Tress sat in the corner, back to the wall and ass on the floor. She held a waterskin in her lap, empty now that she’d gulped down all its contents. She stared at the scene before her: at the blood splattered all over the floor, at the medical instruments that lay scattered about the cabin, at the body of the healer, lying there, still as stone.

“What I don’t understand,” said Truss, “is why would this assassin target a ship’s healer?”

“Maybe he wasn’t the main target?” asked Urahk. The orc had come to shortly after Tress had been healed, though he still seemed a little whoozy. He was at the moment leaning against the doorframe, half-in and half-out of the cabin. “Maybe she’s planning to poison someone, so she needed Torla out of the way?”

“If that’s the case, then she’s bad at her job,” said Tress. Her voice only hurt a little now, which she took as a good sign. “Look at this mess. She would have had to cover up her coverup.”

Truss frowned and walked in a wide circle around the body. “Why is it so messy?” he asked. “You would think that a professional assassin, especially one wielding Shadow and Chaos Magic, could kill someone quietly and quickly, with minimal fuss. But this looks like there was a struggle.”

Seahawk nodded. Tress noticed that the woman didn’t seem to be entirely focused on the current discussion. Her eyes hadn’t left the body of the healer—whom Tress had gathered had been named Torla—since she’d entered the cabin.

“Then maybe Torla wasn’t a target at all,” said Captain Klempt. He was pacing back and forth, occasionally running his fingers through his red hair, obviously stressed out by the murder that had just happened on his ship. “Maybe it was an accident? She was here for something else and the poor bastard caught her, so she had to act fast?”

“Maybe,” Tress conceded, leaning her head back against the wall. “But that’s not how it seemed to me. It was like… she was doing what she intended, up until we opened the door. We were the surprise.”

“Yeah,” Urahk agreed. “And she wasn’t panicked or anything about us showing up unexpectedly. She stayed calm.”

“Professional, even,” said Tress with a nod. “Best guess I have for why this murder scene is such a mess is that she wanted it to be a mess. Maybe it was supposed to look like a violent altercation.”

“As though it were a crime of passion, instead of a premeditated murder,” said Truss. “I see. That makes sense.”

“No, it really doesn’t,” Captain Klempt insisted. “Why in the name of Mother Night is a professional assassin on my ship, killing my crew!?”

At that, Tress could only shrug. The gesture made her sides ache.

“Captain,” said Seahawk suddenly, her calm voice cutting through the cabin’s tense atmosphere, “what is the meaning of this necklace?”

She knelt down and picked up the necklace in question; the one that had been lying on the floor beside Torla’s body. It was made of simple twine, holding a pewter pendant painted to depict a nine-pointed star with a flame in its center.

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“That?” asked Klempt. “It’s just some religious symbol. You know how sailors can be—traveling the world, they come across all sorts of faiths. Sometimes one will catch on and half the crew will become its devotees for a few months, til they find something new. This one’s called the Blazing somesuch. If memory serves, they picked it up in Lamras.”

“The Blazing Path,” said Urahk. “It’s mostly popular with lightsworn, since it’s dedicated to Elyran. They say that the man who founded it is her mortal son.”

“Elyran’s mortal son?” asked Truss. “I’ve heard some wild religious claims in my time, but that is certainly a new one!”

Urahk shrugged.

Tress frowned as she studied Seahawk. The woman seemed troubled by something, and her expression had darkened at Urahk’s explanation. “What’s the matter?” she asked.

Immediately, Seahawk masked herself, her face becoming neutral and businesslike. “Nothing,” she said. “It’s just that there is… something familiar about this symbol. But I can’t quite place it.” She turned to Captain Klempt. “Regardless, it’s not relevant to the matter at hand. We need to come up with some way to catch this assassin before we make port.”

“Oh, well, that should be simple, shouldn’t it?” asked Truss.

Everybody turned to look at him.

For a moment, Tress’ brother simply looked back blankly. Then, slowly, his face reddened as he presumably realized that no one else thought that catching the assassin would be simple. He shifted uneasily on his feet and cleared his throat. “I mean… we know that the assassin is a woman, right?”

“So?” asked Tress.

“And we know her domains,” Truss pointed out. “Both of them, in fact: Shadow and Chaos. Neither of those is particularly common. In fact, I daresay that Chaos is one of the rarest of Veshara’s domains, rivaled only by Mind or Time. And I would be very surprised if there was more than one or two women aboard with Shadow Magic. The two together? Highly unlikely.”

“So you want to… what?” asked Tress. “Gather up all the woman on the Menelen and ask them to demonstrate their domains for us?”

“Just one domain would be necessary, most likely,” Truss pointed out. “But yes.” He frowned as he looked at everyone else in the cabin. “Is there some reason why we can’t do that?”

Tress couldn’t help it: she started laughing. This was just so like her brother; coming up with an easy solution that nobody else would have dared to think of.

“It’s, um…” Captain Klempt looked uncomfortable. “Well, it’s usually considered rude to pry into a person’s domains. But given that it is an emergency, and we’re on the hunt for someone dangerous…”

“We’re out at sea, sir,” Urahk noted. “Legally speaking, a captain’s word is law out here.”

Captain Klempt nodded, his face threatening to turn the same color as his hair. “Yes, that is true,” he said. He sighed. “I will take full responsibility, I suppose. And I doubt that any in the Guild would fault me, given the circumstances. Very well.”

“Would you permit us to handle the questioning?” asked Seahawk.

“I don’t see why not. You are all registered with the Adventurer’s Guild. That makes you all the closest to lawmen we have at the moment.” The Captain nodded and paused, thinking. “Convene in the Captain’s Quarters in an hour. My men will gather up all the women aboard and send them to you for questioning.”

Tress nodded. She wondered what the shadowy assassin would do, once she realized that she’d been caught.