“You really think there’s a power to match the Order, just lying buried in some four-hundred-year-old vault?”

Gyre shrugged. “If what I need is anywhere, it’s there.”

“What you need. Gyre …” She shook her head. “Never mind. Go get yourself killed.”

It may be a long shot. But it’s the only chance I’ve got. And Doomseeker is the first step. Assuming it wasn’t a trap. Assuming Doomseeker was everything he was rumored to be. Assuming a fucking lot of things.

Gyre thumbed the latch and let himself out.

*

The bridge to the Smoking Wreckage was supported on a pair of too-slender resilk cables. Though Gyre knew intellectually that the Elder fiber was related to unmetal and the next thing to indestructible, it didn’t help the feeling in the pit of his stomach.

He put that out of his mind and started across. Out over the Pit, there was a constant updraft of warm, dry air, laced with the faint smells of sulfur and acid. Gyre wasn’t the only one heading to the Wreckage as the last of the sunlight vanished, and the bridge bounced and twisted with the footsteps of a small crowd. Gyre let out a silent sigh of relief when he could put his foot on solid stone again, even if it was the weathered, precarious stone of the pillar on which the Wreckage sat.

The building was a rambling place, with a three-story hall having sprouted several extra wings and additions. Gyre headed for the main entrance, marked by a painted tavern sign depicting the building as a burnt-out ruin. The charred skeleton leaning on the bar, he thought, was a nice touch. Below it was a pair of double doors jammed open, leading to a long wood-paneled room centered on a heavily built circular bar. Other doors, some of them attended by discreet guards, led off to other parts of the establishment, for those who had more particular vices. At the far end, a grand staircase led up to the second floor.

The general impression was of ostentatious but entirely fake luxury. Gyre looked over the place with a thief’s eye, noting the cheap, flaking gilt on the furniture, cut glass in the sparkling lamps, threadbare red carpet, and wallpaper already damp and bubbling in patches. If you squinted, though, you could pretend you were in some nobleman’s ballroom, or one of the grand hotels of Skyreach. Gyre guessed that for the clientele—mostly servants and guards of those who really could afford such splendor—this was the closest they could get.