“Sorry.” Gyre leaned back. “So you’ve been working for Naumoriel in exchange for more fuel?”

She nodded. “He had a whole series of things he wanted retrieved, Chosen know why. The Core Analytica was the last, and the hardest to get to. He said …” She swallowed. “He said if I got it for him, he’d fix me permanently. I’d be free.”

“Do you believe him?”

“Maybe. I don’t have much of a choice, do I? Not that it matters now.” She flopped back on the bed, staring at the ceiling. “Do you think it hurts to blow your head off with a blaster? It looks like it hurts, but I think it’d be over too quick for you to notice.”

Gyre looked past her, eyes distant.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Kit said. “If I’m going to die, why not spend the next six weeks getting absolutely catastrophically drunk and fucking anything that’s warm and willing? And believe me, I intend to. But I don’t know exactly when it’ll happen, and how disgusting it’ll be when it does, and I’d rather not be remembered as the mess someone had to clean up in the back room of a tavern.”

“Kit—”

“And can you imagine if it happened while you were, you know, busy? Like one minute someone’s fucking your brains out, and then next minute, GACK.” She put her hands to her throat and stuck out her tongue. “Definitely not an appealing prospect. I don’t know if I could live with myself, putting that on someone. I mean, I guess I wouldn’t have to, obviously, but—”

“Kit.”

“What?” Her eyes were tearing up again. “Can we please be done with this subject? Better yet, can you just go? You’re done with me.”

“I’m not,” Gyre said. “I want you to take me to the Tomb.”

Kit snorted. “I told you, the ghouls won’t contact me again.”

“So? You found it once.”

“Not exactly,” Kit said. “It was more like I got separated from my crew, and I was wandering alone in some old tunnels, and when I passed out from exhaustion I was close enough that they sent their constructs to bring me in. I couldn’t find my way back.”

“You know the basic location, which is more than anybody else. We’ll find it together.”

“I’ll draw you a map. I have important drinking and fucking to do.”

“Kit—”

“I failed, Gyre. Do you have any idea what they’ll do to me—to us—if we just turn up again?”

“Kill us?”

“Worse,” she muttered. “It could be so much worse. You haven’t seen that place; you have no idea—”

“I’m willing to risk it, if there’s a chance.” He cocked his head. “Aren’t you supposed to be the Doomseeker?”