“I don’t suppose it matters.” Gyre let out a breath. “Take it. Help the tunnelborn; don’t let the shelters close. Keep plenty for yourself, too.”

“I should probably argue.” Sarah lifted the satchel and peered inside. “But I won’t.”

“How long will it take?”

“A couple of days,” Sarah said. “I’ll start as soon as I can.”

“I’ll see you then,” Gyre said. He got to his feet. “Thank you, Sarah.”

“Good luck, Halfmask.” She grinned. “I suppose we can’t call you that anymore, can we? Maybe it’s time you had a proper cognomen.”

“I fought like the plague to keep anyone from sticking one on me,” Gyre said. “They were always Gyre Lackeye or Gyre Scarface or something awful like that.”

“Gyre Silvereye, then? I like the sound of it.”

“I’ll think about it.”

Gyre gave her a shallow bow and slipped into the kitchen. Lynnia was waiting by the stove, two mugs of tea in front of her.

“Fifty thousand thalers,” the alchemist said, her voice flat. “That won’t buy the girl a new arm, you know. Or bring Yora back.”

“I know. But it’s the best I can do.”

“That’s enough for her to get away from”—she waved vaguely—“this sort of thing. Stay on the right side of the authorities.”

“I hope so.”

“So after this, you stay away, understand me? From both of us.”

“I understand,” Gyre said. “After this, you’ll never see me again.”

*

The inn Gyre and Kit were staying at was aboveground, but only just, part of the narrow strip of buildings right up against the edge of the crater, clustered where the main avenues dove into the earth. It was named, for reasons lost to history, the Mushroom’s Daughter, and it was tucked away at the back of a twisting alley lined with cheap stables, cheaper cookshops, and a few ramshackle dwellings.

Not the best part of town, certainly, and not a place where city authorities bothered with streetlamps. The sun had slipped behind the western mountains by the time Gyre returned, and the shadows had reached out across the street to swathe the cobbles in darkness. Up above, the tips of the Shattered Peaks still gleamed yellow-gold in the last of the sun.

Gyre Silvereye. It definitely had a good sound to it. Better than Gyre Lackeye, anyway.

He wondered what Sarah would say if he told her that being able to see was the least of what the new eye could do. He no longer needed nighteye, for example—in spite of the darkness of the alley, if he closed his real eye he could see as though it were broad daylight. But the true power of the thing went beyond that, or so Naumoriel had promised.