As though to underpin Olt’s words, a rumble of thunder rolled through the still air. As it did so, Hendrick thought he felt the ground shift, almost imperceptibly, beneath his feet. There was a slight juddering, and as he watched he saw the surfaces of nearby puddles rippling. Just the rain, he wondered? Or something else?

‘Then there’s a reason we’re here,’ said Hendrick. ‘Come on.’ He led them towards the building’s arched front door, striding up the rain-slick marble steps to pound a fist upon the treated ironoak.

‘I’d have preferred to get a look at some of these insect attacks,’ grumbled Bartiman as they waited for the doors to open. ‘Fascinating necro-entomology there, I’ll just bet. I’ve been asking about that for days now, you know, and I’m not getting any younger.’

‘I don’t care what we look at, so long as I can get away from the rain imps,’ replied Olt, pulling his cloak tighter around himself. ‘Let’s just get off the street, and we can worry about the rest after.’

A few miles away from the Alchemists’ Guild, Borik, Romilla and Aelyn stood on a metal gantry and looked down upon a sea of putrefaction. Rotting grain filled the warehouse floor where its swollen mass had split the storage sacks and spilled out in reeking drifts.

‘That stench is truly unholy,’ said Romilla, covering her nose and mouth with one hand and clutching her hammer talisman with the other.

‘Wouldn’t know,’ said Borik, his voice rendered tinny by his helm.

Aelyn shook her head slowly. The grain hadn’t just spoiled; it had turned black, puffing up until it looked more like mountains of black maggots. It was drenched in a mucal-looking slime, and busy with buzzing flies and slithering white worms. Their constant motion was dizzying. Shapes poked up from amidst the drifts of ruined grain, white and purple nubs that Aelyn realised were fungi. Romilla was correct, the stink rising from the ruined food stocks was beyond nauseating.

‘You say it was found like this?’ she asked the warehouse overseer, a man named Toftin, who had escorted them in. He had been so distracted that he had barely even glanced at their seal of marque, nor questioned their presence. Now Overseer Toftin looked at her with an expression of helpless horror over the cloth he had wrapped around his mouth and nose.

‘This morning,’ he said. ‘Bastley and Jens ran the checks last night and reported nothing amiss. No rain getting in, no sign of vermin, nothing.’

‘Does anyone guard the food stores overnight?’ asked Romilla.

‘Of course, the company employs a couple of night watchmen to keep an eye on things. Grain’s hard to come by this far north of Hammerhal. We have to guard it against thieves…’ Toftin trailed off, looked over the horror of spoiled food below and swallowed.