‘That would take time, and I do not believe we have much of that left,’ said Aelyn. Her eyes flicked to Eleanora, also seated, grey skinned and sweating profusely.

‘A few brave souls have reached us from other safehouses, but there’s a lot more have vanished without trace,’ said Watchman Shen, his tone dubious. ‘There’s still no sign of Lieutenant Grange. At this point we’re assuming he’s lost. Either way, from what sketchy intelligence we’ve been able to gather I can tell you that even with survivors of the watch and the militia combined, our numbers aren’t great.’

‘If we throw everything into a strike at the grots’ poison, we may lose any chance of recapturing the city from them,’ said Watchman Marika.

Romilla felt a surge of sympathy for her, for all the people of this city who had not asked for nor invited the curse that had come upon them. But she had to make them see.

‘I wanted to believe this city could be saved, but we barely made it to the guild house and back alive,’ she said earnestly. ‘You’ve heard the reports just as we have. The Slump, vanished into a seething pit of a billion hungry insects. Greenskins raising fungal gibbets in the squares of Marketsway and ransacking every home and business for victims. Spiders big as town houses spinning webs between what’s left of the Rookswatch towers, while the smaller ones prowl the rooftops and string cocooned victims up from chimneypots and weather vanes. Then there’s the devastation from the meteors, the spore clouds still swirling through the skies, the infection spreading through what’s left of the populace… Borik may have been an unsympathetic oaf about it, but I’m sorry, he was right. Draconium is lost.’

Silence followed Romilla’s words. Somewhere in the middle distance came the faint sounds of screaming, swiftly cut off. Elsewhere, jabbering voices rose in a gleeful chorus of the damned. Floorboards creaked above them and everyone jumped.

‘Just our sentries,’ said Shen, though he kept a hand on his pistol all the same.

‘Captain Morthan entrusted you–’ began Marika hotly, but Thackeray shook his head.

‘They’re right, Marika. It’s a hard dose to swallow but we lost this fight before we even had a chance to draw our blades.’

‘The guild house armoury still stands,’ Marika replied. ‘We could wage a guerrilla campaign, clear them out bit by bit, get the surviving citizens to safety. And if the rains return, then we’d see how long their filthy fungus stands up to a good honest Draconium downpour. Scald the lot of them, I say.’