‘Borik, enough,’ said Aelyn quietly, her voice raw with pain. Borik glanced at her and Hendrick was surprised to see something like guilt flash across the duardin’s craggy features. Borik subsided without another word, though he still glowered at Hendrick from under beetling brows.

The Swords were quiet for several minutes. They drank with the steady determination of those for whom reality has become something to be escaped. Hendrick finished his ale, the fifth or sixth he thought, and made his way to the bar for another round. If there was one thing he’d learned before being ejected from the Freeguild, it was that soldiers’ troubles can often be salved with a generous application of alcohol. In the short term, at least, and after a day like this that was as far as Hendrick was willing to think. Any further, and he would feel the black pit of despair threaten to open beneath his feet again, feel the onset of doubt and self-recrimination at the thought he might have led his comrades into a death trap the moment his brother wasn’t around to clean up his messes.

When Hendrick returned to the table, the conversation had turned to the city itself.

‘From what the barkeep said earlier, that earthquake hit the whole city,’ said Bartiman, gesticulating broadly. ‘Knocked two Rookswatch towers over and killed a couple of hundred people. Brought down an alarming number of slum dwellings and poorhouses and what-have-you.’

‘I heard that between the fungal pestilence and the fear-madness caused by that quake, they’ve lost most of the runti on Westslope now,’ said Romilla. ‘The grain, the beasts… even if the curse upon this city lifts, they’ll need urgent aid from Hammerhal if they’re to avoid starvation when the ashwinter hits.’

‘That’s if they’ve not all been swept away or drowned by then,’ said Olt. ‘Clouds so thick over the city today, you couldn’t see the mountainsides no more. Just the calderas blazing away up there like a big old pair of burning eyes.’

Eleanora made a small moaning sound at this, and Romilla laid a hand on her arm. She shot a glare at Olt, who shrugged.

‘It wasn’t an earthquake,’ said Eleanora in a small voice.

‘Say again?’ asked Hendrick, leaning forwards.

‘People keep saying earthquake, but it wasn’t an earthquake,’ said Eleanora. ‘It made everything float. It put the natural forces askew, like the engines of the heavens were turning wrong. It wasn’t an earthquake.’

‘Eleanora is correct,’ said Aelyn. ‘What we saw down in the sewers was no simple ground tremor.’

‘It’s all linked, it has to be,’ said Bartiman. ‘Listen, tomorrow I vote that I and whoever else wants to accompany me go up to the watch blockhouse and take a look at these reports of Captain Morthan’s. Perhaps a set of fresh eyes, and a few fresh intellects would–’