"I think you should worship Sarenrae like I do." she replies with a wide smile. "That community stuff matches us quite well but I don't imagine you as one following the farmer's god."
"I'll go and open." Margaret says and leaves the office. She opens the front door to see who is there.
"Good morning Margaret. I would like to talk to Mrs. Heidmarch about an important issue." Captain Acacia Uriana, head of the City Watch greets her.
"Of course, please come with me into the saloon." Margaret replies with a forced smile. She leads the Captain there. "Please make yourself comfortable I'll tell Mrs. Heidmarch that you're here."
"Of course." Captain Uriana replies.
Margaret hurries to the office to Mrs. Heidmarch. "Captain Uriana is here on some important thing she needs to talk to you to. What shall I tell her?" she asks.
Mrs. Heidmarch takes a deep breath. Looking at Abomentolor and the bloody remains of the murderer she says "They won't run away. They can wait. I'll meet Captain Uriana in the salon. Please make some tea for us. You remember which tea she likes?"
"Yes of course. Black tea with some candis. I'll make some." Margaret replies and holds on to the thought while leaving the office to block out what these two bodies do to her emotions.
Mrs. Heidmarch braces herself. She checks her dress and takes a look in the mirror to check how she looks and leaves the office too. She closes the door and locks it. She stops in front of the salon checking her posture again and then enters with her usual polite smile on her face to greet the Captain. "Good morning Captain Uriana. How are you?" she approaches her offering a hand.
"Could be better." Uriana replies with a worried face as she accepts the hand. "And yourself?" she asks.
"Same here. Take a seat please." Mrs. Heidmarch offers taking a seat herself at the lounge table. "What important business leads you here that there is no time to set up an appointment?"
"Couldn't we talk about that in your office? I would prefer to have a little more privacy for that." Uriana asks looking at all the three open doors that connect the salon to the foyer, the corridor and the garden.
"I'm sorry but my office is a mess. I have an open project spread over all of it at the moment and can not receive visitors there. But we can have some privacy here too." Mrs. Heidmarch replies and gets up to close the door to the foyer and lock it as well as the glass door leading to the garden. "I'll wait for Margaret to bring the tea. Then we can lock this door too." She takes a seat again.
Margaret appears a few moments later with the tea. She places the tray on the table and pours two cups of tea from the tea pot.
"Please lock the door on your way out." Mrs. Heidmarch requests.
"Of course." Margaret leaves and locks the door.
"The city watch ran into a problem with one of your Pathfinders." Uriana opens without further ado. "We had some reports on a fight in Dockway. Which according to the witness led to several death. It were several people who made an assault at one of the wagons of the Varisians in Lowcleft."
"We don't know who the others were but one of them identified himself as Abomenolor Goblinburner. As we investigated there we found nothing and no one was willing to talk. But that Abomentolor was not hard to find. He occupies the Shadow Clock. Which was officially closed by the city because it is too dangerous as you know. He openly admitted to be the head of that assault and that he had a talk to 'this guy in the blue wagon' - which would probably be Jaster Frallino - about stopping all illicit business in Underbridge or bear the consequences. As the sergeant leading the squad there was asking him to come along for further questioning he denied the request and confronted with the option to be forced to come along he replied and I quote: 'You and what army.' followed by an intimidating explanation by some woman who called herself a gray maiden which could be interpreted as a threat that he'd rather die and take hundreds of the guard with him than to accept the guards authority and to follow orders."
"The base for his denial was that he expected the guard to take in Jaster Frallino first to take us serious. You can imagine that openly opposing the city guard and accusing them of ignoring real criminals and bugging the good people is something I can't ignore. I guess you know who I'm talking about?"
"That explains a lot." Mrs. Heidmarch sighs. "I think we are going to move this discussion to my office and I show you my project."
She gets up, unlocks the door and leads the Captain into her office. "May I introduce you. This is Abomentolor Goblinburner the now dead Pathfinder you're talking about. And here the yet unknown person who is responsible for this death."
"I got these two dumped here in my office - and this crossbow with these empty poison vials - with the request to fix that. Do you have an idea about how to do that?" she asks Captain Uriana.
"Well shit. They are both dead?" Captain Uriana inquires. "That supposed murderer looks like a wild animal ate away on it's face."
"I didn't check that." Taking a look at the figure and checking for life signs she tells "She seems to be alive. Barely, but alive."
"You're going to have him raised?" Uriana asks.
"Yes. I owe that to him. The Pathfinders owe that to him." Mrs. Heidmarch replies. "But that solves nothing. There is still someone around who wants him dead. And from what you tell me and what I know about him he will not react kindly to being killed. And your problem with him accusing you not being worth the coin you earn will only get worse."
"And indeed something will have to be done about assassins running around Magnimar. And I'd prefer that not to be done by some egocentric fire starter."
"I got an idea to what group this assassin belongs to. But getting caught on the job is something that doesn't happen to them normally. Something is strange here. But I think it is not too hard to guess who paid for this. And I'd like to check on that by having an interrogation of this person. So we have some starting points to get this crime solved."
"But would you tell me one thing? If this gnome really manages to set himself as the new 'king' of Underbridge - as he seems to try at the moment - will it be better or worse than what we have now? And how many deaths of innocent bystanders will there be until it's settled?"
"I only know him about a month. He is full of himself and set on making a name for himself. But I don't think he is evil. I don't have the slightest clue what it will cost him or the city until he reaches this goal. But even if he only stomps out the evil guys for him to become the important one there. The people of Underbridge would probably like that. It is easier to live with some self important jerk who doesn't care about you than with some evil gangs who steal, rob, beat and threaten people in the neighbourhood."
"I know that this doesn't put me in a good light. But I'm more concerned what it will do to the neighbouring districts. This may drive the criminals out of the shadow. Literally and figuratively." Uriana thinks aloud.
"How about you simply clear out Underbridge. That worked quite well with that sczarny gang you cleared out of the Gull." Mrs. Heidmarch suggests.
"I haven't decided if that is really done yet. We didn't get a single one of the heads of the group and we have to release them eventually. There is no guarantee that they will not reform again. And they might do that somewhere else in town."
"And clearing out Underbridge is no easy task. A lot of shady figures live there and they don't wear signs telling if they are the kind you can ignore or if they are serious trouble. A one time sweep is easy enough to do. But no one is going to pay for us to regularily patrol the streets there. And it would mean we would have to increase our efforts in Dockway too to prevent that the scum spills out." Uriana explains. "I'm sorry about that but most of the people that pay for us with their taxes live on the summit. And they don't care what happens in Underbridge. You should know that. You have the connections to those important in town."
Mrs. Heidmarch chuckles. "Now that you spell it out the solution becomes obvious. You would need an army that you can't pay. Because no one cares about Underbridge. And you have some little man with delusions of grandeur he wants to live out in Underbridge. I guess he could easily afford to pay 50 armed guards. If you put some kind of mandate on him with some certificate of appointment handed over by someone important?"
"He couldn't blame you for not taking care of the criminals as ensuring the law would be his responsibility. And it might help with people refraining from killing him if he got official approval. I know it is a big stretch from the current situation."
"But for reals now. The little man will probably be very grumpy once he gets back to life. If he takes offense by the guard not preventing shady business it will be no fun if the city watch can't come up with someone to put on trial for his murder."
"And a lot of people would take offense in that if it gets public. Even I face the problem that I can't stand there idly if one of my pathfinders got killed. If I provide the means to get him back I have to write a report for review in Absalom. They would check on the circumstances to see if there is something to learn for all pathfinders to prevent further deaths. Which might lead to warning about Magnimar in the Pathfinder Chronicles for every Pathfinder to read. It would be much more to my liking to write that the murder got solved and the culprit put on trial and sentenced."
"Because you know - even though Abomentolor might have given someone a reason to despise him enough to have him killed - practically anyone that crosses some criminals plans could fall victim to such a crime. And having the gossip run wild about some Pathfinder that lived in the Alabaster district and got killed somewhere in town would be a nightmare."
"You're right that this has the potential to become an outright scandal. But appointing this gnome to something sounds like setting up a fox to keep the geese."
"What would you suggest?" Mrs. Heidmarch asks.
"I would like it best if we could soft-pedal that. I'm going to take care of that person for you." she says pointing to the murderer. "And we'll see if she spills the beans about who hired her. If that goes well we'll have someone on trial for that pretty easy. If she doesn't tell we still have her to convict. Even if that leaves the issue that we can't get the man behind it. Even though it's obvious who that might be."
"I think I can persuade him to not take any actions now and send him on his next mission to buy you some time. But I can make no promises about that." Mrs. Heidmarch replies.
"You can threaten him that we take him in if he tries something. At least he admitted to an assault on the Gallowed. We could put him to jail now and keep him there for a month or two until he gets a trial. I don't like that idea but before he becomes a threat to the city's safety I would do that." Uriana comments.
"I can tell him, and he will probably believe me. But we both know that you can't really put that on. He'd sure enjoy to play the victim who had to help himself against that criminal getting him killed in the result. Even as it looks like he caused most of this by himself it is the city that will look bad in that if you put him on trial."
"Great. Now that he is dead he causes even more trouble as when he was alive." Uriana complains.
"What shall we do to keep him alive once I have him raised? I don't want him dead again." Mrs. Heidmarch asks.
"Tell me when you'll have him raised. I want to come with you and question him once he's back. I can give him a talk about staying hidden for a while. And I'll bring some of my sergeants to make the point clear that I am serious about him not trying something himself."
"And I'm going to check what can be done about the general situation of Underbridge."
"I thank you for your open words and your cooperation. I'll send a squad to retrieve our murder suspect here and please send me a message about the appointment for the raising. I need to go now and see how we will manage this quite complicated situation." Uriana says.
"I'll bring you to the door." Mrs. Heidmarch replies and does so. "Good bye. I really hope we can solve all of that in a good way."
"I hope so too. Good bye." Captain Uriana says and leaves.
As the Captain is gone Mrs. Heidmarch turns to Margaret. "Margaret. I need you to make an appointment with Proctor Imikar for today. Tell him I have someone that was killed today that I need raised from the dead."
"Of course. I'll leave immediately." Margaret replies and putting on her cardigan she leaves to do as told.
About half an hour later a squad of city watch guards appears at the manor. Knocking at the door the officer knocks and waits for someone to open. "Hello. We're here to receive the murder suspect." she greets.
"Please follow me." Mrs. Heidmarch tells and takes the guards with her to her office. "Here she is."
The guards put the murder suspect on a stretcher and put a blanket over her. "Thank you. We'll leave now. Good bye." Officer Kasadei says and leads her squad out of the manor and back to the Arvensoar.
"Good bye." Mrs. Heidmarch replies.
Back at the temple
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"I can somewhat agree on that, it seems close on a few points, but a strange in others. Anything else similar?" Jimmy asks
"I shall do that. If we have more questions can we arrange another meeting?" Jimmy asks