Beren crossed his corded arms over his chest, but his thought process couldn't finish as Jocasta spoke. He tried to hide a smile but it failed. 

"You're way too cute to be this clever," He told her and shook his head, as if the fact was more of an annoyance than anything. He wasn't agitated, of course, but he finally was able to hide his smile. The sleepiness helped. He knelt down and searched the man's pocket. He found three silver lordlings, which he gave to Jocasta, and a note with an unbroken seal. 

"Oh let me see that," Jocasta said, holding her hand out. Beren gave that to her as well, and couldn't find anything else on the corpse except a dirk he kept in his sock, which Beren promptly placed on the desk beside the bed. Jocasta knelt by the body and took a limp arm in her hand, placing his thumb on the seal. 

"What are you doing?" Beren asked. 

"I had a friend who was in the Black Auction for a bit. He told me how some assassin guilds operated..." she said, and the letter opened as if by magic, just from the touch of the deadman's thumb. Beren didn't seem convinced, as this attacker, while tough, wasn't exactly the caliber of a dreaded assassin.  

She opened up the letter, and nodded professionally, before turning it around so Beren might see. In the lamplight, Beren could see the entirety of the page, and it wasn't lost on him that there was nothing on it. He looked past the empty note at Jocasta. "Am I missing something girly?" He asked her, genuinely confused. 

"Ooone second," she said, pressing the tip of her tongue on her pointer and then sliding it down Beren's chest swiftly, like one might strike a match. To his surprise, a flame did erupt on her fingertip from the contact. Beren's face flushed in surprise and she gave a wink. "Pretty hot yourself, apparently. Now hold on..." 

She held the small flame up to the paper, just behind it. Three seconds came and went until gradually, script began to appear. Jocasta took a deep breathe and read it aloud. 

"Once the Eru'Dai is dead, go to the third tree on the path past the statue of Meldarion north of town. Take your payment there, and leave his axe as proof." She reiterated, and then blinked in confusion. "Meldarion I know. The ancient hero. But what is Eru'Dai?" 

"That's me. I'm an Eru'Dai," he admitted, and she looked at him quizzically. He shrugged his strong shoulders. "We're sort of a... well not a [i]secret[/i] order, exactly. But there aren't many of us left. I don't know how they knew I was one, or how they knew I'm here. Whoever they are..." 

"You'll have to tell me more about that later. But for now...we have a reward to get tomorrow."

"If it's not a trap." Beren said, putting his jacket on. He hadn't deigned to put his shirt on, giving him an almost vagabond look. Beren grabbed the corpse and lugged it over his shoulder like it weighed twenty pounds, not two hundred pounds. He carried it out into the hallway, Jocasta following behind. It took only a minute to find a sewer to dump him in, something Beren wasn't comfortable doing, even for an assassin trying to kill him. But he couldn't leave the town with the walls and the closed gates without being discovered and further questioned for the death of a man. Jocasta hugged herself, even wearing her layers, as the night wind whipped. 

"Let's start a fire when we get back in," Beren told her, and then yawned. "I'll get back to sleep soon, but we should probably warm up first." 

They made it back in, and once they went up the stairs and back in the room, Beren moved the couch and Jocasta started the fire, the crackling flame growing to life in the fireplace. Beren sat down on the couch, and he asked Jocasta to join him. Once she plopped down just beside him, he crossed his legs and arms, watching the flames. He seemed thoughtful, and it took almost a minute for him to start speaking. 

"You're really fun. I like hanging out with you." He admitted, and let another few seconds go by as he considered his next words. "But if someone's coming after me, or if there's a mix up between the Master of the town and the Lions and I've pissed off the latter, I don't want you to get caught up in anything, either. So I'm giving you a chance to tell me to go, if you think it's safer. No hard feelings, nothing. Just do what you think is right for you, ok?" 

He turned his face to hers, to see her reaction. "I'll just leave, if you tell me to."