‘Eleanora?’ prompted Romilla. The engineer looked up, her eyes fighting to focus. Romilla had given her every tincture and potion she could think of that might halt the spread of poison from that damned spider bite; she had laid hands upon Eleanora’s wound and prayed for Sigmar’s intercession, but she had felt only the malevolence of the Bad Moon burning down upon them, and the faint but nauseating sensation of things twitching beneath the taut skin of Eleanora’s shin. Romilla felt dread for the fate of her young ward, but also a fierce pride that despite everything Eleanora had not given in.

‘My first thought was that we could use the stores of powder that you described in the guild house,’ said Eleanora, her words sounding laboured.

‘Those stores are meant for our cannons, not for indiscriminate demolition,’ snapped Marika.

‘It doesn’t matter what they’re meant for, they wouldn’t be any good to us anyway,’ replied Eleanora. ‘The last we saw, the Moonclan grots were making stacks of poison barrels beside their idol in the middle of Fountains Square. Located directly beside the headwater of the canal into which we’re assuming they wish to dump the poison. I believe we can therefore safely work on the basis that they do not intend to move the poison again until they are ready to use it. Providing they have not already done so, obviously.’

A few faces paled at this thought, but Thackeray shook his head.

‘A runner reached us from the guild hall an hour ago. She reported no sign of the poisons being dumped yet. Lots of what looked like ritual preparation, though.’

Eleanora blinked at Thackeray, began to count off the fingers of her right hand, stopped herself and then carried on as though he hadn’t spoken.

‘Making a direct attempt to reach the poison seems unlikely to succeed,’ she said. ‘Too exposed, too many greenskins. Besides which, the powder barrels are large and unwieldy and would require wagons for transportation, which we do not possess.’

‘All right, not the powder barrels, we understand that much,’ said Shen impatiently.

‘Just let her do this her way, you won’t be disappointed,’ said Romilla, her tone firm.

‘I then factored in alternative methods of approach. Specifically, the sewer tunnels that run beneath all the major streets of this city. While I was working in the Ironweld Guildhouse I acquired reading materials on my rest breaks and learned as much as I could about the city’s infrastructure and design. They hold… um, held… extremely detailed plans of Draconium’s transport systems, defensive structures, some impressively advanced spark-lantern patents, and the sewer network.’

‘You’re suggesting we could approach through the sewers, get the powder supplies in under the square?’ asked Thackeray. ‘We’d need maps from the guildhouse, wouldn’t we?’

Eleanora stopped long enough to check he wasn’t going to say anything else, then continued.