“Need…time…” I wheeze.

“You don’t have time,” he warns, glancing down the street.

“Don’t…be…dick…”

“Hey! Hey you!” someone shouts. “There they are!”

With a growl, Aron hauls me to my feet, and I find I can run a little after all. We go down a narrow, filthy alley, my toes squelching in mud—at least I hope it’s mud. At the end of the alley, we turn and go down a side street that leads to another side street…only to run into two men with torches waiting for us. Their eyes widen in surprise to see us race right for them, and one opens his mouth to call to his friends.

Aron grabs him by the throat, quick as a whip, and slams him into the wall. There’s a horrible, wet crack, and the torch drops to the ground, sputtering out in a puddle. A second later, Aron tosses him aside and slams his fist into the other man’s face, and he collapses to the ground.

It all took less than a breath.

Aron turns back to me, not even breathing hard. “Come on. It’s clear we’re not safe in the main part of the city. Let’s head toward the river.”

When he puts his hand out, I take it. I’m still shocked by the quick, effortless violence of his actions, but I have to remind myself that those men want to kill us. I pull my cloak over my face and Aron does the same, and we hide in the shadows, moving from alley to street and watching out for others. There are people everywhere in the streets tonight—not just men but women and children, fear and anger on their faces.

You’d think Aron was the boogeyman instead of a god. But maybe because he’s a god of battle, people are afraid. I think of the two men he brutally attacked and can’t blame them for being afraid.

We get to the river’s edge and go down the creaky wooden stairs towards the docks. At the docks, though, there are just as many people as there were out in the streets. These are almost all exclusively men and I feel even more unsafe here. Despite our hoods, they eye us with way too much interest, and they seem to be more focused on me than on Aron.

I trot a little closer to my companion as he pushes his way through the waterfront docks. “I don’t want to be here, Aron. This is worse.”

“What do you suggest, then?”

“I don’t know! Something! Anything! Someplace we can hide and sneak our way out of the city.”

He thinks for a moment and then steers me down the docks, past crates and shanty buildings and along the edges of the cliffs. I look up at the stairs that lead back to the city, but it doesn’t look like we’re heading in that direction. I can’t figure out where we’re going until he pulls me next to a huge, smelly sewer grate and then looks around furtively. There are a few people watching us on the docks, but it’s more of an idle curiosity than anything else. The mob clearly hasn’t come this far yet. Aron drags me behind a few crates and then we crouch low in the shadows.

“When they stop looking in our direction,” he murmurs, “I’ll pull the grate up and you get inside.”

What? “Oh no, no,” I protest, but he puts a hand over my mouth and shakes his head, indicating silence. As I watch, a sailor comes up to the grate, pulls out his dick, and pees a hot, heavy stream into the sewer itself.

Oh, god. This is nasty. I don’t even have shoes. My stomach clenches as the man shakes off his member and then wanders away. I glare at Aron as if to say really and he only nods, his gaze on the others down near a small boat.

I eye the sewers with trepidation. The grate itself must be about twelve feet high and just as wide, which makes me wonder just how much poop is coming through this city. The sewer itself looks to be made of stone bricks or mortar, and the walls are scummy with sludge. There’s an iron grate over the front to keep people from wandering in, and I’m pretty sure I hear rats. I shudder even as Aron gets to his feet and grabs one side of the grate, pulling it away from its moorings so I can slip through.

Distantly, I can hear the men on the docks laughing as someone speaks in a language I don’t know. They sound distracted, which is good. Hopefully they’ve forgotten we’re here.

Aron manages to create a wedge large enough for me to slip inside, and nods at it, indicating I should go through.

I hesitate. I really, really don’t want to be girly and prudish while our lives are at stake but…barefoot and sewage and rats…? Can’t there be another way? Something that won’t involve a raging case of conjunctivitis?

As I hesitate, there’s a low shout at the other end of the docks. That spurs me into action. With an irritated curse, I push forward, squeezing into the sewer. As I do, cold mud—please let it be mud—squelches between my toes and I slip, nearly losing my balance. Choking on the stink, I put a hand on the curved wall to steady myself and it’s equally slimy.

“Pick up your cloak,” Aron says, already at my side. I barely have time to haul it up against my side before he grabs my hand and hauls me forward. I half skid, half run after him. His footing is far surer than mine, and he doesn’t even seem to notice that we’re splashing through the sludge as we head into the darkness.

“Where are we going?” I hiss at him, a little terrified as the scarce light from dockside torches recedes and we plunge into darkness.

“Away from our pursuers. That’s all that matters.”

“Do you know where this heads?” I ask, skidding along a little and clutching at his arm.

“These are a remnant from the ruins of Old Suuol. They network all along underneath Katharn.”

“These tunnels are huge,” I admit, and see a circular patch of light up ahead. I look up, and as I do, more water splashes down, narrowly missing me. I bite back a squeal of disgust as I realize it’s coming from the street above. These tunnels are pure worked stone, and I’m shocked to think that people are walking right above us. Those filthy streets above? That means all that filth came after the fact. That under a foot of land-hippo poop and people sludge and dirt there’s a paved street.

God, Katharn is so damn gross. I am ready to leave this city as of yesterday.

Aron squeezes my hand. “Silent, if you can,” he murmurs. “We don’t know how much sound will carry down here.”

He’s right, but I can probably guess. Even those quiet words ring with a hollowness, echoing in the oversized tunnel. There are more distant rings of light up ahead, and I don’t know if I’m glad to see them or frustrated. Glad because there’s at least some light in this awful darkness, and frustrated because it means we’re so close to the street above that it feels like we could be caught at any moment. All they have to do is look down.

I cling to Aron’s hand as we walk. Eventually, the sewage gets deeper and we’re no longer splashing through the muck but wading in knee-deep water. The stone under my feet is cold, the water too, and before long, I’m shivering and my toes feel like ice. The noise from the streets above grows quieter, and we’re either moving away from the busiest parts of the city or it’s getting late and they’re heading off to bed. My teeth start to chatter and I bite down on the edge of my hood to quiet them, trying not to think about how much sewage I might be covered in. All the poop in the world doesn’t matter if my clacking teeth give us away. So I clamp down, keep quiet, and walk.

Aron doesn’t seem to get tired, so I try to do my best to keep up with him. When the tunnels fork, he picks path after path, as if he knows where he’s going. For the most part, the tunnels don’t seem to be a bad path to take, for all that they’re filled with sewage. It’s private, mostly level, and it seems to be going somewhere.

In a way, it’s also beautiful. Because as moonlight from the double moons pours in from the grates above, it illuminates just how precise and gorgeous the ancient stonework is. Every now and then I see something that looks like a sigil carved into the rock, and it makes me wonder about the civilization that vanished, leaving nothing but dirty, scrubby Katharn behind.