“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.’