MYREN

Her usual occupations had of late grown tiresome. She found the sun high in the sky as she contemplated what strange sound she had heard the night before. As a Sword, she was to observe. Plots to kill her, after all, usually came with little warning, if any. Myren had wasted no time concluding that she had heard it from the ship's stern, but the sound itself was uncertain.

What unsettled her was that she dreamed she had been thrown overboard in a chest. It had taken only minutes to die, but they were agonizing minutes fraught with clawing at the wooden walls and beating on the lid. Water poured in and killed her. When she woke, it was the darkest hour of night and she heard that same sound again, the sound of the box hitting the waves.

Brown Courser would almost certainly be unnecessary, but it stood to reason to inform the cocksure knave what had transpired if for no other reason than to account for the slight chance he would accidentally encounter evidence. The sellsword somberly nodded upon hearing, as though having expected it.

"I heard that sound myself. The captain would have been closer to it." They turned toward the stern, seeing the captain at the helm. "He knows." Walking deliberately with a hand on the pommel of his sword, a small brass shape meant more to prevent the hand from slipping rather than for striking, Myren casually wondered about his focus, scanning the helm and the man at its wheel. She did not think she had seen him before. The two of them reached an acceptable proximity to shout to the strange man.

"Don't ask him who he is."

"Who are you?"

The man stared down and responded quietly. "I am the captain. I saw no need to… introduce myself." Myren had thought the same.

"Well, you aren't the same one." Brown Courser explained. "Every day before it was a man with a pockmarked face. He was missing an eye. I liked him enough."

"Had I seen him, I would tell you. Might be that he… remains asleep." The captain spoke with a Tyroshi accent. From his expression he seemed to ever be searching for words. She took her eyes off him when a short man with dark hair stopped in front of her and stared at her. Myren sidestepped him and he heaved himself onto the ropes, scaling them with apparent difficulty. Looking back up, the captain and the sellsword were talking quietly on the deck next to the door to what appeared to be the captain's quarters.

"Let me… I shall…put your fears to rest." He opened the door and revealed a hallway, two doors and a large room at the end, where she assumed dining took place. The doors they passed read 'Captain' and 'Owner', a heavy lock on the latter. "We use this for the… helmsman." He produced a key and unlocked the door. The captain stood in front, but she caught a glimpse of an open wooden chest and an empty bed as he called for him halfheartedly.

As the search began, the crew had expected stories. The helmsman had been drinking, and they thought he was asleep.

"We must needs examine the room without oversight." Brown Courser nodded, accepting it without thinking about it. Myren was unwilling to consider the actions of the captain suspect so soon, but should they find aught connecting him to the disappearance, she would not want him to know.

The plan was simple enough. The sellsword had been talking to a darker man who feigned a passing interest in collecting a debt from the helmsman, or his room, whichever the captain would prefer. He allowed the key for a short time, and Myren slipped into the room.

"Don't see much. Looks like it's cleaned." The swordsman commented as his acquaintance returned the key. "Might be the captain respects the dead." She allowed it as a chance, but had her misgivings.

"It is like that he wants naught in here for us to find." She searched through the papers on the table as her like as not unlettered companion checked for any signs of a struggle. The way he would tell it, they were everywhere. As a personal guard before the Swords Sable, he had learned how to read a room, frequently having been forced to find people who disappeared.

"I can't smell any ale." Astute. Cocksure, but astute.

"The letters read nothing suspicious. What was the helmsman's name?"

"Bogothi, I recall."

"I expected as much. Not one of the papers were signed with that name and not one addressed him." He either borrowed them or stole, and I am inclined to believe the latter."

"How's that?"

"They all make mention of the ship's owner."

"It's his ship."

"They have been compiled here deliberately."

"It's his room."

"There are words on top of his writing." Patience. "Whatever man wrote them, it was not he, and it was more recent." Brown Courser appeared to grudgingly accept the explanation. Myren turned back to the papers as he ran a hand over notches in a timber. The script on top of the owner's hand mostly commented on details here and there, more than like making sense to only one.

"I have an idea." Why? "When we were asking around, I met a man who said he never knew the helmsman to drink. Told me he had a kinship with the old fellow. Might be he knows about the papers." She allowed it, having better things to do. There was more than enough time available, since no man knew her to miss her on the deck. The sellsword closed the door quietly behind himself and set out to meet another one of his acquaintances. Perhaps it was a habit he developed long since.

"It makes no matter." She muttered to herself, passing by the chest and searching the bed. It had already been searched for fluid, as she had expected, but running a hand along the underside, she found a rotten tooth that looked to be a man's. Doubtless it had been seen and ignored. Black teeth fell out for no cause at all.

Looking about the small room, she decided she had better simply think about all she had seen. From experience, Myren knew that it was ever easy to forget about some detail noticed earlier.

In the darkest hour of night, the helmsman was deliberately thrown from the stern, living or dead. We spoke to everyone who could have done it, and not a man of them gave sign of suspect nature. One of them is an adept liar. Her thoughts turned to the captain, stumbling over his own feet with uncertainty. He had vehemently denied any knowledge of what had happened, and she was inclined to believe. Firstly, his having of the keys made little manner with the chance the helmsman could have been killed outside his quarters at night. Secondly, she failed to imagine a reason he might have wished for the man's death. He might have been killed for any reason at all, but nothing went back to the master of the ship.

Turning once more to the papers, it occurred to her that she had not determined why the helmsman was interested in the owner. A moiety of the information discussed simple business information, in this she detected little out of the ordinary with the exception of a place where the owner's writing might have been forged, but the text concerned nothing more than his recent actions, dated to half a moon's turn before. Myren wondered about the notations for time. Most of them were simply passing days with a reference point, like as not a system the helmsman or the owner used merely for his own purposes. Looking over them more closely, she found that the papers with his own hand were older than the forgery.

She set it down and took a step back, allowing the current of her mind to run freely. It was beginning to come to her at last. There was a reason they had been using the owner's room for the helmsman, a reason he had been looking into his papers, and a reason there had been naught from him in days. He was dead.

Finding footing in the flow, she calmed herself as she worked out the details. The captain told her he had been using the room for Bogothi, not that it was really his room or to ignore the sign, or anything. Somehow the captain had leave to decide how the room was used, and no reason to rid it of the owner's papers.

Myren forced the stream of thought to slow. Jumping to conclusions, certainly if she were right, would for nine parts in ten mean certain death. She had to find the captain. It was unlikely he was involved, but he would be able to tell her more about the owner and his demise.

Her head jerked as a sound came from the hallway, breaking the deafening silence. Slowly backing away from the door, she held herself against the wall under the hinged portcullis and the calm waters beyond the glass. She quickly considered hiding, but that would be easily turned back on her were she found. Resolving to simply break and run when the door opened, she planned to surprise anyone on the other side. It was certainly too late to feign innocence.

Silence returned as she waited for another sound, but she heard none, remembering the heavy lock on the door. It might be the man went for the key. It might be he gave up.

She forced her thought still in the middle of its stream as she reminded herself Brown Courser had no key, but on the other side it would be the killer waiting for her to surface. Had he heard her? No, it was impossible. There was no man crouching like a wolf beyond, and now was her final chance. Filled with uncertainty, she stepped slowly across the room, breathing deeply and silently as the ship moved under her. She kept her footing and reached out, daring at last to touch the nob. Myren let the air out of her chest slowly and turned it, almost unable to feel the presence behind her. Arms seized her by the face and around the chest, dragging her backwards as she clawed at them, coiling and writhing in painful resistance. She felt her face forced to the floorboards as her entire body dragged across it. The moment she could raise herself, her body was rolled over the edge of the chest. The chest, she thought. What was in the chest? Had she checked it or had it been Brown Courser? The lid closed on her fingers as the hand came off her face. She refused to retract them. To do so meant death.

"Die."

The man's boot raised the open side of the chest, twisting her body inside. He closed the lid and flipped the latches, sealing her in with the dust and the darkness. Forcing herself not to struggle until his footsteps no longer sounded, deliberately walking out of the small room without bothering to close the door. Something the cocksure sellsword might have- she tried to move the lid and failing that, to get the box up on its side. It was possible the slats were weaker on the bottom, having a greater field to cover. Turning face proved to be impossible.

Accepting that she would be trapped for a time while forcing herself to remain calm, having been trained for far worse, Myren took a long breath and took hold of her coursing, fearful mind. She was hand to Denys Darklyn and mouth to the Swords. In the darkness, she could feel no connection to the ravenries and the outposts scattered across the Known World, in the simple chest of wood she could only feel the pressure of a twisted skeleton and a heart beating at far too great of a haste.

Like Escenane Waters, she was a body in a box.