sure nobody would recognize him.
He went upstairs an hour later, carrying a pack filled with useful supplies. Lynnia was in the sitting room, furiously drinking tea.
“You look hideous,” she snapped.
“Good,” Gyre said. “That’s the idea.”
Lynnia scowled and stared into her tea. Gyre walked past her to the door.
“Gyre.”
He paused, hand on the latch. “What?”
“What will you do if it is Doomseeker?”
Gyre straightened slightly. “He’s the only man who’s ever found the Tomb and come back.”
“So rumor has it, anyway.” Her skepticism was apparent. “You’re going to ask him to show you the way?”
“Something like that.”
“You really think there’s a power to match the Order, just lying buried in some four-hundred-year-old vault?”
Gyre shrugged. “If what I need is anywhere, it’s there.”
“What you need. Gyre …” She shook her head. “Never mind. Go get yourself killed.”
It may be a long shot. But it’s the only chance I’ve got. And Doomseeker is the first step. Assuming it wasn’t a trap. Assuming Doomseeker was everything he was rumored to be. Assuming a fucking lot of things.
Gyre thumbed the latch and let himself out.
*
The bridge to the Smoking Wreckage was supported on a pair of too-slender resilk cables. Though Gyre knew intellectually that the Elder fiber was related to unmetal and the next thing to indestructible, it didn’t help the feeling in the pit of his stomach.
He put that out of his mind and started across. Out over the Pit, there was a constant updraft of warm, dry air, laced with the faint smells of sulfur and acid. Gyre wasn’t the only one heading to the Wreckage as the last of the sunlight vanished, and the bridge bounced and twisted with the footsteps of a small crowd. Gyre let out a silent sigh of relief when he could put his foot on solid stone again, even if it was the weathered, precarious stone of the pillar on which the Wreckage sat.
The building was a rambling place, with a three-story hall having sprouted several extra wings and additions. Gyre headed for the main entrance, marked by a painted tavern sign depicting the building as a burnt-out ruin. The charred skeleton leaning on the bar, he thought, was a nice touch. Below it was a pair of double doors jammed open, leading to a long wood-paneled room centered on a heavily built circular bar. Other doors, some of them attended by discreet guards, led off to other parts of the establishment, for those who had more particular vices. At the far end, a grand staircase led up to the second floor.
The general impression was of ostentatious but entirely fake luxury. Gyre looked over the place with a thief’s eye, noting the cheap, flaking gilt on the furniture, cut glass in the sparkling lamps, threadbare red carpet, and wallpaper already damp and bubbling in patches. If you squinted, though, you could pretend you were in some nobleman’s ballroom, or one of the grand hotels of Skyreach. Gyre guessed that for the clientele—mostly servants and guards of those who really could afford such splendor—this was the closest they could get.
Only the bar itself looked like it was built to last, a ring-shaped counter of polished stone with all the barrels and bottles tucked safely inside it. Three uniformed bartenders circled, filling orders, and decithaler coins clattered and slid across the stone. Gyre joined the loose queue, quietly satisfied at the horrified, pitying looks he got out of the corner of his eye. This scar really is one of my better efforts.
When he reached the bar, he found himself facing a boy no older than fourteen. The lad said something Gyre didn’t catch—he had the rolling, grating accent of the mountains, unsoftened by standard Republican pronunciation. Seeing Gyre’s scar, he raised his eyebrows quizzically. Gyre cleared his throat.
Here goes nothing.
“I would like,” he said, “a bottle of the Katre ’49.”
The boy blinked. “’Scuse me?”