It was hours after sundown, but Jax still had light from a beam of moonlight shining into his cell from outside. Not that he needed it to see anything while his eyes were closed. He still sat on the floor in the middle of his cell, back to the moonlight, facing the door to his one-man prison. He had been unable to remain in his motionless meditative state throughout the entirety of the day of course; he had stood up a few times and moved through several empty handed fighting forms, as his sword had been taken from him. All fighting forms had the capacity to be a form of meditation, but he had done them mostly to keep his body from becoming unbearably stiff and sore from being in a seated position for so long. He had never gone for more than thirty-five to forty minutes before tonight. But tonight he had to think, and clearly. His life and honor depended on it, not to mention the safety of the kingdom.

Queen Ismari had been murdered and somehow he had been framed for it. He was still reeling from his failure, but he had to keep trying to push aside his disbelief and shame in order to figure out the truth of what had happened, and how. 

He'd kept vacillating between who could have done it, and what the motive could have been. He'd quickly come to a relatively certain conclusion that whoever had done it, he didn't know them personally. The only people in the course of the Queen's reign who had tried to harm her had been the few mentally unstable men who had attempted to throw their misguided romantic interests at her through constant inappropriate letters - which she never read, of course, queen's had no time for such nonsense - and then decided to wait outside the palace walls for her, hoping to catch a glimpse of her, or talk to her when she ventured out of the palace. When they felt rejected for lack of response, their already unstable minds worked them into such a frenzy that they became angry with her, and they'd either try forcing their way onto the palace grounds to find her or they'd wait outside any number of the palace gates hoping to catch her on her way out. 

The Queen's Guard had only had to kill two such men, but such men did exist. They were however, the only people Jax could think of who'd openly displayed ill-will toward the Queen. None of the lands in their country were contested, nor were the lands of the capital contested by any of the other noble houses, and Jax could think of nobody of known significance who would dare murder Ismari. Attempt to manipulate her for political gain, certainly, but not murder her. Jax had given a moment of thought to the possibility that the King had murdered her, but had dismissed the idea almost immediately; Kaltriel had adored Ismari, and had always bowed to the Matriarchal tradition that in Nahlreli, the Queen held the rule. 

All of this lead Jax to the idea that someone unknown to him was responsible for this, and for reasons he was unclear of. It was incredibly frustrating, but it left him with the possibility that the whole thing had something to do with that peculiar medallion Ismari had taken to wearing the last year or so. She had worn it constantly; as soon as he'd noticed the thing, it seemed she never took it off. The few times he'd asked about it, she'd responded either coyly or dismissively. There was little he hadn't known about the Queen, as body-guarding didn't lend itself to allow for much if any privacy, but that medallion had been a mystery to him, even though it was obviously important to her. 

It didn't seem like much of a lead, but it did seem like his best shot at the moment. He started recalling all the details of the medallion in his mind; the ruby in its center, surrounded by what seamed to be a sunburst, and didn't it have...?

Footsteps outside his window, he was certain he'd heard them. Just as he was about to dismiss the sound as a likely passing guard on patrol, he heard the barest hint of a whisper. Guards didn't whisper to themselves. Mumbled to themselves sometimes, to keep themselves awake, but never whispered. Whispering meant more than one person, and both or all of them trying not to get caught. He was about to be either the object of an assassination attempt, or of a rescue mission. Given everyone's love for the queen...

...he thought assassination much more likely.

Just as Jax was about to dive roll directly under the barred window so as to create an impossible angle to shoot him with a bolt or an arrow, an unfamiliar feminine voice nonchalantly said, "looks like you've gotten yourself into a lot of trouble, Jax." 

Confused, Jax hesitated in his movement to roll, deciding to stand and turn instead. There on the ground outside his cell's window was an apparently lazy thief, laying on her stomach and not seeming at all like having broken onto the palace grounds was a reason for her to be nervous. If not for the cloth obscuring everything on her face but her eyes, he would have thought she looked... amused! 

"Who are you, who is with you, why do you know my name, and why are you here? Answer quickly before I call for a guard - I have no time or inclination for games on this night!"