"Move," Nymeria hissed, shoving Kaizareth into the shadow of a rotting timber overhang. "Unless you want the dung-cart driver to realize his 'sanitation inspectors' don't have a badge."Kaizareth stumbled, his oversized tracker’s boots squelching in the greasy mud of the alley. He gagged, coughing violently into his sleeve. "The stench. It is... it is a physical weight. I can feel it coating my teeth.""That’s the smell of survival," Nymeria said, her teeth gritting as she scanned the narrow, winding passage.Oakhaven’s Low Quarter was a suffocating labyrinth of damp alleys, leaning tanneries, and cheap, overcrowded boarding houses. The air was thick with the acidic tang of vinegar, curing hides, and raw sewage. Overhead, the sky was a bruised charcoal grey, spitting a cold, greasy drizzle that did nothing to wash away the filth."We need a roof," Kaizareth muttered, clutching his chest. His lungs rattled with every breath, his heart racing too fast for his frail ribcage. "My legs... t

 "Stay down," Kaizareth whispered, pressing his shoulder against the damp, timber-braced wall of the cellar. "And keep those bandages hidden. If the widow Marra or anyone else smells the rot on you, we won't live to see the sunset." Nymeria hissed through her teeth, her pale face slick with a cold, sickly sweat as she clutched her burning forearms. "Just go. Find what you need before my skin completely sloughs off these bones." Kaizareth turned sharply, pulling his woolen cloak tight against the damp, foul-smelling air of the Low Quarter as he slipped out past the snoring laborers. The foggy streets of Oakhaven were a maze of mud, rotting thatch, and desperate, hollow-eyed refugees huddled beneath dripping eaves. He kept his head bowed, letting the heavy wool shadow his face while his oversized boots squelched in the greasy filth. He navigated the twisting alleys by instinct and memory, hunting for the faint

 "Hold still," Kaizareth muttered, his fingers tightening around the bone needle as the pale-gold luminescence beneath Nymeria's skin pulsed with a frantic, sickening rhythm. "If the point slips by a fraction of an inch, I will tear open a vein that no herbalist's paste can ever seal." Nymeria didn't flinch, though her jaw clenched until the pale skin across her cheekbones turned chalk-white. She wedged a thick, sweat-stained rag between her teeth, biting down hard enough to draw a sharp metallic tang into the damp air of the cellar. "Just do it," she hissed through the fabric, her voice a muffled, vibrating growl. "Stop talking and cut." Kaizareth pressed the tip of the bone needle into the center of her left forearm, right over the swollen, bruised-purple ridge of the brand-rot. The skin gave way with a wet, popping sigh, and instantly a thick, luminous golden ichor welled up around the shaft, smoking faintly where it touched

 "They're coming up!" Kaizareth shouted, his boots slipping on the slick, rotting wood of the shingle roof as he hauled himself over the peak. Nymeria dropped to one knee, clutching her bandaged forearms against her ribs as a heavy iron crossbow bolt whined past her ear, splintering the chimney stack a handbreadth from her face. "Keep moving! Don't look down!" "I can't—my legs are shaking—" Kaizareth stumbled, nearly pitching backward over the edge of the sloping roof before Nymeria grabbed the collar of his coat and yanked him hard into the shadow of a towering brick water-tank. Below them, in the narrow, muddy alleyway between the tanneries, Warden Jonas stepped out from the shadows, his face an expressionless mask of scarred leather. He raised a mailed hand, signaling his men to hold their fire. "You can run across every rooftop in Oakhaven, little rats," Jonas called out,