A set of stairs leading up to the second floor faced the front door, but everyone veered left into a large sitting room where rough wooden benches lined the walls.

Fire danced in a fireplace by the right wall, giving plenty of warmth. Lanterns with burning candles hung above the benches, placed high enough that those seated below didn’t need to worry about hitting their heads on the simple metal fixtures.

The main feature of the room was a sizable wooden desk that actually appeared to have been crafted by someone who knew what they were doing. With treated, oil-darkened wood and sanded-down surfaces, it wouldn’t have been out of place in his father’s office.

Behind it sat a thin woman with blond hair in a thick braid resting over her left shoulder, blue eyes with dark rings under them, and a stern expression on her face. The small nose and thin lips did little to liven up her expression, and the way she sat with a very straight back reminded him of a teacher who would accept no nonsense from anyone. He was familiar with the type.

“Embla?” he whispered to the boy to his left, one of the redheaded lads.

The young woman immediately turned to him, her gaze as stiff as her back. “You are new.” Her voice was surprisingly soft. Still, it carried through the room, and everyone immediately fell silent.

“I am,” Vidar confirmed, doing his best to hold eye contact without fidgeting.

Ida raised her hand. “I brought him.”

“Ate our food,” one of the urchins muttered.

“A rich boy,” someone else added.

A few of the younger boys and girls giggled.

Embla silenced the room with a look, then focused back on Vidar with a searching look. “How old are you?”

“Sixteen.”

“Name?”

“Vidar.”

“You have not been one of us for long, judging by your clothing. What brings you here, Vidar?”

The intense attention from this blond stick and her questions made Vidar’s eye twitch and put some heat into his words.

“Why do you care?”

One of the girls gasped and several others started squirming in their seats. Ida shot him a warning look.

Embla’s expression didn’t change. “I am the organizer here in our little nest. You ate our food, which means you owe me a day’s work. If I don’t know anything about you, then how can I assign you a task for the day? Perhaps you’d enjoy collecting frozen cow dung outside the gate?”

That prospect did not sound thrilling. “I’m a scribe.”

“A scribe would not have any need of my services,” Embla said, raising an eyebrow.

“Not a very good scribe,” Vidar admitted.

He glared at the others in the room, daring them to laugh.

“But you can read?”

“Of course I can read.”

“Aside from me, I suspect you’re the only one in this room who can.”

Vidar looked around, seeing some sullen glares and uncomfortable looks. Only Ida and Siv seemed to think the whole thing amusing, considering the badly suppressed laughs they were trying to hide.

“Oh.”

“Unfortunately, we don’t get many assignments with that requirement, but I do have one.”

Torbjorn suddenly burst out laughing and Embla shot him a look of irritation. “Torbjorn, you know your assignment.”

Torbjorn’s laugh shifted into a giggle as he moved to leave. He said something, but Vidar didn’t quite make it out. He thought it sounded like shit goblin, but that couldn’t be right.

Once the big lout was gone, Embla looked at the others. “Ida, Siv. Seamstress.”

“Yes, Embla,” Ida said, pulling her sister along. She shot a grin Vidar’s way as they left. “See you tonight.”

“Torkel, Johan, Knytt. You’ll be helping Haraldson with cleaning the barracks today. You know where to go?”

“Yes, Embla.”

It continued like that for a few minutes, with Embla reading off a list and assigning tasks. All of them were rather mundane, unskilled labor, but that was to be expected in a place like this. Not much room for specialization.

Most of the room cleared out. Only Vidar and three other boys remained. They all looked to be older, but not quite of an age with Torbjorn.

One of the remaining boys spoke up when Embla let the silence settle. “Are we digging graves again?”

“Yes.”

They started shuffling out of the room, but Embla stopped them. “Hold on a moment, boys.”

“There is a job that keeps landing in my lap that pays a little better than most,” she said, turning to Vidar. “And you won’t be out in the cold doing it.”

That got his attention. “That means I’ll get money, not just stale bread, bean paste, and suspect cheese?”

Embla’s gaze hardened. “No. It means you and your new friends can get a little more food and some thicker blankets. We all work together here.”

“What did you eat this fine morning?” Vidar asked.

Embla kept her face neutral but did not answer. Instead, she asked, “Do you want to hear about this job or not?”

“Fine.”

“It requires navigating using a map and following guided markers underground.”

He frowned. “Underground?”

“The water and offal systems both run underneath our feet. Your job would be to traverse these pathways and clear reported blockages.”

“Our drinking water runs parallel with everyone’s shit?”

“It does. Kept separate, as I understand it, but not by much.”

“You’ve never been down there?” he asked, nodding to the papers before her on the desk. “You are obviously able to read.”

“I’m too big.”

“What?”

“That ‘what’ makes finding someone for this so difficult. The entrances are quite narrow. Whoever takes it upon themselves to go down there must be small, short, and like I said, able to read and follow a map.”

“I’m not that small,” Vidar muttered.

The three boys waiting to leave all chuckled.

Vidar eyed them but didn’t comment. “So what are the downsides? It sounds a simple enough task.”

“You’ll smell like shit!” one of the boys blurted, then he eyed Embla nervously and shut his mouth.

“What?” Vidar asked.

Embla closed her eyes and rubbed at her temple. “The smell down there is reportedly not pleasant, and the odor…” She paused briefly. “Lingers.”

“Torbjorn did say shit goblin!”

“It’s what we called the last boy who went down there. Bjorn the Shit Goblin was foul!” that first boy said. Bjorn. That was the name Ida mentioned.

Another added, “We all hated that boy, made it impossible to sleep. The whole shack smelled like poo!”

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“Boys,” Embla said, exasperation dripping from her tone of voice.

“Well, it’s true!”

“Wait,” Vidar said, narrowing his eyes. “Those blockages. Are they made from shit?”

“No.”

“No?”

Embla sighed. “Corpses, mostly.”

“What?”

“The water intakes are all by the sea. Many of our city’s less fortunate cannot afford funerals with the church, so they dump their loved ones. Similarly, the guild, and many others, often dispose of their victims into pits that lead directly to the sewer mains.”

“Great,” Vidar muttered.

“You get to go through their pockets before you remove them,” Embla offered.

“And keep what I find?”

“Half of what you find.”

“And you get the other half?”

She nodded. “That’s right.”

One of the boys snickered. “Shit goblin.”

“Stop that,” Embla said, shaking her head in disappointment.

“It does not sound like an opportunity for me,” Vidar said. That was putting it mildly. Very little about that this arrangement made sense. Unpaid labor made all these young boys and girls little better than slaves.

“You ate our food. You owe us a day’s labor. Then you may leave and do whatever suits your fancy, little boy,” Embla said. “If you wish, you may go with these fine young men here and dig graves in the frozen ground for the church of the fallen angels.”

Vidar looked between the stern girl and the three boys. “You mentioned a boy going down there to work. What happened to him?”

“One day, he went down into the system and did not return,” Embla said simply.

“He just vanished?” Vidar asked.

“The shadow men took him,” one of the boys said.

“What’s that?” Vidar asked, eyes widening.

Embla shook her head and suddenly looked very tired. “It’s nothing. Just a legend the older boys use to scare the little ones.”

“Nu-uh,” the boy said. “Haven’t you heard? A bunch of people have seen them! Shadows walking around by themselves!”

“Have you seen one?” Embla asked.

“Well, no.”

She turned to Vidar. “Superstition. At your age, you should know better. The boy simply exited the system somewhere else and decided not to return here with my lantern. Or key.”

“Lantern?”

“It’s dark down there in most places, so you have to bring a runelight. The boy probably sold it while the rune still retained some of its power. Cost us a lot to replace it.”

“Why not a regular lantern, then?” Vidar asked. “You used regular lanterns in the barn thing where you served the slop.”

Embla gave him a sharp look. “It’s what we can afford. Fire is not recommended down there. Something about the air itself catching fire.”

Vidar’s eyes widened. “What? Why?”

“The excrement does something to the air. I didn’t ask for an explanation.” She held out a folded piece of paper to him. “Do you want the job or not?”

He took it and opened what turned out to be a map of the southeastern part of the city. The building they were standing in, Embla’s house, was clearly marked. Arrows pointed to two other points on the map. One was in an alley and the other was in the middle of a street. Instructions were written next to the origin of the arrows.

The letters danced before his eyes, gliding this way and that, some even trading places. Vidar squeezed his eyes shut, then opened them again. It helped. A little.

“What is this?” he asked.

“A map, clearly. The instructions are where you are to descend and how you should navigate to find the most likely location of the blockages. This is an easy job compared to most. As long as you follow the directions, you won’t get lost down there.”

Vidar cleared his throat and looked away while handing the map back. “No, thank you.”

“No?” Embla asked.

“Disappearing into the dark is not something I’m prepared to risk,” Vidar replied. “Even if everything works as you say, I’ll always smell like shit. I might be down on my luck at the moment, but I’ve not fallen so far as to roll around in the muck with the pigs.”

“Grave digging it is,” Embla said, her face betraying no emotion.

Vidar followed the three boys out into the cold. They were all taller than him despite their young years, and they sped through the falling snow with such speed that he had to half run to keep pace and not lose them in the winding streets. The biting chill mercilessly stung his bare hands and face, but at least he had his coat.

“Hey, where are we going?” he shouted at their backs.

One of them turned around briefly to gesture toward at a pointy structure rising over the rooftops in the distance. A church.

Smoke rose nearby, and when they drew close, a blazing fire roared near the ancient stone structure.

The tightly packed houses made way for an open space where Vidar figured there’d be grass under the snow. Bare trees dotted the short distance from the street to the entrance of the church, stretching their dead-looking black branches in all directions. A thin layer of snow covered everything.

“I’m Sven,” the boy who’d pointed said once they made it to their destination. The church towered up above them, but Vidar’s eyes were fixed on the flames. Two men with bent backs and gray beards kept fueling the fire with what looked like old pieces of broken furniture.

“Why the fire?” Vidar asked.

A third man exited the church, this one a little younger. He wore a dark gray robe identifying him as a member of the clergy. The priest approached and handed each of the boys, and Vidar, a shovel. This new man was completely bald and his ears were red from the cold. From under the robes, a pair of bare feet pointed outward, the toes buried in the snow. The priest didn’t speak a single word, but the fire in his gaze as he made a gesture, blessing them, made Vidar shiver.

Sven struck the snow-covered ground with the end of his shovel. A metallic clang was the only result. “Ice in the ground. The fire melts it so we can dig a little.”

Vidar leaned in and spoke in a hoarse whisper. “What is with that priest?”

“What do you mean?”

“His eyes. They looked like a madman’s, and his feet were bare!”

The boy shrugged. “They’re all like that. You get used to it. Haven’t you ever seen a priest before?”

“My family was never very religious,” Vidar grunted.

He’d seen priests walking the street before, but never in winter and never this close.

“Don’t say that out loud here or they’ll have the fallen angels smite you!” the second young man said, looking around with wide eyes like a little boy.

Vidar glanced at the priest’s back. He’d walked over to the men tending the fire to speak with them. “What?”

He giggled, and Sven gave him a shove. “Erik is just messing with you. They don’t smite people.” He looked thoughtful for a moment. “At least, I’ve never seen them do it.”

“That’s a comfort,” Vidar said. “So, what do we do here?”

“We dig where they tell us to dig. After they put out the fire, that is.”

“And we just stand around until then? It’s freezing here.”

“We’re not allowed to step into the church hall.”

Vidar futilely tried hiding his hands in the sleeves of his coat. They were too short to allow for it. Instead, he started walking. “I’m getting closer to the fire, at least.”

A wind whipped up snow all around them and the three boys looked at each other, then followed. None of them wore anything warmer than what Vidar might have thrown on in late spring. Only Erik wore gloves. The third yet-unnamed boy wore an undyed wool hat pulled down over his ears.

When they made it to the fire, the priest turned to walk off toward the entrance of the church, apparently finished with instructing the old men working for him.

The old men eyed Vidar but said nothing when he approached and put his hands closer to the warmth. Only when the other boys dared approach did one of the old men speak, his voice a low rumble. “It is hallowed ground you tread on, boys. Watch carefully where you step.”

Vidar peered around at the area surrounding the bonfire. Thin wooden poles stuck out of the snow in neat rows all around the church. Some were rotted, while others looked new enough. Graves.

“We’ll be careful,” he promised, looking behind him to see they’d already passed by a few markers.

Vidar stepped even closer, standing as near as he dared. Despite his proximity to the fire, the cold tore at him, leaving his back near enough frozen.

“How long until we can start digging?” he asked. The fire, their only source of heat, would be gone by then. How they were supposed to work all day without freezing to death was anyone’s guess.

To answer his question, the two men began shoveling snow into the fire, making it hiss and bubble. It didn’t take long to put it out.

“Dig,” one of the men said. They then turned and lumbered off to disappear near the main entrance to the church.

Vidar shuddered. “How are we supposed to do this? One hole big enough for a person?”

“No,” Sven said, thrusting the shovel into the ground. It didn’t penetrate far. “We dig one big hole.”

“Then they come with a cart and we dump dead people in there,” Erik added.

The unnamed boy barely got his shovel into the ground at all. Groaning, he added, “Then we put the dirt on them.”

“Just one hole?”

Sven shrugged and stomped on his shovel with the heel of his tattered boot. “A big one.”

The three boys set to digging and Vidar followed along as best he could, hoping to get some warmth into his frozen limbs by moving. It didn’t work very well. With the fire having thawed some of the dirt, the first couple of inches were easy enough, but then it was like trying to shovel your way through solid stone.

Increasingly frustrated, Vidar threw his shovel to the side. “This is impossible!”

The boys snickered. They were slowly, ever so slowly, making their way downward by prying loose bits of frozen ground.

“Why do you think we’re here all day? If anyone else wanted to do this job for as little as us, do you think we’d be here?” Erik said.

“It gets easier in a few hours once we’re past the frozen ground.”

“I’ll be frozen solid myself by then,” Vidar grumbled, hiding his hands in his armpits to try getting some feeling back in them.

“You won’t get food tomorrow if you don’t work,” the unnamed boy said. The little urchin actually grinned at his own comment, like it was the most hilarious thing he’d ever said.

“There has to be a better way of doing this,” Vidar said, looking around and spotting a small wooden door by the side of the church leading into the building. He pointed. “What’s that?”

“It’s where the cart with the dead ones is kept while we work.”

Vidar trudged over, picked up the shovel, and brushed off the snow. “There must be a pickaxe or something in there. Anything to make this ordeal a little more bearable. If the old men return, tell them I went to take a piss somewhere.”

“We’re not allowed in the church!” Sven said, raising his voice.

Vidar turned back and gave a grin of his own. “You only spoke about the church hall. That door, I’m betting, doesn’t lead into the main hall!”

He ignored their protests and walked over to the side of the church. After checking both directions and then glancing back at the boys, who’d resumed their digging, Vidar reached over and pulled on the door, only then noticing a heavy padlock. By all appearances, it’d hung there since the beginning of time.

Vidar drew back and whacked the metal with the flat of his shovel. It didn’t make that sound of metal slamming against metal, and the shovel almost flew out of his hands. Vidar yelped and fell back into the snow, spotting a brief, bluish glimmer around the padlock.

“Dragon’s dung! What was that?” he asked no one, getting back on his feet. The obstacle only made him more determined to get in, and for his second blow, Vidar spun and stepped in to deliver as much force as he could muster, turning the shovel to hit with the side rather than the flat of it.

That blue sheen returned, then flickered as he saw the shovel strike something right in front of the metal, something invisible. Whatever that thing was, it could no longer withstand Vidar’s mighty blows. The third strike broke through and struck the metal with a loud clank. Force transferred from the end of the shovel, up the wooden handle, and then into his hands, arms, and shoulders.

A jolt of pain made him drop the instrument of smashing, but after bending over to pick it back up, he whooped in triumph. The padlock hung open.

“I am unstoppable,” he whispered to himself.