The smell of damp stone lingered in the air long after Lancelot left the construction zone. Despite the efforts to scrub the muck from his boots, traces of clay and lime still clung to his soles—a reminder that even a prince couldn't rise above the grime of his city's transformation.
Madrid was changing.
That much no one could deny. In just six weeks, over a dozen filtration wells had been erected across the southern wards. Nearly four hundred men were working underground every day, extending the second-tier sewer lines beneath Lavapiés and El Rastro. Brick by brick, pipe by pipe, the city was shedding its medieval skin.
But with progress came pressure.
And it was mounting.
Inside the grand stone chamber of the Cortes Generales, beneath the frescoed ceilings and the golden lions flanking the speaker's dais, that pressure was about to explode into the open.
