( closed ) death comes to me again, a girl in a cotton slip

[obdurata]

WHO: Joselyn Smythe & James Holden.
WHAT: A spot of light, sanctioned grave-robbing.
WHEN: Sometime this month.
WHERE: In the Free Marches.
NOTES: Sometimes you realize you haven't robbed a grave, and make it happen. Stay tuned for casual disrespect of the dead.

Probably, Joselyn is here because someone else was busy, but that's fine.

Lady Zieghilde Badoer (you must call me Ziggy, Marchioness Badoer was my [...],) has recently come into her inheritance, and found it in something of a state of disarray—there's some explanatory discussion of cousins and cadet branches that Joselyn probably could have followed if she'd really tried—and, quite possibly, under the influence of a curse. The dilapidated fort that the late and apparently unlamented Marchioness called her solitary home for so very long certainly feels cursed as all get out, but Joselyn is almost certain that if someone had told her and Jim that this is just how weird aristocrats choose to live they'd probably have taken it under advisement.

Maybe a few follow up questions.

Still.

Ziggy has done some of her own investigation—she flourishes a magnifying glass at one point, and Joselyn gives her points for style—and only reached out to Riftwatch upon realizing that her silly little mystery might, actually, lead somewhere she isn't cut out to go. It's all about this bracelet in her (great aunt? by how many removes? exactly how many husbands did the marchioness have, anyway—)'s portrait, rumored to have been placed in her urn after she was dead...

But the crypt is in as much a state of disarray as the rest of the property, and most of the old servants—

“Bolted when the old bag died, or something sinister?”

—Joselyn is already elbow-deep in an urn.

Comments

[acreage]

"Bolted," he confirms on a sigh, and whether that's directed at the servants who left, the situation at large, Joselyn rooting around in some old noble's remains, or the urns he's currently considering — well, that's hard to say.

He's not actually sure how he or Joselyn are better equipped to deal with a cursed bracelet than Ziggy, if he's being honest. He's not actually sure how important he thinks this job is under the circumstances, except that a cursed object probably does belong with their division rather than where it might hurt people, and there's the possibility that Ziggy will be so grateful as to later lend them money, or her support, or other potentially useful things.

So.

He picks up an urn two-handed and gives it a shake, hearing something that could be the rattle of a family heirloom. Maybe. He wonders aloud,

"What are the odds of it biting one of our hands off?"

For the record, he doesn't pause in opening this urn while he asks. Likely, certain persons who were in the Temple of Dumat with him in the spring are wondering where this inch of caution was when he was sticking his hand in holes in floors.

[obdurata]

“Well, not zero,” is not the worst answer she could possibly have given him, but there's not much in it to be comforted by, either. At least she doesn't sound actively concerned, but on the other hand, did she put her fist straight into an urn because it's probably fine or because her own curiosity meant she was going to do that no matter what level of danger she thought there might be.

She's wearing gloves, so that's something.

[acreage]

If anything, it's sort of reassuring. Not that he'd expect her to, but at least she's not bullshitting him about the relative safety of this job, or anything.

He looks through that urn, then moves on to another, and another.

"What do we do with the bracelet when we find it, anyway?"

[obdurata]

“Pull your hand out real quick,” she says, with a flash of a smile. “I have a sack we can put it in—I think if you feel something that doesn't belong in there, we tip it out into the sack and then open it under the torches so we can make sure it's the right thing.”

Joselyn's smile quirks, troublemaking: “But if no one's looking that closely in urns, I mean, I have another sack.”

Rich people getting buried with their jewelry...it's probably not all cursed, right?