The entrance to Finn Park is a high gate of ornate black iron, the rust stains from the hinges streaking the pale limestone pillars, crowned with fantastic beasts. Behind the railings the trees are still astir in the gusting wind; at their centre, impervious and imperious, the spire of the Chapel of The Ossuary.

The Grey Man pauses on his journey to examine the painted statues of the saints that crowd the surface of the chapel walls. Once a riot of colour, now the creeping decay of Empire is visible in their peeling paint.

One doe-eyed saint cradles a miniature chapel, the purple of her robe fading to a muddy pink. Anselem, patron of shipping, offers a benediction with chipped fingers, at the edge of the gothic-arched portico a forlorn Saint Isadora stands, her right hand severed at the wrist, the magpie on her shoulder a tailless oddity in peeling black and white paint.

In the network of streets around the park there shows the tell-tale signs of entropy: a genteel shabbiness is visible in the tired plaster; the trees that line the avenues are a series of unkempt tangles, their leaves shedding into drains already choked with debris.

Even the people that ply their trade in Finnward are different in these strange days. You can see it in their clothes: the subtle repairs, the almost invisible stains.

But the Grey Man, he can see it in their eyes, in the set of shoulders, in the length of their pace. He can see it their shoes, heel worn and spit-shined. He can smell it in the air all over this huge, stinking city; despite the taint of copper and iodine from the storm, despite the ozone reek, he can smell it: the stench of decay.

The Grey Man flares his nostrils and inhales deeply: there is always money to be made, even in the worst of times, and in a dying place you could make a killing out of death...