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beds and picked up a coat, only to discover the bed was not just a rumple of a blanket and jumbled clothes. His hand came away damp.
    "Thorias! Inside here, quickly!" Krumer called out just loud enough for the others outside the room to hear him, while his heart throbbed hard in his chest.
    O'Fallon and Moira rushed in with weapons drawn. Thorias and Arcady were only a moment later. They looked around, confused at seeing Krumer alone in the room. When their eyes adjusted to the gloom, they realized they were only partially mistaken. Krumer was not in danger, but he was definitely not the only body in the room.
    The first mate showed Thorias his hand. "His throat's sliced open like aboard the wreck. Check the others."
    Thorias slipped around O'Fallon and Moira who were looking around in a mild horror at the number of bodies in the room. The doctor stepped over to the next nearest bunk.
    "Though I suspect none of us are truly surprised, this one is dead. They all are, most likely, but I'll check to be sure." The doctor said dryly. "You never know, one could just be sleeping off a particularly strong night of whiskey." With a faint sigh, he slowly moved between the bunks and took his time with each examination. His initial guess was not wrong.
    O'Fallon looked around then stepped over to the door for a nervous look outside. "It be like walkin' about in a graveyard. A floating graveyard."
    "Well, we're na the only ones." Mora said, pointing to two faint sets of tracks in some dirt that happened to have collected at the side of one of the bunks.
    Also in the dirt were two boot prints, neither looking small enough to belong to the boots that sat on the floor next to them. Likewise the paw print did not match any foot in the room.
    "Spirits guard us. Again with the cat." Krumer growled. "How can one assassin do so much?"
    Thorias walked down the length of the room, wiping the blood from his hands on a spare rag he had located on a footlocker. Arcady flew just behind his right shoulder. "I have my doubts this cat or even its owner had anything to do with the initial deaths. Though I am convinced they have everything to do with the crew being in their bunks with their belongings around them."
    Krumer considered this a moment then shrugged. "I don't see where you're heading here, Doc."
    Thorias waved a hand around in a sweeping gesture. "Look at the remains. Not how they were killed, but how they are now. No sign of a fight at all. Stretched out silently as if caught while sleeping. But how? This many men caught sleeping at once? Not likely." The doctor stepped over to a bunk and lifted a journal to show the others. "Look, their belongings are around them on the bunks. One or two I might could see that. I myself have read to sleep more than once. But all of them?"
    Moira cleared her dry throat. "Last rites." She whispered hoarsely.
    Thorias nodded. "Indeed. But not any kind I'm familiar with. There are some stains of oil, some scent of herbs I daresay I don't right off recognize."
    The first mate's expression deepened into a firm glower at the room and its occupants. "If the person we are following did not do this, then who did?"
    At the door, O'Fallon had been looking out at the silent buildings, watching the occasional gust of wind scurry around a corner. He looked down, then knelt and frowned. "If it'd be a snake, Ah'd be more'n dead."
    "Actually it depends on the snake," commented Thorias who was looking closely at one of the fatal knife wounds out of curiosity. 
    Krumer walked over to where O'Fallon knelt down. "What is it?"
    O'Fallon pointed to what Krumer thought looked exactly like a few smudges at the edge of the doorframe. "There and there. That na be the same bunch." The quartermaster then pointed to a larger smudge that, the longer Krumer looked at it, slowly resolved into a partial paw print. "That be the bugger we'd be tryin' ta follow." He then pointed at another set, almost obscured by the second. These arrived from a