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There is a nightstand, right next to the bed; a good place as any to start. Your 'stick aloft, you hustle over - but you end up stopping short when out of the corners of your eyes, you notice something on top of the bed. It is ... a funerary wreath? What in the Heights of Hell - moreover, why in the Heights of Hell? An obvious answer would be that this is where Aldoin died ... except, that you know almost for a surety that it wasn't. There was a Graven Ball lodged inside of his corpse; that killed him and Estranged him as well, you know that much. But how exactly it managed to get inside of him, that you don't know. There was no one at the funereal that gave any indication that Aldoin had been shot and murdered, in fact, there was barely anything to suggest that the span of his days ended abruptly. Obviously, the Graven Ball could not have ploughed into him in the typical manner that shot chews through flesh ...
Questions. Nothing but questions. But even if you set those all aside, you have a fresh one here. Even if you assume that this is where Aldoin was found - without any indication that he had been shot, murdered - Pattern's Peace, why would put a funerary wreath here? With all of the effort that is put in after an unexpected death to keep things clean - physically and spiritually - putting a wreath on the site someone died, it ... it feels wrong. Transgressive. As if someone was trying to dredge Uncleanliness back into the house. You make a warding sign, and for good measure, you murmur the prayer of Gravediggers and Coroners, beseeching the Patternmaker for fortitude so that the miasmic taint of death and decay doesn't foul your Thread. Honestly, you have worked shifts collecting bodies, you have seen remains in all states of decomposition, and you have even helped rob and part out corpses - and somehow, none of that felt as ... as wrong as this wreath being here. Not to mention, just how bizarre it is to make two wreathes for a funeral ...
You pull your eyes away, and turn your attention back to the nightstand. There is a small leather pouch on top of the 'stand, which looks a great deal like a purse. You pick it up, and the way it droops suggests straightaway that there is something inside. But when you give it a little shake, you get a dull clacking noise, instead of the sharp clinking noise you would expect from coins. You know full well that you don't really have the time for this, but between your curiosity getting the better of you, and a desire to put the wreath and its attendant Uncleanliness out of your mind, you pry open the draw string and fish out ... a rock. It is a deep azure, beautiful and uncut. There looks to be about a dozen of these fingernail-sized stones inside the pouch. They ... they couldn't possibly be sapphires, could they?
