“That I’m onto him, obviously.” She pulled her legs in a little tighter. “He’s never going to fix my heart. Of course he’s not. And he’s never going to give you what you want. Either we die getting him to whatever he’s looking for, or he’s going to keep us on his leash forever.” She shook her head. “Or else, once he has his ‘power under the mountain,’ he’ll toss us aside like yesterday’s breakfast and leave us to rot. You know he will.”

“The thought has occurred to me,” Gyre said. “But I always knew that was a risk of looking for the Tomb.”

“You chose to risk your life trying to turn the world upside down. I’m just trying to fucking stay alive until my next birthday, all right? Forgive me if I don’t like the idea of being dropped on a dung heap to wait for my personal hourglass to run out of sand.”

“I don’t like it much either,” Gyre said. “But what’s the alternative? You said yourself we’re dependent on the ghouls.”

“On the ghouls,” Kit said. “Not on Naumoriel.”

There was a pregnant pause.

“Think about it,” Kit went on. Her voice was low and fast. “Naumoriel isn’t popular among his people, right? He’s practically an exile. And he said that dealing with us wasn’t something their leaders would approve of. If his project were to go wrong out here, well … who would know, apart from the two of us?”

“That’s …” Gyre paused. “That still doesn’t solve your problem.”

“It does if we find this ‘power’ and take it for ourselves,” Kit said.

“We don’t even know what it is,” Gyre said.

“We know it must be something spectacular,” Kit countered. “You’ve seen what the ghouls can do already. What goes far enough beyond that for Naumoriel to risk everything—his own life, even?”

“And you’re assuming it’ll be something we can use—”

“We don’t have to use it. Whatever it is, we just offer to sell it to the rest of the ghouls. Make our bargain over again, only this time we’ll have the whip hand. That ought to be enough to be worth a little dhaka to fix me up. And for you—what would you need, to destroy the Order? An army of those construct things, maybe?”

“Maybe,” Gyre muttered. “It’s a plaguing big risk. There’s so much we don’t know.”

“I think it’s not as much of a risk as letting Naumoriel get what he wants and trusting to his gratitude afterward,” Kit said.

Gyre gave a slow nod. “So what are you planning?”

“I’m playing it by ear for the moment. The more we can get Naumoriel to tell us about where we’re going, the better. Aside from that, we wait for an opportunity.” She grinned in the darkness. “I just wanted to get us on the same page first.”

“I may have an idea,” Gyre said. “At least it’ll be … a little insurance. If he gets out of his construct again tomorrow, see if you can get him talking.”