Gyre staggered back against the door, the room spinning around him. Lynnia was saying something, but he couldn’t parse it. She hurried forward, taking Kit out of his arms, but made no effort to assist Gyre as his legs gave way and he slipped to the floor.

*

When he woke, he was in his own bed, and Lynnia was working at his table by the light of a lamp. The nighteye had worn off at last, but his good eye still ached from the abuse, and his scar pulsed with a deep, throbbing pain. He tried to sit up, which set his head spinning again, and he settled back on the pillow with a groan.

“I’d stay put a little while longer,” Lynnia said without looking up. “You’ve got some quickheal in you, but that’s quite a bump on your skull.”

“I gathered.” Gyre found a mug of water on the bedside table, lifted it carefully, and drank. “Is Kit all right?”

“She will be. She was in worse shape. Splinted the fingers and gave her some bone-break potion. It looks like she fell off a plagued roof.”

“That’s more or less what happened,” Gyre said. He paused. “Yora’s really …”

His voice trailed off into silence, which stretched on for what felt like an eternity as Lynnia’s pen scratched over a ledger book. Eventually the old alchemist sighed and turned her chair around.

“That’s the word on the street, and I don’t see any reason to doubt it,” she said. “Nobody who went to the tunnel with her came back, and some of them are definitely in the dungeons. Raskos proclaimed a great victory over the criminals and smugglers.” Her eyes narrowed, gaze pinning him to the bed. “I also hear that Raskos’ private treasure horde nearly burned down. Some kind of fight there.”

Gyre swallowed. “What do you want me to say?”

“You don’t need to say anything.” Lynnia got to her feet, stretching her bad leg with a wince. “Yora was … Did you know I helped her father, in his stupid little war?”

“She told me that once,” Gyre said.

“After he died, those of us who were left felt … responsible for her. I helped her as much as I could.”

“I thought you believed in her cause.”

“It gets harder to believe in causes when you get old,” Lynnia said. “It’s all I can do to believe in people. I believed in you, Gyre, when you washed up on my doorstep. I introduced you to Yora because I thought you could help each other.” Lynnia sucked in a deep breath. “And you left her to die.”

“I didn’t—” Gyre struggled until he was sitting up, head pounding. “She wasn’t supposed to—”