berated herself. Remember what your goals are. Rescue Teriana. Avenge your father. Force justice upon Lucius. “I’ll stay out of the way.”
“Good.” He didn’t sound convinced. “Let’s go.”
Lydia followed him out into the darkness of night. It was cloudless, as it had been for days, rain a distant memory for the belabored city. Stars twinkled above them, the moon only a sliver of light. Perfect for deimos on the hunt, though none circled above.
“Where are they?” she asked as he unlocked the gate, easing it open for her to exit before locking it again behind him.
“Good question.”
They walked across the road and dropped down into the sewer, but the second Lydia’s feet hit the tunnel floor the rank scent of rot slammed her in the face. “Gods,” she whispered. “That smells like—”
“Blight.” Killian swore under his breath, then said, “We need to find where it’s coming from.”
Together they made their way through the tunnels, Killian navigating without hesitation with his uncanny sense of direction. They passed several groups of children, and he asked them to try to find Finn before carrying on.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
“Toward the western part of the wall.”
The smell grew stronger, bad enough that Lydia covered her mouth with her sleeve, breathing shallowly. They turned a corner and a faint glow appeared ahead, illuminating a slender figure. Beyond, the sewer was a dead end, but that wasn’t what stole Lydia’s attention: it was the blackness seeping through the cracks in the bricked-up wall.
The figure holding the candle reached out with one hand as though to touch the blight and Killian shouted, “Finn, no!”
The boy jumped, the candle nearly slipping from his hands as he whirled about. “Lord Calorian?”
“Did you touch it? Did you get any of it on you?” Killian’s voice was frantic as he grabbed hold of the boy’s hands, searching them for blight.
“Of course I didn’t.” Finn’s voice was indignant. “What sort of fool do you think I am? I was only having a closer look.”
“I don’t want you going anywhere near it.”
While the pair argued, Lydia took Finn’s candle and approached the wall. The blight wasn’t coming from above but from behind, seeming to be eating away at the mortar between the bricks.
Lifting one foot, she nudged a brick with the toe of her boot. It gave easily, sliding backward into the wall. Then, with Lydia watching in horror, it slid forward again and kept going until it landed with a crack on the tunnel floor. “Shit,” she whispered right as Killian said, “What in the underworld was that?”
Blight flowed through the hole the brick had left in the wall, a thick and viscous slime flooding down the walls and onto the tunnel floor.
Lydia backed up rapidly, colliding with Killian, the three of them retreating as the blight followed them up the tunnel.
“Finn, round up all the children you can and take them to the eastern half of the city,” Killian said. “As close as they can get to the harbor. Now run!”
As the sounds of Finn’s boots echoed off into the distance, two more bricks pushed loose. Then another and another. The blight flooded out in great gouts, flowing down the tunnel like sewage.
“We thought it had stopped its progress,” Killian said, shaking his head. “But it had only gone underground. It’s beneath the wall, destroying the foundation.”
“How do we stop it?” Lydia demanded, backing away.
“Get supplies down here. Shore it up.”
“It’s the middle of the night!”
“Do you think I don’t bloody well know that?”
They retreated, step by step. Blight had poisoned Malahi’s horse, and Lydia had heard the warnings to avoid contact with the foul substance at all costs. And if they were to avoid contact … “Killian, is the only source of water in the city wells?”
He stopped in his tracks. “Without rain, yes.”
“What if it’s contaminated the water?”
Grabbing her hand, he led her at a run until they reached an open sewer grate. “I’ll cover you against the deimos,” he said. “You check the well water.”
Her skin crawling with the sense she was being watched, Lydia kept to the shadows of the building until she caught sight of one of the public fountains. With Killian’s bow nocked and his eyes on the sky, she knelt next to the basin. In the darkness, the water appeared black, but she knew that was an illusion.
The stench of rot filling her nose, however, was undeniably reality.
46
KILLIAN
Dawn saw the arrival of two things: utter panic among Mudaire’s civilians and the fleet of