Embla made him wait until everyone else was gone before handing over the items he needed for this particular job. A map, a key, and a lantern. The map he’d seen before and the notations were the same as well. It made sense that the blockages would remain static, since no one had gone down there.

  The key was long and blocky, crafted from rough metal and clearly meant for simple locks.

  “This’ll open any entrance?”

  “It will.”

  Vidar pocketed the key and held up the lantern. “This looks like it’ll fall apart at any moment.”

  “It’s sturdier than it looks,” Embla said. “Just don’t drop it.”

  The places that were supposed to hold glass panes gaped empty and the metal pieces holding the thing together were bent and obviously repaired multiple times already. A small indentation in the middle of the bottom at least made sure the rune would be kept in place.

  “Where’s the rune?”

  Embla opened a drawer in her desk and withdrew a cloth bag. Light shone through the fabric, but only a little.

  He took the bag from her outstretched hand.

  “You’re able to trigger these?” he asked, opening the bag. Light almost blinded him before he could hide the emitting light with the palm of his hand.

  “The person I buy these from triggers them for me. One of the boys was nice enough to deliver the rune for activation and then return it once triggered.”

  It was a flat, somewhat circular wooden disc, about half an inch thick, with the rune itself painted in shallow grooves directly on the surface. The ones kept in his home—well, his father’s home—were expertly crafted from etched metal plates with red ink filling the required pattern. This was a far cry from that.

  “It’s terrible,” Vidar said.

  “It’s what we can afford.”

  He frowned. “Wait, you had this triggered before I even got here today?”

  “Don’t worry, it’ll last you the full day. Probably several days.”

  “What?” he asked, shaking his head. “No, I mean, how did you know I’d be going down there?”

  She raised an eyebrow. “I was surprised to hear you lasted a full day with the boys.”

  Muttering to himself, Vidar pulled up the map to scour it for the entrance closest to the marked blockage. It wasn’t far. Throwing one glance back over his shoulder to Embla, who was already busy with some papers on her desk, he left the house. The early morning meant it wasn’t yet dawn, but no suspicious types lingered in the alleyways and the streets were mostly empty. Those few men and women who braved the early morning hurried along like they had places to be and didn’t even glance in his direction.

  The entrances were scattered all over the city, but the marked ones were mostly in Andersburg. No blockages were reported near the keep or around it, where the city’s wealthier citizens lived. One wasn’t far from his old home, right in the middle of the city of Halmstadt.

  With how near the closest entrance was, Vidar didn’t take long in finding it on a street running parallel with Rat Town’s main thoroughfare.

  This street didn’t have a name as far as he could tell and most of the houses looked like homes where many families lived together under the thumb of a landlord, crammed into a tight space both for warmth and because they could afford no better. Still, it would’ve been a step up from his own sleeping arrangements.

  One of the buildings, a squat, brown two-story townhouse, hosted a bakery. The light was already on inside and the scent of baking bread made him think of home again, no matter how much he tried not to. This was the scent of their mornings as a family. Fresh bread every day. He hadn’t thought it particularly extravagant then. Compared to the rock-hard, old crust he’d been offered this morning, it was a feast fit for the king himself.

  The opening should’ve been right near the gap between that bakery and an abandoned cobbler’s shop next to it, but Vidar wasn’t able to tell. Snow covered the entire street. It just kept falling and falling, a never-ending miserable blanket of white.

  He was tempted to withdraw the rune to give the dark street some light, but didn’t want to attract unwanted attention. If someone stalked the streets nearby, a light like that would undoubtedly catch their eye. Instead, he set to stomping around and listening to the sounds his boots made. Metal should sound noticeably different from stone, he figured.

  “Little scribe.”

  Vidar shrieked and spun, holding up the lantern as a shield. When no attack came, he slowly opened his eyes to look in the direction of the speaker.

  “Lytir?” he asked, craning his neck as if that’d make him see more clearly in the dark.

  A small flame appeared, dancing by the far wall of the building across the street. Its light was weak and flickering, like the wind would extinguish it at any moment, but it endured.

  Lytir set the thick candle in the snow next to him where he sat, leaning back like he didn’t have a care in the world. “It’s been a while, my dear friend!”

  Vidar walked up to him, placed the lantern in the snow, and squatted down, resting his arms on his knees. “What are you doing here, Lytir? Did I walk right past you?”

  The overcast clouds made for a particularly dark early morning, and Lytir’s candle didn’t help much in that regard, but Vidar didn’t need much to make out the features of this old jokester. Old wasn’t the best word, perhaps. He’d known Lytir since he was a kid, but the young man barely seemed to age. He’d been that same happy, slightly odd person for as long as Vidar could remember, always accepting coin or food graciously while encouraging Vidar to read and write.

  “Just taking my leisure, doing some light reading.”

  He held up a book, one Vidar hadn’t seen before. A depiction covered the front, a rarity among books in Halmstadt. A heavily armored knight raised his shield to protect a maiden from a dragon’s roaring flames. It was titled When Dragons Ruled.

  “Dragons again?” Vidar asked.

  “I thought you liked dragons, little scribe,” Lytir said, mock hurt in his voice. “The first book you gave me detailed the exploits of a boy and his dragon. Remember?”

  “I’m not a child anymore, Lytir. Don’t have time for stories, especially now.”

  Lytir nodded, the pointed ends of his disheveled but somehow dry hair bobbing up and down. “No longer part of the household.”

  Vidar grimaced. “Can’t sneak you books anymore, I’m afraid. No coin or bread either,” he said, frowning. “Wait, how did you know?”

  “Watchers and listeners see and hear. We, like brothers on the street, have hands open for the world to provide,” Lytir cited, like reading from a book. “The most perfect time for stories and adventures, I’m told.”

  Vidar pointed over his shoulder with the thumb on his left hand, indicating the still covered hatch. “I’m going on an adventure in real life, down below the street.”

  “A dark place indeed, but a useful one.”

  That surprised Vidar. “You’ve been down there?”

  Lytir chuckled, his smile wide enough to make his eyes no more than thin slits. “Oh no, not me. I’m a simple man, content with my fiction and the pleasant weather.”

  Vidar narrowed his eyes but didn’t press further. Receiving straight answers from Lytir was next to impossible. While he was a nice enough man, there was something wrong with him in the head, Vidar thought. Something that made him strange in a way difficult to describe. Harmless and friendly but not much use, and it didn’t take long for Vidar to grow irritated at the man’s nagging for him to read stories. Always the fictional ones, specifically grand adventures.

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  Vidar swallowed, suppressing those memories as he stood. “Well, I better get started.”

  “A laborer’s mind is free to wander.” Lytir chuckled, opening his book.

  Despite the snow and the wind, and the man wearing clothes thinner than what the boys digging graves had worn, he didn’t seem affected in any way. His fingers didn’t even tremble as he flipped the page, and the darkness apparently did nothing to stop him from seeing the words as his lips silently read the words.

  “Uh, well. See you, Lytir.”

  Lytir nodded, his eyes not leaving the book. “Little scribe.”

  Picking up the lantern, Vidar turned to return to his task of clearing the opening of snow.

  “You dropped something, Vidar.”

  Vidar turned to see Lytir handling the cloth bag with the rune, opening it. Even with the fabric in the way, it lit up a wide area around the vagrant, and light filled the street when Lytir plucked the rune from the container and brushed his thumb over the runic symbol.

  “Kenaz,” Lytir whispered, his eyes alight with the rune’s glow. “Light. Simple but oh so crucial when darkness comes creeping in.”

  “Hey, put that back!” Vidar barked, rushing to snatch the piece of wood from Lytir’s hand.

  He reached out his other hand, looking up and down the street to make sure no uninvited guests were approaching. “Give me the bag, Lytir.”

  Lytir held out the bag for Vidar to take, the friendly smile never leaving his face. “The sigil does not dance, does it, little scribe?”

  Vidar took the bag and secured the rune inside before shoving it into his pocket. The street once again fell into darkness, though the sky was beginning to lighten, the sun rising just enough to show streaks of purple in the cloudy haze.

  “You should get out of here before someone robs you,” Vidar said, backing away toward where the hatch should be. “I’ll find you when I’ve got bread to spare, promise.”

  “When you have nothing to steal, the world leaves you to your thoughts.”

  The vagrant read too many books for his own good. Vidar muttered as he searched for the hatch, finally hearing his soggy boots make a different sound, a low thud. Clearing the snow revealed a surprisingly small, unadorned and rusted square bit of metal. He saw no handle or hinges, just a hole in the middle.

  Vidar used the key. Once he turned it, the metal fell on a hinge and slammed against the hole’s wall. The first steps on a metal ladder were the only things visible. A ladder leading down underground. He shuddered, glanced back at Lytir, who still sat there reading, then removed the rune and placed it in the lantern. The walls to either side obscured most of the brightness, and when he lowered the lantern to see better, even less light escaped onto the street.

  The lantern didn’t let him see much at all. Despite the brightness, the tunnel was just too narrow for him to get a good look past the light.

  Thinking he might grow too frightened to enter if he lingered, Vidar threw himself into the narrow passage. It was a tight fit. Going down, he even needed to lift his arms straight up over his head for his shoulders to squeeze through, holding the lantern over his head. Once he passed the hatch and closed it back up with a loud click, it wasn’t quite as claustrophobic, though his shoulders still scraped the sides of the downward passage.

  The climb down was easy enough, despite the lack of space. It was all stone, like a hollow pillar, and the climb was far longer than he’d thought. In his mind, Vidar pictured a hatch and a short one-story drop to reach the sewer level below it, but in reality it took him almost a full minute to climb down.

  His nose twitched as he looked around. There wasn’t much to see, if he was being honest, and the smell was getting to him. He hadn’t noticed it when he anxiously climbed down, but this place reeked. “Shit goblin” was right. It reeked of feces to the point Vidar needed to sit down and hold his nose, squeezing his eyes shut to make them stop stinging.

  Taking shallow breaths, he fought off a wave of nausea. His body wanted him to puke, but he refused, keeping steady and holding everything down. Losing his breakfast was not an option, not when he was already hungry again. His stomach growled. That only made it worse. So much worse.

  A few moments of breathing through his mouth with his head between his legs was enough for him to bravely let go of his nose. The stench grew bearable, little by little.

  Vidar opened his coat to air it out. Sweat was streaming down his chest and back. The place was warm, and when he searched the wall and the floor with his hands, he found spots of warmth like the ones in the church.

  He glanced down at the recessed part of the floor, to the two-strides-wide basin where human waste raced from right to left, like a perplexingly fast-running river of crap.

  Vidar found himself in a straight tunnel crafted from stone. Other than the oppressive stink of the place, there really wasn’t much to see. Good. He would like nothing more than to spend the day warm and bored. If he didn’t bump into a murderous ritualistic priest down there, it would be time well spent.

  It was pitch black, and even the excellent lantern’s illumination didn’t reach either end of the passageway. He stood and turned left, carefully walking downstream, following the excrement. The platform was plenty wide, but he still took extra care to keep near the left wall, staying as far away from the murky water as possible. If he fell in, he might not be able to get back out.

  After consulting the map at the first intersection, he continued straight ahead. According to the map, he could’ve turned left to find clean water running in the floor rather than shit, but that was, unfortunately, not what the day had in store for him. At the next intersection, it looked like he was supposed to turn right, but it wasn’t until he got there that Vidar realized he would have to get over to the other side.

  A small metal bridge allowed him to cross. After doing so, he walked in a narrow passageway where neither water nor the smelly alternative ran, and when he exited, Vidar needed to examine the map again.

  He was in the circled area indicated on the map, but no matter how much he focused and tried to still his fast-beating heart, the words would not stop sliding into each other while the letters danced up and down.

  “Dammit!” he yelled into the darkness, violently shaking his head while blinking.

  He couldn’t read the stupid instructions. This ailment of his that’d ruined his life was only getting worse. It didn’t matter, he told himself, trying to calm down. The indicated area didn’t cover much ground. He’d just search it all. Two separate corridors with another tunnel connecting them, and a third intersecting both. It couldn’t be that difficult.

  Holding up the lantern to light the way, Vidar bravely continued, heading left in the pitch-black underground system. He didn’t find anything in the first corridor, even after walking all the way to its natural stopping point, where the running gray water ran off the floor and into a black abyss. Even with the brightness provided by the lantern, he could see no other such corridors ending in a shit waterfall, but he could hear them. The sound of many similar streams ending up in the same huge basin reached his ears, even if his eyes could not make them out. He shuddered, thinking about the manner of things that might be buried down there.

  After his short reverie, Vidar doubled back and entered the second corridor. Just as he squeezed his way through the narrow passage, he stopped. A faint but distinct sound had reached his ears. Like stone rasping against stone somewhere far in the distance.

  Not moving a muscle, and even holding his breath, Vidar waited for the sound to return. It didn’t.

  He breathed in deep, continuing on after glancing over his shoulder and into the darkness. Perhaps some small animal had made its way down there, he told himself. Just a stupid animal.

  That’s when the lantern flickered.

  “No!” he shouted, the word bouncing on the bare stone walls, disappearing somewhere far up the line in the darkness.

  It held its light steady as sweat pooled under his shirt. With a mouth drier than parchment, he examined it. A hair-fine crack ran along the front of the wooden disc, right over the runic symbol.

  “What the?” he asked the surrounding silence. “How did that happen?”

  The lantern could not be allowed to fail. It would spell his doom as surely as falling into that huge basin of shit would. He waited a long moment for the flicker to repeat, but it did not. Finally, he pushed on, hoping it was just a singular mishap. The blockage would be near here somewhere. After he’d dealt with that, he’d head back up, just to be safe.

  When he found the corpse blocking the next tunnel, his attention finally wavered from the lantern. This tunnel did not end in a cascade of free-falling shit water but a sheer stone wall, and there was a hole in the floor where the awfulness was probably supposed to go. Now, it pooled around an adult man who, from the looks of it, had been down there for quite a while.

  Even in the already pungent air, Vidar could smell this man as he approached. With him blocking the path of the gray water, the surrounding area flooded just enough to reach up to Vidar’s ankle, and he shuddered as his shoes soaked through. They would never be clean again.

  His first instinct was to kick the bloated corpse until it broke down enough to slide through the hole, but he forced himself to take his time going through the man’s pockets. You never knew where hidden treasure might be.

  Vidar grinned as he withdrew a knife. It was a slim blade stuck into a strapless leather sheath. The weapon didn’t have a single spot of rust on it, and the metal glinted in the bright light of the rune lantern.

  “Perfect,” he muttered, sliding the find into his coat pocket to continue his search. A few copper coins and two silver coins found their way into his hands, but that was it. Still, it was more than he had any right to expect from this poor sod. From the appearance of his clothes, this was not a rich man. A laborer, most likely.

  Vidar wondered where he’d come from as he kicked again and again, splattering gray water all over his own pant legs. Finally, the corpse broke enough to slide into the hole with a slurping sound that made him shudder in disgust. The collected gray water slowly dissipated, flowing back into the main run in the floor.

  While Vidar considered finding a water run to clean himself off in, the lantern flickered again.

  He shook it, making the hinge creak in protest. “No, no, no!”

  The runelight turned off for several seconds, then blessedly returned. Vidar breathed a sigh of relief just as it dimmed, like the rune had lost some of its power. Hurrying for dear life, he squeezed himself back into the corridor and then over the bridge. After that, he really needed to consult the map.

  He got it out of his pocket and unfurled it, scanning the page for his location. Cursing, he turned it around, trying to read the instructions. Those blasted letters defied his every attempt.

  That sound again. Stone against stone.

  Vidar raised the lantern, trying to peer into the darkness in both directions, seeing nothing. Cursing again, he returned his attention to the map, focusing on the way he’d walked. If he only traced his steps back, he’d find his way back to the surface.

  The light from the rune lantern in his hand waned.

  In a matter of moments, Vidar found himself alone in the pitch-black darkness of Halmstadt’s sewer system, with no clue on how to get out.

  “Shit,” he muttered. “Shit, shit, shit!”