“No,” Gyre mouthed. “He said filiarch. That means Legionaries.”
“The dux only has a couple of squads of Legionaries.”
“He only needs one to kill us.” Gyre swallowed. “Stay quiet.”
Time passed, in silent and excruciating slowness. Kit shifted her weight, brushing against him in the process. He gritted his teeth.
“We could fuck,” she whispered. “If you’re bored.”
“Very funny.”
“Not the most comfortable position, I admit, but there’s something about trying to keep quiet. Knowing that if you gasp too loud you’re definitely going to die.” Her hand brushed against his cheek, playing over the silver mask. “No?”
“Please be quiet.”
Her other palm pressed against the front of his trousers. “Aha. I knew you’d be into it.”
“Kit—” He cut the word off in a strangled gasp at the sound of approaching footsteps.
“Head back up,” the man’s voice said. “We’ll hold the junction until we’ve secured the area.”
“Yes, sir,” the woman barked. Then, mercifully, both sets of boots headed back up the corridor.
Kit tweaked him through his trousers. “Missed your shot, Halfmask.”
Before he could warn her, she wriggled past him, pushing out of the niche. Gyre took a few quick breaths and followed.
“What the plagued fuck—” he began.
“Oh, relax.” Kit was still invisible, but he could hear the grin. “Just breaking the tension.”
“You really are insane, aren’t you?”
“I’ve been told that before. You’re the one who wants to go to the Tomb.” She flicked the firelighter, outlining herself in a brief shower of sparks. “You think we can get past them?”
Gyre ordered her to stay put and padded back up toward the junction, moving with the smooth silence of long practice. Well before he got there, he could see the light of more torches. Risking a peek around the last corner, he saw at least a half dozen shadowy figures, and one who gleamed in a rainbow of iridescent colors. Legionary. There was something insectoid about the faceless unmetal armor. The man—or woman; there was no way to tell—carried a short sword on their hip and a blaster rifle slung over their shoulder. Gyre swore silently and eased back down the corridor.
Kit was where he’d left her, for a wonder. She answered his quiet call with a flick of the firelighter.
“They’re still at the junction. Auxies and a Legionary,” he said. “We’re not going to get past them. We’ll have to wait.”
“So we wait.” Kit sighed. That prospect seemed to disturb her more than the idea of fighting their way out. “Until they get tired and go home.”
“Or decide to come double-check.”
He heard the rasp as she slid down the rock wall. “And not even anything to read in the meantime.”
“We could—”
“Very funny,” she snapped.
Gyre sat down beside her, his back to the wall. “You’re not good at waiting, are you?”
“Nope.” He heard the firelighter clicking, open and closed. “Clock’s ticking, you know?”
“What clock?”
“You know. The clock.”
“On life, you mean?” Gyre shrugged. “Given your line of work, is getting old really something that worries you?”
“You have to plan for the best case, right?” She flicked the firelighter again.
“How old are you, anyway?”
“Nineteen.” She cocked her head by the light of the sparks. “Maybe twenty by now? I haven’t been keeping track.”
There was a long silence. Gyre stared into the darkness, the firelighter’s sparks dying away. He went to scratch his scar, was blocked by the mask, and shifted uncomfortably.
“Tell me a story, then,” Kit said.
“A story?”
“Something about your life.”
“I’ll make you a deal,” Gyre said. “A story for a story.”
“I suppose that’s fair.” Cloth shuffled as Kit stretched. “You want me to go first?”
“If you don’t mind.”
“What do you want to hear about?” She paused. “Not the Tomb. Not until we’re finished.”
Gyre made a face. I suppose that was inevitable. “Did you really know the … other Doomseeker? Where did you get the name?”
She grunted as though he’d struck her. “Suppose I should have expected that.”
“If you don’t want to trade—”
“It’s fine.” She paused. “It’s just a little hard to look back, sometimes.”
“It can’t have been that long ago.”
“I was fifteen, maybe.” She shifted against the rock. “I got … some bad news. I was living in Grace at the time, and I marched down to the tavern and signed up with the scariest scavenger expedition I could find. The real madmen, who go out way past where anyone else has gone, hoping for a big score. A virgin tunnel, or a piece of skyship. There were eight of us when we left. Three came back.”
She was quiet a moment. “There was a boy I liked. Not even a scavenger; he just kept the thickheads from running loose. I don’t think he knew how dangerous the run was. Stupid, pretty boy. I let him crawl into my bedroll, and a week later a plaguespawn the size of a cart peeled his face off.”
“I’m sorry,” Gyre said quietly.
“Wasn’t my fault,” Kit said. “But it felt like it. We got out with a decent haul, and I blew the whole thing on drink and whores in about a week. Then I went back out with another team. Down into the tunnels under Crackskull Peak. Came back with four busted ribs and a broken arm, plus a new blaster. Waited until it healed, then went out again. You get the idea.
“After a while I guess I was kind of a legend.” She gave a short laugh. “They were calling me Doomseeker, and I didn’t mind. Bought me a lot of drinks. You’d think they wouldn’t want me on their crews. Every run I went on went bad, one way or another. I kept waiting for my luck to run out.”
“Why?” Gyre said.
“That’s another story. You only get one.” He could hear her grinning again. “About a year after this started, I was in one of my drinking and fucking phases, and a guy comes to see me. Old guy, which is rare enough, because there aren’t that many old scavengers. He sits down and tells me that he’s heard I was using his name. Doomseeker.”
“Really?” Gyre leaned forward. “The original?”
“No idea. But going by the way old-timers treated him, he could have been. I was a little drunk, so I told him if he wanted to fight, we could fight. He said that wasn’t how he preferred to handle things. He just wanted to make sure I was worthy. I tell you, I almost shot him just for saying that. But he pulled out a deck of cards and sat down.
“I mostly gambled as another way to lose money as quickly as possible. We played a few rounds, back and forth, up and down. I’m just throwing in whatever I can, and he’s starting to look disappointed. I finally get a really good draw, and I throw everything I have in the pot, and he looks at me real quiet and says, ‘I bet my life.’