The Temple of Morr was large and imposing, with soaring arches and great windows of glass which had been artfully stained in shades of blue and gold. Skull iconography sprouted from it with depressing regularity, spreading out into the Gardens that surrounded it. Altdorf’s dead were too numerous for any Garden of Morr to hold for long, so all but the greatest were exhumed after a time, the dry bones stacked in ossuaries or buried in large common pits. The work was continuous and at any given time one could see the black robed acolytes of the temple stacking bones for disposal. For obvious reasons it wasn’t a particularly well attended temple. Hannah hadn’t been here since her father had died two years earlier, and she wasn’t keen to visit again.
Koenig had, at least, allowed her to return to her garret where she had taken a much needed bath and changed her clothes. She was dressed now in a simple grey leather tunic over a gold and black hunting shirt that had been given to her by an Averlander for whom she had won a duel. A dark woolen cloak hung over one shoulder concealing her pistols and her fencing steel from casual observation. Fine leather riding boots rose to mid calf over brown doeskin trousers. All in all the outfit was designed to avoid showing any kind of sectarian allegiance. Rioting had been avoided this morning, but come tonight, when the end of the work day released men to their drink, things were likely to get very heated. It might be worth your life to be wearing a strip of red or white cloth in the wrong part of town.
 
“This little job of yours dosen’t involve anything… unnatural does it?” she asked Koenig as they passed a pile of skulls in a wheelbarrow. 
 
“Be serious for once in your idot life, will ya?” Koenig snarled. Hannah realised with a start that the watch captain was nervous, though whether his nervousness was about the task he had in mind for her, or just general unease in the presence of so much obvious death, she couldn’t be sure. The entered the temple through an unobtrusive rear door, moving down a flight of dingy steps to a set of large oak doors. Koenig knocked and they were admitted by a young woman in the black robes of an Acolyte of Morr. Hannah gave her a smile, but the priestess didn’t acknowledge either of them, merely turning and leading the way deeper into the temple. The went down into the embalming vaults, heavy with the smell of death and the unguents that Morr’s priests used to preserve them until burial. It was cold. Very cold. The walls seemed to sweat moisture and Hannah’s breath began to steam. Finally they reached their destination, the deepest embalming chamber in the temple. Inside on a stone slab lay a man, his face contracted into a rictus of pain. He wore the robes of a sigmarite preacher, somewhat the worse for several large blood stains that spread from tears in the cloth. He seemed somewhat familiar to Hannah though she couldn’t quite place him.

“This is Helmut Greefer,” Koenig stated as they entered. Greefer. Hannah remembered now, one of the charismatic preachers who spent their time whipping people up into a frenzy at the Sigmarplaz. She looked him over, noting he couldn’t have been dead more than a day, even with the cold.
 
“What do you think?” Koenig asked, his voice serious. Hannah peered at the wounds, obviously knifework. 

“There appears to have been a murder, someone should inform the Watch,” she replied filppantly. Koenig growled in frustration.

“Would you pull what passes for your head out of what passes for your arse for a minute?” he demanded. Hannah threw up her hands in surrender.

“Fine, looks like he was stabbed to death, I bet they get a dozen just like this in here everyday,” she replied, not understanding why the Watch captain had brought her here. She wasn’t a barber surgeon, or for that matter an acolyte of Morr, either of whom could certainly have tole him more than she could.
 
“Two dozen,” the Priestess, whose presence Hannah had forgotten, put in unexpectedly. Hannah cast her another look, amused to see her leaning against a bier and picking at her nails. It was quite the most ordinary pose she had ever seen a priestess adopt.
 
“Herr Greefer was hit by a wagon,” Koenig stated flatly. Hannah arched an eyebrow and leaned close as though scrutinizing the wounds carefully.

“Looks like three very small, very sharp wagons,” she commented, earning a snicker from the Priestess. Koenig gave the acolyte a black look and then sighed as if explaining something to a very young, very dim child.
 
“If Herr Greefer was stabbed then it’d be murder wouldn’t it?” Koenig began. Hannah’s eyes went very wide.

“Why I believe you are right! With insight like that you might consider a career with the Watch!” Hannah couldn’t help herself. The priestess burst out in laughter, quickly covering her mouth to stifle such sacrilegious sound in such a sacred place. 

“Use what passes for your brains Fischer!” Koenig snapped, clearly losing patience with her insouciance. “What happens if a popular preacher is murdered at a time like this?” Hannah sobered, imagining the Sigmarite mob howling for the blood of their Ulrician counterparts.
 
“There it is, all the sense the gods gave a goat working together at last,” Koenig observed. The priestess continued to snigger.
 
“Don’t you people take a vow of bloody silencer or some’in’,” Koenig demanded.
 
“No,” the priestess said, clearly unabashed. “Its just most of what we have to say is pretty depressing. Hello Sir, would you like to hear about the inevitability of death?” Her voice sing songed in a pleasant contralto and Hannah gave her a longer look. The priestess was a young woman, perhaps younger than Hannah herself with a soft rounded face that looked vaguely Brettonian despite a lack of accent. What hair she could see beneath the black cowl of her robe was very pale blonde, almost white.
“Well do us a favor and embrace your inner corpse while I’m talking,” Koenig snapped. The priestess mimed buttoning her lip.
 
“Now as I was trying to say, this man died in an accident, because if he didn’t we will have a real bloody problem on our hands. I let anyone in the watch in on this and the whole precinct will know, and someone is bound to go pin the tail on the nearest wolf and then we will have the watch station burned down around our ears.” Hannah nodded, understanding the difficulty. With the best of intentions this murder would look suspicously like the work of Ulricians. For all she knew it had been, that was as likely as a random knifing, maybe more so considering these preachers usually at least put on a show of being little more than beggars.
 
“Ok, so, pistol ball dodged, just toss him in the ground and call it an accident?” she probed. Koenig leaned back on one of the damp walls, folding his arms. His face was troubled, uncharacteristically so in Hannah’s experience of the man.
 
“Something is going on here Fischer, something… wrong. I don’t know much, but I know this city and there is something strange about all this religious turmoil. Never seen the like. At first I thought, you know, times are hard people are looking for something but now…” he made a gesture to the corpse, “I’m not so sure.”
 
“Ok, well unless you want to call out a vague sense of unease and have me fight a duel with it, I still dont see what you want from me.” Koenig sighed and pressed his fingers to his temples.

“You're a clever woman, Fischer despite all evidence to the contrary. Better yet no one will look at you and think you are anything more than a drunken idiot who said some stupid things. You can go places, you can ask questions.” The penny dropped.

“You want me to investigate a murder for you?!” she gasped in shock. If there was one simple rule to surviving in the shadow world of Altdorf it was that you didn’t work with the Watch. You didn’t see anything, you didn’t know anything, you were actually from Nuln and here on a pilgrimage.
 
“A miracle! Can it be that she has finally gotten the point?” Koneig asked the vaulted ceiling.