Chapter 49: The Smell Beneath the Progress Part 2
The next morning, the headlines in La Voz del Pueblo read:
REGENT WALKS THE SEWERS: A PRINCE IN THE GUTTERS
Below the bold typeface was an etching—a hand-drawn image of Prince Lancelot crouched beside an open sewer drain, sleeves rolled, boots caked in mud. It was not a staged portrait. A local artist, witnessing the event, had captured it from a rooftop using charcoal and instinct.
The image spread across the city faster than any decree.
In the northern quarters, aristocrats sipped tea and muttered that it was unbecoming of a prince. In the tenement rows of Lavapiés and Embajadores, it was pinned to every door. Children pointed and whispered, "He really came." Laborers, who once saw the palace as distant marble, now spoke his name with a newfound sense of ownership.
But symbolism alone wouldn’t fix the crisis.
Inside the Ministry of Urban Works, Lancelot gathered with his core team. Alicia stood to his right, and Chief Engineer Bellido—an aging man with oil-stained hands and a scowl etched into his face—unfolded a new map across the table.
"This," Bellido began, "is what we were trying to avoid."
He pointed to several black dots drawn along the southern basin of the city.
"These are outbreak zones. Confirmed cases of dysentery and waterborne fever. Small clusters for now—but give it a week, and it spreads faster than fire in a cotton mill."
Alicia leaned over the table. "We have to quarantine."