<div class="floatright">(https://i.imgur.com/lZGjbJx.jpg)</div>Vi pulled her companion up the balcony after her.  The exertion was more than she was used to, but tho the other woman wore many extra pounds of fabric, she was able to get her high enough that she could help pull herself up onto the side balcony.  Vi smiled to herself, she had seen the light from what must have been an open door when she was looking into this room before, and the existence of the easily scalable balcony confirmed her instincts.<br/><br/>But now she would need her instincts more than ever.  With practice honed from years of breaking and entering, she scanned the room, looking for anything that might be amiss. First thing she noticed was the missing blade.  Now THAT was significant.  This may not have been an assassination, but a burglary gone wrong. This room was full of Casimiro's curiosities... it could have been a puzzle sword, or some ancient relic that burned with clinging fire or had a crystal blade.  ANYTHING was possible with Casimiro, she had learned that long ago.  Vi shook her head to herself, no use jumping to conclusions now.  Noticing the stool pieces, Vi made her way to the fireplace, with all the silence a veteran footpad sneaking up on a mark could muster.  She examined the piece carefully, remembering times when she was first learning her trade, blocking her mentor's steel with a wooden truncheon blacked with pitch.  Perhaps these marking were the same?<br/><br/>Turning back to the room, Vi looked at the vomit and the ash.  Now that stank of sorcery, and foreign sorcery at that.  The Vodacce witches were elegant and subtle in their magic, not vulgar that the Montaigne and their bleeding portals... Vi blinked once, then twice.  Perhaps a Montaigne sorcerer had opened a portal to the room, kidnapped Casi, killed his bride and made off with the sword? She shook her head again, she was making all this up right now.  Instead she made her way to the other woman.  Getting very close so that her chest pressed against the other woman's arm, Vi whispered in her ear "Do you know anything of sorcery?  I... I don't know what that ash pile and vomit mean, it is like nothing I have ever seen."<br/><br/><div class="spoiler_container"><div class="spoiler_header" onclick="hideSecond (this);" role="button">approach</div><div class="spoiler_body">Vi is using wits+theft (dicepool 5) 8, 8, 7, 1, 1, re-roll 1 - 4, 2 successes.</div></div>