Despite a journey of less than a mile through the city streets, it had taken them several hours to reach this safehouse. It was, at least, secure when they arrived; a solidly built townhouse that hid behind a facade of boarded-up abandonment. They had got through the door thanks to the presence of the watchmen they had rescued, coupled with the authority of the late captain’s brooch of office, and had found a dozen watchmen and perhaps three times as many rescued city folk cowering in the rooms within, doing their best to stay silent as the grave.

Most of Aelyn’s companions were now snatching what sleep they could. She did not feel the need, though her wounds ached and her mind churned with nightmare images she would rather forget. She wasn’t sure she could have slept, even had she wanted to; the hours since the Bad Moon’s rise had been too profoundly disturbing.

Instead she had offered to stand guard, along with a couple of watchmen. She could protect her comrades while they rested, and at the same time get a little peace and time to herself in which to think, and to try to come to terms with all that had happened. Both things felt very important to her, after what had transpired.

The view through the dirty window was less restricted than she had expected. The boards had been artfully affixed to give the look of long-term abandonment while actually affording good sight-lines in the event that the building required defending. Aelyn could look up and down the street quite a way. She could see the slime-slick cobbles that were slowly disappearing beneath a swelling field of fungal blooms. She could take in the wrecked carriage that had ploughed into a shop front across the way, a half-eaten corpse still dangling from one shattered window. She could look upon the other bodies of dock workers and militiamen and traders that were scattered amidst the debris, their poses unnatural, their bodies thick with squirming insects and swaying toadstools. Blessedly, what she could not see from this angle was the monstrous moon that leered down upon the city.

She could feel it up there, though.

Still watching.

Still leering.

Still hungry.