< Good morning, Escalus. >

Numair sat at a small table, reading from a sheaf of notes. On the table was a large dish, displayed vertically with the concave interior pointed at him; it was wired to a small perch on which Sraddi waited silently.

< This is Cynn Numair d'Escala with my usual R.I.T. report broadcast, > Numair said. < Before we start, I have something to discuss. 

< In the early morning hours yesterday, a resident of our city was murdered. >

The keys turned out to be a couple of notched cards on a lanyard. A keychain in the shape of a little hedgehog-like creature rested on the ground with the cards.

< By now, you may have heard quite a few exaggerated details, but the truth is horrific enough: she was decapitated, and her head was left on display at Escala's feet in the fountain plaza. >

All they had to do was hold one of the cards up to the door, and it released with a little ringing sound. Hawk slid the door open, and he and Liya, along with another fuzhu and one of the spirits who had been present at Suyan's memorial the day before, peered in.

< I am choosing to ignore the political implications of this, as I do not find them worth addressing publicly. Instead, i would like to tell you a little bit about this resident. >

They entered the little flat carrying bins and baskets. It was not an untidy place; everything in it was situated on the floor or on low tables that a fuzhu could reach easily. The most cluttered surface was a little table covered in books and jars full of mushrooms and other small implements. 

< Xue Xuan, known as Suyan to her Escalan friends and neighbors, immigrated to Aetheri eight years ago from Shanxi, China, on Earth. She was a scholar in residence in the Department of Mycology and Botany at the University at Escalus, where her work focused on mycological husbandry. Her colleagues describe her as very bright and very enthusiastic. She loved mycology, a field that is centuries more advanced here than on Earth. >

There were framed photos on the walls: a family of four fuzhu, two of them young enough to only have button antlers, clustered together and smiling, next to two smaller portraits of people who looked human enough.

Something was scratching at a closed door that led to another room, and letting out occasional yowls. As the fuzhu and the two spirits considered the rest of the flat, Hawk and Liya went to the door. Liya was carrying a large cylindrical basket, which she removed the lid from as Hawk prepared to open the door.

< Suyan was quite reserved, but her neighbors recall her as pleasant and kind. She was a great lover of animals and often fed the rit in her neighborhood. She was a member of her district's cleanup committee and accessibility council. She was a good neighbor and a good Aetherian, but even if she had not been, she deserved better than the fate she met here. >

Liya crouched down and positioned the basket and lid in front of the door, as Hawk swung it inward. There was a commotion, a loud yowl, and the two spirits looked over to see Liya hastily closing the lid back on the basket.

< Like many Earthlings, she came here in search of a gentler life: clean air and water, a slower pace, and the quiet dignity that we Aetherians work hard to enjoy. >

With the basket set aside, and its contents complaining on occasion, the five of them went to work cleaning out the rest of the flat. Jars were wrapped and set into padded bins; papers were sorted and packed.

< To come here in search of something that we as Aetherians have agreed for millennia is everyone's right, and to be viciously denied that for the crime of being from somewhere or of something else, is both deeply saddening, and deeply enraging. >

The bins were then put onto carts that waited right outside the door. A bird-headed, four-legged animal stood patiently in its ties in front of one of the carts, as the bins were arranged and strapped down.

< Suyan's killers are members of what I maintain is a minority in Aetheri: the fearful, jealous, angry and small. >

When all was said and done, they stood for a time outside the now closed-up flat, chatting. Hawk took the keys and placed them up above the door, in a potted plant that sat on a thin reed shelf.

< They behave in ways we regularly denounce as exclusive to other societies, while claiming themselves to be the truest Aetherians. >

The spirits and the fuzhu left with one of the carts, while Hawk and Liya went in another direction. Liya carried the cylindrical basket with its now-silent passenger strapped to her back, while Hawk had taken one of the jars, which had a little stand of slender mushrooms growing in it.

< But I know the hears of the truest Aetherians, and they are open, welcoming, curious, and kind. >

Hawk and Liya walked past the memorial for Suyan, which had only grown since the evening before. The mural above the window had been completed: a portrait of Suyan in a field of stars, between twin crescent moons, with a caption in Aetherian. Notes were now stuck to the walls around the window, and someone had left a stuffed animal next to the buckets of flowers and foliage.

< The Escalan Investigative Bureau has charge over this murder case, > Numair continued. < They are full of competent detectives and spellwrights who are eminently capable of solving this crime. I expect, > and he leaned on the word, < that they will treat this case with all the care that it is due, and that Treiha Sirse will keep me personally up to date on their progress.

< In the meantime, please look after yourselves and your neighbors, > he concluded quietly. < Thank you. I'll continue on to my usual report now. >