Gideon Hickenbottom wasn't very pleased to see them again and didn't disguise it. He wasn't hostile, however, and listened to what they had to say. His responses were limited to grunts and his body language stayed the same mix of laconic and perturbed, but at least he wasn't throwing them out.

Leliana had dealt with a lot of grumps over her career. The key with grumps was to overwhelm them with energy. To be such a nuisance, that the most expedient method they had of dealing with her was to just give her what she wanted and hope she went away.

Usually, she could tell whether that approach was having an effect. Gideon Hickenbottom, however, was giving her nothing. His mane-like beard hid most of his face below his nose, making it difficult to read him.

"And so, with our combined experience, we can make serious headway into the investigation," she winded down her spiel with less enthusiasm than when she'd started. "We'll report to you, of course, and you won't have to spend any additional resources. No parties will lose out in this arrangement."

She felt Alistair pat the small of her back as she finished. Well done, he was trying to say. Shooting him a quick smile, she turned back to Gideon. "What do you say?"

"We still gonna bury him," Hickenbottom replied listlessly, chin in hand. "But if you twos wanna poke around before we do, knock yerselves out."

With that, he went back to reading whatever was on his table. Leliana narrowed her lids. It looked suspiciously like a crossword puzzle.

"Thanks, but we'll need someone to take us to the body," Alistair prompted.

"The Chairman's standing on-duty outside," Hickenbottom returned without missing a beat. "He'll take ya both down to the morgue."

That was good enough. With a final thanks, Leliana walked out of Hickenbottom's office. She breathed a sigh of relief. That had felt like trying to impress a rock. It reminded her why she had always dreaded dealing with grumpy people – they just didn't care. Few baits could poke past their layers of apathy. It was devilishly tiring.

On the bright side, the Chairman really was outside, fast asleep on the chair he was usually carrying around. She stared at the sleeping dwarf, his tongue sticking out of the corner of his mouth. He didn't snore, but he was nowhere near the realm of consciousness.

So much for on-duty.

"It is three in the morning," Alistair muttered.

Leliana hummed. She was seeing first-hand why the dwarves had such a lackadaisical approach to law enforcement. Long hours. Not enough pay. It was no surprise that they were content with simply sweeping deaths under the rug.

"Should we wake him?" she asked Alistair, who shrugged.

"We could just ask some other dwarf."

Nodding, Leliana sneaked around him and kept walking. The guard's building was a one-storey affair attached to the back end of the mortician's office. She guessed they shared the morgue. The first dwarf guard they came across confirmed her suspicion.

"Yeah, both buildings have a shared basement," said the officer while stifling a yawn. "If Cappie says you can go down, you can go on ahead. The drowndead human's on the table. It's the only body we've got down there."

"I feel bad now," Alistair said on the way down. "I doubt I'd be in a great mood if I had to operate out of this dump, I tell you what."

"It's startling that they have not invested in a better force," Leliana mused. "I do not get much time to spend on Bourdain, but I did not expect such ghastliness."

The basement was cold and dimly lit. Dwarven lamps hung from the beams running along the ceiling. Enough to illuminate the walls, but not the floor. Thankfully, it was clean. At least, Leliana didn't step on anything squishy.

In the middle of the room, on a wooden table, lay the bloated body. It had been stripped naked, with the clothes hung out to dry on the chairs nearby. Leliana approached the body.

The stench was tolerable, though Alistair hung back. Leliana went around the table, inspecting the body from a few feet away. All digits were accounted for, meaning that scavengers hadn't gotten a chance to tuck in. Though there was definite bloating, it wasn't that bad. The colour of the skin, discarding the lividity around the chest – where the blood had pooled on account of gravity – resembled that of any recently deceased corpse, so it hadn't been at sea for weeks.

"It's a recent death," she told Alistair, who was poking around the dead man's clothes. "This man, whoever he was, doesn't seem to have decayed a lot. Corpses in salty, moving water do take longer to decompose, but I don't think he's been dead for more than a day."

"There're a few folded pieces of paper in his pockets," Alistair called out. "Water's washed away the ink, I'm afraid."

"Hold on to them. We might get some use out of them yet. Can you help me flip him over?"

"Is that necessary?"

"What if there are marks or clues on his back?"

"Whatever happened to resting in peace?" Alistair sighed as he walked over. With a grimace, he tucked his hands under the corpse's right shoulder. "Hope he doesn't roll off the bloody table."

Leliana chuckled. The table was wide enough, but flipping the body took a lot of toiling. It was heavy. The saying 'dead weight' wasn't coined lightly, she thought with a snicker and rubbed her palms down on her trouser legs once the corpse had been rolled.

It was dirty work, to be sure and she would take a long bath first thing upon going back, but this was where all her skills and talents came together. Of course, this wasn't how she foresaw spending her time with Alistair, but she couldn't deny that ignoring it would have just made them both miserable.

"This is interesting," she heard Alistair say and turned to look at him. "He's got a rune on his butt."

She didn't need close inspection to find it. The mark had been branded onto the base of the dead man's spine, at the tip of the tail bone. Though not an expert herself, Leliana knew that the mere inscription of a rune by itself didn't bestow magical properties on anything. Alistair himself had a couple of runes tattooed on his person. They didn't allow him to do superhuman feats.

"Can you sense any magic from it?" she asked and Alistair shook his head.

"None. It looks like a regular brand, like you would use on cattle, I suppose. But the choice of the rune is… weird."

Alistair was fond of runes. He collected and studied runestones wherever he could find them. She'd learnt of them by association – which runestones he liked and such – but theoretical knowledge was his domain by far.

"Why is it weird?" Leliana eyed the brand. "Many societies have initiation rites where new members are branded like this. To mark their allegiance."

"Yes, I agree. But this…" He furrowed his brows. "Leli, runes carved into flesh have no effect unless the process involves lyrium. I don't feel it here, but if that were the case, that rune right there? That's something that could potentially signal foul play."

Leliana looked him over with open admiration. Being confident and professorial suited him… and it really, really impressed her.

If there weren't a dead person on a table, I would have kissed him.

"That rune is the old Tevinter symbol for stillness," Alistair continued and turned towards her, lips pressed together. "Shesha. The paralysis rune."