The Book of Beasts · BEAST
Chapter 19
Silver Rat

Pale, fat vermin grown bold in the flooded silver shafts under the town, fed on what the dying mine no longer guards.
When the silver failed, the shafts were left to the rats, and the rats did not mourn. They come up through the cisterns on bad nights. Vandahl's men are paid in arrears to cull them and do it badly.