The Admiral wastes no time in escorting the three of you back to his cabin.  Signaling Diego to fetch a bottle of wine and four glasses, and asking Dominique to bar the door, he seats himself behind his desk and pins the scruffy Barathi with his usual piercing gaze.<br/><br/>"Elaborate on your recent visit, then, if you would be so kind."<br/><br/>"Gladly," the man musters a wry smile.  "I was tasked with contacting a certain learned scholar and purchasing a number of tomes from him.  Our transaction was perfectly legal, I assure you, and we parted amiably...I with the books and he with the coin provided by my client.  Unfortunately, while I was waiting to depart the Zultanate, certain long-past complications from my dissolute youth reared once more and I had to depart under less auspicious circumstances."  He pauses, one corner of his mouth twitching.  "I was less surprised than you might imagine to find myself arrested not an hour after my return to Agua Azul, but to be auctioned off to the highest bidder was a bit excessive."<br/><br/>"What manner of complication?"<br/><br/>"I bear a powerful likeness, do I not?  A regrettable legacy.  All too often a cuckold in his rage has mistaken me for the Markiz Lupini and sought to do a husband's duty.  Or a father's.  Or a brother's.  I understand their anger, but do not care to pay the price for another man's sins.  Thus and so, I was forced to kill a man.  It was not the first time.  It will hardly be the last."  Carlo grins cynically.  "And tales do grow in the telling.  I imagine it will be spread about that I murdered that scholar after ravishing his wife and daughters.  Difficult to do when the man has neither spouse nor children, and I attest I left him alive and well."