“I thought you’d be spending the night in that thing,” Kit said.

“I will,” Naumoriel said. His huge eyes scanned the darkness, ears erect and searching. “But it has been a long time since I was aboveground. I find that I desire … reflection.”

“Fair enough.” Kit looked back at Gyre. “Shall we see what Elariel packed us to eat?”

She’s up to something. He watched Kit suspiciously as she rummaged through the strapped-down packages on the cargo constructs. But what is it? With Naumoriel sitting a few feet away, he could hardly ask. Instead, he helped her inventory the supplies. The old ghoul had to instruct them which of the several tightly wrapped bundles was food—it turned out to be boxes of small dried pellets, which according to Naumoriel were some sort of nutritious fungus. Adding water made them balloon to the size of small oranges, and they had a salty flavor and a slightly slimy texture a bit like raw fish. All in all, Gyre concluded, he’d eaten worse, though he imagined a steady diet of the things would get old.

Naumoriel ate a few of the fungus balls and drank from a bulky canteen. He trailed his fingertips in the water of the stream, letting his claws carve lines in the flowing water. Gyre had never seen him in such a contemplative mood, and he decided to take advantage of it, while Kit rummaged to see what sort of sleeping arrangements the ghouls had provided.

“May I ask you something?” Gyre said politely.

“I suppose,” Naumoriel said.

“Elariel. You two seem … close. Is she your daughter?”

“Daughter?” The old ghoul’s lips spread in a toothy grin, and his ears twitched. “She is family, but my daughters are all long dead. You would say she is my great-granddaughter.”

“Great—” Gyre raised his eyebrow. “I see.”

“You wish to ask how old I am,” Naumoriel said.

“Honestly I don’t have any idea how long ghouls live,” Gyre said. “You look older than Elariel, is the best I could manage.”

“I doubt Elariel has many more years than you do,” Naumoriel said. “Whereas I was born … I suppose our calendar would mean little to you. It was the eighth year before the war began.”

Before the war? That made Naumoriel over four hundred years old. “Then you remember the war. The Chosen.”

“Of course I remember.” The ghoul’s eyes narrowed. “I was a child, but I remember. The sun-lovers chased us from their world, this world, above the earth, but that wasn’t enough for them. They cracked our mountains like eggs to get to us. The tunnels flowed with their fire. They sent your kind, their slaves, to root us out. However many we slaughtered, there were always more.” He stared, unseeing, into the darkness. “I remember moving from one city to another, always just ahead of the fire. Knowing that all who hadn’t fled in time, everyone we’d left behind, had perished at the hands of the Chosen.”