The official name of the place was the Vesayan Overlook, as like the other two places we’d been you could see the Vesayan island of Kryst on the horizon without much difficulty. Reaching the island, however, was virtually impossible.

Cottages didn’t have the problem with dimensional spaces returning that the Villas and Mansions did, and so didn’t have structural problems. They also had very standardized designs, weren’t built very efficiently, and didn’t have the kind of space to be putting up treasures and trophies and the like.

That said, there were a bunch of them, and they did have a chest each with dimensionally-expanded space inside, which had all naturally burst at the Fall. The cracked and shattered ownership crystals laying broken beside each of their doors were also ubiquitous.

The thorp was in the shadow of the Snowtop Mountains, which meant lugians weren’t far away, all of them considering all mountains their territory wherever they were. So, they came down from the mountains to here regularly, looking for trouble… but oddly enough, had never wiped the buildings away, despite not having a lot of respect for anything built of wood instead of stone.

Instead, the town had become a frequent brawling site between different tribes of creatures that wanted to use the buildings as the basis for a new settlement with access to the sea, the lairs of wandering creatures like reedsharks and shreth looking for suitable dens, and of course shelters for warbands on the move between the seas and mountains.

The undead of Mayoi regularly came up here and cleaned everything out. If the lugians had one of their Summons bands ensconced here, it could turn out to be quite a fight, too.

Yet somehow, the buildings were still roughly in shape, although there were a lot of holes in the roofs, burn marks, bashed doors, all the windows were basically shattered, and the internal furnishings had been ground up for cookfires or used as bedding in lairs.

They were, however, surprisingly clean, as the undead also cleaned them out when they cleared them out.

All of which meant when we rolled up that there were likely things to kill here, the scouts knew it, and fanned out with the discipline of experience to flush out what ended up being a whole pack of shreth that thought they’d found great lairs.

Hooved crush-jawed predators, including a Hunter Shreth taller than any of us, roared and rumbled and fought for their new territory. For their efforts, they were poked full of holes, the Hunter Shreth in charge getting a crossbow bolt under the jaw from Rogar to settle down its defense of the territory, and the shreth and the two litters there were all hunted down and killed.

Which naturally led to skinning and butchering, as shreth steaks were a prime source of meat for the scouts and the hides were very much appreciated, as any form of good leather was. A lot of leather armor was made from shreth hides, although these hides were far from the highest quality.

I noticed Princess Kristie standing over by one area, a frown on her face, not moving as she looked out over the sea about a mile away, the dark line of our goal for tonight there on the horizon. Dawn would come in about fifteen minutes, and nobody had really noticed what she was doing as the scouts efficiently got to work under the Mick’s snapped orders, butchering the shreth and setting up pickets to make sure the smell didn’t attract any reedsharks or anything from the area.

Not using any explosive magic also helped not draw attention.

“I see a scowling princess, I tend to get curious,” I asked, walking up beside her. The amount of Healing I’d had to do had been minimal, as the scouts were used to dealing with shreth, and spears and missile weapons had done most of the work.

“You choose spells after the dawn, right?” she asked in return.

That didn’t sound ominous, no. “Yes? It’s still my Renewal time. I’d like to set it to midnight, but there’s not been a free day to do that.”

She waved slightly with her off hand. “There’s a dead scout buried under this mound here, about three feet down. It wouldn’t have attracted my attention much, except the death wound is a knife wound in the back of the head, up through the cortex.”

I couldn’t help glancing at the nondescript stand of grass and weeds growing atop the patch of ground. Not even a bulge to indicate it was there, and buried deep enough nothing had dug it out. “Someone hid a body in a high-traffic area, hoping that if it was disturbed, it would be rapidly torn apart?” I theorized slowly.

“You can access Speak with Dead, right?” was all she said.

“After Renewal, yes.” Clerical spells, just ask Heaven and if they approved, you got the spell. So different from grabbing after random Arcane spells.

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“Find out who it is and why they were murdered. I’m sure the Mick will have a good idea who it was.”

“How well can you read the body?” I asked her.

“I know it’s a scout by the armor. Definitely male. No identifying jewelry, and if there are scars or tats Tremblesense can’t read them. No idea how long it’s been buried, although at least two years by the depth of the roots reaching down for him.”

“You should be a forensic investigator. Dug with magic, hands, claws, paws, or a shovel?” I asked her.

She gave me a glance, then looked away as she read the ground. “Interesting train of thought. A short shovel.”

A variant of which was part of the kit of some of the scouts. It helped build sheltered fires and the like, as well as windbreaks to curl up in at night.

We knocked on the Mick’s mental door, he glanced our way, gave the scouts a last set of glares to make sure they were sharing the jobs properly, and stalked over our way, his scowl vanishing to an even smile as he glanced towards the coming sun.

“What can I do for ye lovely ladies?” he inquired, then saw Kris’ face and let the winning smile slip. “Bad news from something?”

“I’ve told you of Tremblesense,” Kris replied, somewhat tersely, and he nodded, glancing at the ground automatically and seeing nothing there. “It’s an application of heavyfoot, allows you to see and sense anything solid within an area you are in contact with. Mostly, that’s the ground.” She slowly raised and lowered her foot. “It means you always know how good the ground is and where to put your feet. It also tends to reveal everything underneath where you are standing, which can also be interesting.”

He followed her extended finger alertly as she lowered it to point directly down. “There’s a dead human scout three feet down that way, been there at least two years. He was knifed in the back of the head.”

Lord Mick’s eyebrows rose for just a moment, and then his dark eyes turned very hard. “We take a lot o’ pains to get the bodies o’ our dead back,” he swore quietly. “We’ve been damn vicious about it if we had to be, an’ we don’t mess with the dead o’ our enemies, save to burn them in fire an’ send them off. There’s not a lot of scouts who’ve gone completely missing, because we operate in teams, an’ survival is the key. Can’t report if ye don’t survive.” He paused a moment. “Not a grave, not killed in a fight?” he asked for clarity.

“Is there a specific protocol you use for the dead?” Kris asked, just to be sure.

“Necklace o’ copper.” He indicated the simple chain about his neck, a small pendant on it, no magic to it, just a symbol and a number. “Tear off the necklace, bring it back with ye. A team will go out to recover the body, if we can.”

She glanced down deliberately that way, filling the Markchat with her very clear impressions of the ground. The Mick and I shifted our attention through the scattered stones, dirt, layers of roots old and new, the thrumming of leaking energy from a ley line conduit down beyond actual sight, and the thing of worm-eaten meat and bones standing out in the rest of the stuff Right There, cold, silent, and unmoving in the dirt, but obviously not dirt itself.

“No necklace,” he muttered, looking the impression over. The long slice of the knife wound in the back of the head was readily sensed in the mummified flesh, definitely not an arrow wound or sword strike, dead flesh quite transparent to her Tremblesense. “No jewelry, either.” Which meant he’d been looted, as all the scouts wore at least a ring, somewhere, usually with a clan sign or name of their family on it.

The Mick stared at the image for a moment, plainly having several names in mind. “Can ye focus on his right foot,” he asked at last.

Princess Kristie stepped sideways, and began to tap her feet with profound strength. Miniscule vibrations spread out on waves of Crystal ki, washing through the ground with ever more detail as she alternated feet to get dual images and consolidate them.

And there it was, inside his boot. The Mick sighed as he saw the missing little toe inside the decaying woolen sock and leather, the bone gone and not in the soil anywhere about it.

“It’s Ian.” He took a deep breath, but his expression didn’t soften. “Well, that be a relief an’ a curse alike. Fer some reason, he don’t seem to have died forty miles t’ the northwest scouting out the undead trying to find the Deru tree what was in the area, who took his body t’ make an undead slave out of an’ all.”

Kris and I just looked at one another. “I gather he was on a team, and they returned with his necklace and ring?” Kris asked with a dangerous edge to her voice.

“Of course, fine, loyal chaps that they were, doing their duty proudly. Not mentioning that someone knifed him an’ they buried him were only them being discreet an’ not wanting to upset the higher-ups, be sure of it.” His completely droll delivery belied the ice in his gaze.

“You knew him?” Kris persisted keenly.

“Aye. Ian, tagged ‘Foefinder’ o’ the Radiant Blood because he were so good at sussing out where the Celestial Hand and Eldrytch Web were going about finding stuff, not t’ mention the virindi an’ the undead. He were injured in the escape from Cragstone, got his little toe cut off, an’ were called ‘Ninetoes’ ever after that.

“He were one of the officers who sent out people on missions fer the Radiant Blood. Experienced, committed, very independent fellow who had no use for a High Queen o’f New Aluvia and whatnot… until so many o’ us died in the Fall, an’ the Queen and Prince showed their character in the face of so many of our own acting like, well, the total self-interested twats we are.”

I could imagine the utter failure of his Society to deal with what had happened would vastly disillusion someone who actually believed in the professed ideals of it. “He changed his coat?” I asked without judgment.

“Aye. The Radiant Blood’s ideals did nae match the reality of what so many o’ the Society actually did when the chips were down. Why, I’m sure it were not a coincidence that he were in contention for the position the lovely Miss Swiftfoot holds right now.”

Kris tilted her head slightly. “And you were shuffled off into training new recruits, instead of taking control of experienced scout teams.”

“Surely that were a coincidence too, it were,” he replied blandly, but his eyes were black diamonds.