During the years of her youth she had never been the most academically gifted student; all members of the aristocracy were enhanced compared to the average man, but she had not as adept with the sciences as the others, and not every subject captured her interest as much as linguistics very obviously did. Despite their disappointment that she would never be a biological engineer, one of the most prestigious professions in the Stellar Empire, the late parents of the duchess had quickly realized that she surpassed the children of others when it came to social aptitude. Put into colloquial terms she could read people. When measured against her contemporaries she fared better at establishing a rapport, discerning lies, coaxing the truth, and intuitively perceiving their emotional state. For a few moments she studied the trader, quietly assessing, and debating the best way to convince him to divulge the suspicions she knew were lingering in the back of his mind.

By her estimation, there were three different scenarios whose end result would have been Bel'sian leaving the world in a crate. The first was that she was attacked and involuntarily entered the container by force. This was incredibly unlikely for a variety of reasons, including that any altercation would have been loud, there was no known provocation, evidence could be left behind of the scuffle, and an aggressive abduction would guarantee deadly retribution. The seedy underbelly of the outlying fringes of humanity would be reluctant to take a slave from the fearsome Kalderi and earn their ire, and it would put Bouradine in much more trouble than he could ever gain. The second scenario was that Bel'sian was incapacitated, but this would require extensive physical and medical knowledge of their species. From what they had gleaned, Bouradine did have the resources for such an ambitious plot. Brilliant scientists had spent nearly a decade trying to create pharmaceutical equivalents for Syshin when they were initially subjugated. It was statistically impossible that a merchant would have stumbled onto the discovery of a perfect cocktail to knock out a young, female Kalderi, in the correct dosage, without bringing her harm.

Murder was entirely out of the question as far as she was concerned. There was no motive; Bouradine did not have a reputation for possessing a temper, and even if he did, she couldn't fathom anything he was kill someone over. The mere implication of murder destroyed his business opportunities, and he had been here long enough to appreciate how he needed to remain emotionally stable. A verbal altercation alone would have ejected him from the surface. Additionally, if there was any reason Bel'sian could have threatened him or goaded him into a rage unintentionally, disposing of the body by taking it with him was an extreme response. Corpses were shot out of airlocks not infrequently to cover up heinous acts because of how hard it was to locate one in the vast depths of space. Bouradine could have taken a trip out for a couple hours and 'dumped' her if she was dead without anyone the wiser. Not only that, Caperelli himself admitted the cleaning out of the shop indicated this had been planned for quite some time, so whatever occurred could not have been a crime of passion so to speak.

With a soft, bemused expression she smiled at Caperelli. "Oh, my dear sir, I think you know exactly why she frequented his shop and bought so little," Solae ventured. With a certain tone it would have been accusatory, but she was light and airy, as if laughter were trapped behind her lips. "Why, I'm sure you dealt with it a few times yourself." It was flattery, a stroke to his ego, which did not go unnoticed by the older man.

"I'm not sure what you're suggesting," he puffed, trying vainly to hide his grin. "I can't possibly know what would bring her there so often... but perhaps something similar [i]has[/i] happened to me before," Caperelli confessed with feigned humility. Puffing out his chest slightly, he toyed with some of the threads of his shirt.

"Bouradine still had years left ahead of him here, he wasn't what any of you would consider successful enough to 'cash out,'" she pointed out sweetly. It was true. The trader in question was still in his prime, decades younger than his peer with whom they had the pleasure of conversing. "Do you know if he had any family?" the duchess inquired, her line of thought becoming increasingly clear. Once they eliminated all the possibilities only one viable one remained- Bel'sian had left of her own accord. Whether it was romance, or a platonic relationship between two kindred souls, or a man simply spiriting away a discontent alien that wanted to see more of the universe, they weren't tracking down a fugitive. If she had to venture a guess, it was the former, because love catalyzed everyone it touched to take wild risks and make huge changes to their lives. Caperelli must have considered the same thing.

"No, no family that he ever mentioned to me," the gentleman readily replied.

"Any idea where he went to procure his art pieces?" she prodded. "Not everyone comes here surely. Most of you must have a meeting place for your suppliers, somewhere out of the way, but not so far its inconvenient. I can't imagine the Kalderi want traffic in this system at all hours from the type of individuals that might be bringing your colleague's inventory."

Caperelli shifted in his cushion, tilting his head to the side. "Well, usually that's not the sort of thing we tell each other, but he was always going on about how he had found somewhere fascinating where they had a terra-forming failure. Not anywhere I've been," he added with a shrug. Maps would omit this sort of data since once a planet had such a failure it was deemed uninhabitable and of no interest to the populace. Exploration or access to records related to the endeavor would be the best methods for locating such a place. No one here was of stature within the empire, so Bouradine must have found the failure during his travels.