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“So, why do we have to go down there, again?” asked Dougal.

“Because there’s one spot in the wall that the Vanguard rarely watches and the charr don’t attack: the sewage exit. Ebonhawke mostly gets its water from streams that flow down into it from the mountains, and they tap an underground river with a few deep wells. But they also need to get rid of all the waste they generate. Otherwise, the city would eventually be overwhelmed with it.”

Even under her fur, Ember seemed to be turning a little green.

“The honey wagons dump the waste into a few well-positioned central depositories, each of which sits downstream from the wells and the point at which they divert some of the mountain streams into the sewer’s main tunnel. The diverted water then carries the refuse under the city until it spills out of the far side of the mountain a couple hundred yards away from the wall.”

Dougal’s stomach turned. “You’re kidding,” he said, although he knew the asura wasn’t.

The asura smiled. “The charr can’t stand the smell. Every now and then, the Vanguard sends someone up to check out the sewage tunnel’s exit, but he finds it locked up tight, and that’s a good enough excuse for them to forget about it. The Vanguard isn’t made up of complete idiots. They know about the sewage exit, of course, and they’ve secured it fairly well against attacks—from the outside.”

“But not from the inside!” said Gullik, who had finally lifted the iron hatch and stood there, splay-legged, holding it up. “By the Snow Leopard’s lazy tail, this just might work!”

“Might work? Of course it will work. It’s foolproof !” He scanned the faces of the others. “It has to be when you’re working with fools.”

Ember growled at the asura, who let out a nervous laugh. “Present company partially excepted, of course.”

“Then we have to go,” said Riona. “And now, before the guards are done with Kranxx’s foolishness and organize a proper search.”

The set of her jaw told him everything Dougal needed to know. She hadn’t lost an iota of her determination. She would do anything to see her mission through.

Dougal pointed into the darkness beyond the iron door that Kranxx had opened. A wrought-iron ladder disappeared into the abyss below.

“Let’s get it over with.”

The descent was interminable, and Dougal wondered how deep the original sewers ran in Ebonhawke. Gullik went last, securing the now-unlocked iron hatch behind them with what the norn probably thought was stealth but, to the others in the narrow vertical passage, sounded like the toll of a dead man’s bell.

At the bottom of the ladder Kranxx handed his lantern to Gullik, then reached into his pack and pulled out and unlimbered a long pole made up of several hinged sections with a hook on one end. He shoved the other end into a pole-width pocket sewn into the back of his pack, then dug out and hung a glowing blue rock from the end of the hook. He shouldered the pack again so that the rock hung above him, about five feet off the ground, lighting his way, and he led them into the sewer.

Killeen followed right after Kranxx, peering at everything she saw in repulsed fascination. Dougal and Riona followed behind Killeen, with Ember after them and Gullik hunkering along in the rear, his head and shoulders held down tight to keep from scraping against the tunnel’s ceiling.

The tunnel had been cut straight out of the side of the mountain, then covered over with fitted stones. Wooden trusses held up most of the roof, although in spots it had caved in or begun to sag. Far less care had been taken with these tunnels than with the elaborate underground structures in Divinity’s Reach. Dougal supposed that had been determined by what each had been designed for. Here in Ebonhawke, they didn’t have enough space for a graveyard: they burned their dead and watched the smoke from the fire carry their spirits off to the Mists.

At first, the floor of the tunnel was flat and dry, just like the passages that Dougal and Riona had been caught in as kids; but Dougal could hear