The Tears of Kas̆dael

While Jasper stabilized Ardus̆ar and double-checked that Nīla was genuinely unharmed - for the poor girl was covered in so much blood, Ihra found it hard to believe she hadn't been injured and was just in too much shock to realize it - she bent down to check the first body.

An ugly red rash was already spreading across the man's skin from Aphora's misericorde, so Ihra knew before she even pulled off the hood drooping across his face that he wasn't an elf. She recognized the man, though, nearly immediately as one of the guards that had come with the merchant caravan whose camp they were sharing. He was just a normal Corsyth, as far as she could tell, and not even of particularly northern heritage if his green eyes were any indication. Just a sellsword then?

Her search struck gold quite literally, as she flipped over him and found the bulging coin purse tied inside his crotch, safe from all but the most impudent of pickpockets. There were a hundred imperial gilders inside, too much coin for a simple guard to have, confirming her theory, but the real find was a pair of seals she didn't recognize.

One was a polished onyx ring whose flat face was etched with a bearded griffon hovering above a stormy sea. The craftsmanship of the ring was decent quality, but not as detailed as she'd expect from someone important, and that, coupled with the use of relatively cheap onyx, led her to guess that the seal was the guard's personal signet. It was a bit strange for him to have one, as generally a guard wasn't important enough to need a seal, but she supposed if he was fourth or fifth son of some minor merchant house for whom no inheritance remained, or the descendant of the one many impoverished noble houses that had escaped the Zalancthians' conquest of the south, that would explain it.

The second signet was more interesting. A solid gold band held a flattened ruby, on whose surface the image of a Spectral Spider had been etched and filled in with molten gold. While she was no jeweler, she'd guess the ring was worth more than everything else the guard had combined, which raised the question - where did he get it? Was he really just a sellsword, or was this the emblem of a secret organization?

She continued the search, finding a small chamber hidden in the sole of his boots with a bit more gold, but discovered nothing else of use before moving onto the second body.

Her breath hissed out as she pulled back the hood and was greeted with an eerie reflection of herself. Delicate blond hair, sightless blue eyes, attenuated, pointed ears, and a pair of silvery-colored antlers that had been carefully hidden beneath the hood.

"Something wrong?" Jasper asked, pausing his work long enough to glance over his shoulder.

"One of these is an elf," she spat, shifting her body to give him a better view.

"Can't say I'm surprised."

"But we haven't run into any elves thus far, so where did she come from? The other guy was a member of the caravan, but this one…"

"Are you sure she wasn't with the caravan?" Her brow furrowed at Jasper's question, but as she mulled it over, she realized he was right.

"I suppose she could have hidden in one of the wagons," she admitted.

"That's a possibility," he replied, turning back to continue to tend to Ardusar, "but actually, I think we might have met her. Remember that guard who wore the weird headdress? Said she was a 'servant of the Anzuzu,' whatever the hell that means? I bet that headdress would do a pretty good job of hiding her ears and antlers."

Ihra had forgotten the woman altogether, but as Jasper spoke, her mind immediately jumped to the golden seal she'd found. The woman claimed to be a servant of the Anzuzu…a Spectral Spider.

Her hands frantically pawed over the elf's body until she found what she was looking for, a second coin purse dangling between her bosom. The elf had ten times the amount of gilders the man had, enough to live a luxurious life for at least a dozen years, but, for a change, Ihra barely noticed the money as her fingers grasped a second signet inscribed with the sign of the Anzuzu. Finally, a real lead.

She double-checked the body, hoping against hope she'd be fortunate enough to find a set of orders, or really anything at all that would shed more light on the two assailants, but there was nothing else. Giving up the search, she stood up with a sigh and walked over to Jasper.

"Do you know of any secret organizations that use this sign?" she asked, thrusting the matching signet rings into his face.

"Me?" Jasper half-laughed, though he took one of the rings from her, and rolled it over in his palm, examining it curiously. "Aren't you the native here?"

"Orphans don't generally get invited to high society," she responded wryly, and his smirk evaporated.

"Crap, sorry, I wasn't thinking-" he started to apologize, but Ihra cut him off.

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"Relax, I know you didn't mean it like that. Maybe Tsia will have a lead," she shrugged.

"Maybe," he responded slowly, returning his attention to the ring. "I guess this confirms my guess, though. This is a Spectral Spider, right?"

"Think so," she agreed.

"Well," he stood up, grimacing as he caught sight of his bloody hands, and turned to Nila. "Are you able to walk?"

The girl nodded quickly, her eyes still wide and frightened as she glanced down at the still recuperating guard at her feet. "I-I can make it back to the others on my own," she stuttered out.

"Yeah, no," Jasper snorted. "There's no way we're letting you walk by yourself. I know the assassins are dead now, but there's no guarantee there couldn't be more seeded in the caravan - we're going to need to interrogate them, and as quickly as possible. Ardus̆ar," he glanced down at the guard, "Just rest here until we can send somebody to help you back to your tent; we'll watch Nīla."

"I don't need 'watched,'" Nīla protested, her face turning red like a cherry. "I'm not a child."

But Jasper ignored her, as he bent down and hoisted one of the assassin's bodies over his shoulder. "Ihra, can you grab the other? I think it's time we have a chat with the merchants."

The merchants were already nearly packed up for the morning as Jasper and Ihra marched into their camp with the bodies draped across their shoulders and a trail of dribbled blood in their wake.

"Selene's grace," the head merchant cursed, his weaselly face turning a sickly shade of puce as he turned away from the bodies. Some of the others were less passive in their response, the metallic shriek of swords whistling from their sheaths greeting them as the caravan guards quickly pushed themselves between the merchants and Jasper.

"What did you do to our men?" the captain of the guard barked out, an older man who looked like the Temu version of George Clooney, complete with the salt and pepper, a dignified nose, and several days' worth of stubble.

"So, you admit they're your men. Good, we're making progress already," her partner chuckled mirthlessly, as he heaved the body off his shoulder onto the ground before them. The merchants cringed back, and even the guards wavered uncertainly as Ihra added her own body to the kill pile - the elven woman.

"Is that an elf?" "Did you know Hatarah was an elf?" "For kruvas̆-sake, we can't let them get away with this!"

The crowd murmured angrily, shooting the three of them dirty looks, but the captain of the guard seemed to have a better sense of the situation. As one of the merchants stepped forward, scooping a rock from the ground to throw, the man raised his hand to stop him. "Careful, this man is more than he looks."

"Just deal with them," the merchant hissed. "We hired you to protect us."

"I will," the captain reassured him, shoving him back before returning his attention to them. "Care to explain why you killed our guards? I didn't know Hatarah well, but she never gave us any trouble, and I've served more than a score of trips with Mārs̆amas̆, and he was as solid as they come."

"Nīla," Jasper snapped, and the girl stepped forward uncertainly, still drenched in Ardus̆ar's blood from nearly head to toe. "Your guards attacked the Lady Selēnīlat, the Emperor's ambassador to the northern armies-"

"The what?!" The captain blurted out incredulously, his face torn between belief and doubt.

"Show him the seal," Jasper ordered, and Nīla handed the Emperor's letter and signet ring to the man. "As I was saying," Jasper continued, as the captain's hands began to shake like he had the palsy as he perused the letter, "Your guards attacked the Emperor's ambassador, and we have reason to believe it was part of a larger plot to disturb the empire's alliance. Needless to say, we'll need to interrogate your men."

"This has got to be a forgery, right?" The merchant who'd angrily demanded the captain do something crowded onto the man's shoulders, his face white as he examined the letter and signet ring.

"It looks real enough," the Clooney clone muttered, "not that I've ever seen the Emperor's seal in person. And besides," his gaze drifted to the blood-soaked Nīla, "how do you explain her? Do you think she did it to herself?"

The merchant began trembling, his anger replaced with fear as he dropped to his knees. "Please, my lord, we had no idea-"

"I'm inclined to believe that," Jasper interrupted him, "but I'll still have to verify it." The crowd shuffled nervously as he let a trickle of flames run down his hand and continued. "As you can see, I'm a mage, and one of my spells will let you know if you're telling the truth, so I'm warning you now: don't lie. You won't like the outcome."

The merchants offered no further resistance, and Ihra stayed to supervise their men while Jasper escorted Nīla back to the relative safety of their camp. He returned a few minutes later with a fresh set of clothes for her, and backup from S̆ams̆ādur and Nissilât.

Then, the true 'fun' began. The day passed torturously slowly as Jasper and S̆ams̆ādur tag-teamed the caravan. They had the process down pat soon, with Jasper asking the questions while using the Scales of Justice and S̆ams̆ādur sifting through their thoughts for any signs of deceit. Meanwhile, Ihra and Nissilât rummaged through the caravan's wagons, searching both for anyone who might have tried to escape the interrogation or for any belongings of the two attackers that might give them a lead.

But their efforts turned up very little. Though a handful of the crew, including the caravan leader, had known Hatarah was an elf, there were no rules against elves being in the Empire, and none of them had ever seen her do anything that would lead them to believe she was plotting something nefarious. Her actions were as much of a shock to the caravan as they were to them, and they found nothing further on her.

The same could be said for the Corsyth, whose life proved to be almost mind-numbingly mundane. As Ihra had surmised, he came from an impoverished merchant house that'd escaped the stoneflesh invasion with little more than the clothes on their back, but he'd served with nearly five years without ever even getting into so much as a drunken brawl. He'd been a model citizen by all accounts, and as this was the first caravan the elf had joined, it seemed unlikely that they'd had any previous connection.

"Well, that was a big waste of time," Jasper sighed as he staggered to the campfire that night, finally finished with the interviews. "Hatarah probably recruited him during this mission, but the real question is, why was she here? Was this a crime of opportunity, just a coincidence that we ran into them, or does it mean we've got a rat?"

"What do you think?" Ihra snorted.

"Squeak, squeak," he replied wryly.