Quoted By:
You continue on to the wardrobes, and without further delay or dissembling, you open up the nearest of the two, and are greeted with exactly what you expected - men's clothes, boots and shoes that will not even come close to fitting you. Still, all of them are richly made, and as you poke and probe your way through the wardrobe, looking for hiding spots, you find yourself wondering how many of Aldoin's clothes cost as much as your 'worn piece' from Cassandra's - and how many of them cost even more. The dresser is also as expected; shirts and stockings and underthings and the like, moreover, the only thing on top of it are a number of hatboxes - none of which have hats in them anymore, though one does have a black cat-eared masque, the kind that are worn to those fancy dances. The other wardrobe is much the same as the first, except that at its bottom, in the place of footwear, there are three parasols; two of which are large and white, and one which is black, and larger still ... though not anywhere near the size of the one that Cassandra tried to palm off on you.
With that, you have looked over everything in the room - excluding the bed, which you had been trying to avoid, on account of that discomforting funerary wreath. You look the canopy bed over from top to bottom, as difficult as that may be with the only light in the room coming off of your 'stick. Grimacing all the while, you look over the wreath too, noting how just like the one that was hanging on the door of Aldoin's house - and now sits on his grave - it is not the typical tar-dipped laurel, but rather, some plant with naturally black and glossy leaves, though the shape of the leaves are very -
.
Pattern's Peace! Three parasols! Three!
Mercy, how long did it take you to clue in; four minutes? Five? You rush back over to the wardrobe, as if it might disappear if you take overlong - though it seems that your luck is not running that black today; both are right where and as you left them. You pull the lot of them out, and dump them on the floor, then you scour the bottom of the wardrobe with your eyes, inside and out. When nothing else turns up but the hems of jackets and coats inside and dust on the outside, you turn to rapping the wood, thinking that perhaps Aldoin secreted it away.
