"What do cultists want with a barge of gunpowder?" Emmaline asked, an uneasy feeling settling into the pit of her stomach. Stedder snorted with an audible range that was almost poetic in the emotions it conveyed.

"They want to put on a show for Karl Franz' birthday? How the bleeding hells should I know woman?" Stedder demanded. Emmaline chewed on her lower lip thoughtfully.

"You obviously didn't think to tell anyone about the theft before now?" Emmaline said, a touch exasperated, even though she knew it wasn't the thiefs fault that an Inspector was blackmailing them. Stedder's eyes buldged.

"Sigmar's cock woman, I said I THOUGHT it was cultists, you know what would happen to me if I went squealing to the watch and it turned out to be the Saltzhiemer's or one of the other criminal families? They'd pull my balls out through my throat just for starters!" Emmaline held up both hands in a placating gesture, it probably had been little more than a suspicion before the forces of chaos showed up to fit the pieces of the puzzle together.

"I thought they already grounded all the barges," she mused, remembering the mob scenes she had witnessed from the tower earlier in the day. Stedder made an equivocal guesture with his hand.

"Grounded is a bit of a stretch, most of the shipping is in Tar Pool for the duration though, taverns and brothels there abouts are overrun with out of work bargemen, slim pickings in thier pockets let me tell you. Most of 'em got turfed without even their pay," Stedder continued mournfully, his upset at the injustice of merchant captains directly related to the tragedy of so many marks with empty purses.

"Tar Pool?" she asked.

"Its the downstream docks," Neil explained, "near the western river gates." There was a momentary mutual silence. Neil leaped to his feet a half second before Emmaline and Stedder, all three of them overturning their chairs with a clatter that drew all eyes. The all started talking at once, conveying with varying levels of profanity, that a barge loaded to the deck heads with gunpowder was now moored within a hundred yards of the sparsely defended western walls while beast men threw themselves oh so continently at the eastern ramparts.