Charm Person.

She fails her Will save. "- huh?"

"Hi, sorry to bother you, can we come in for a moment?"

Felicia doesn't have the spellcraft necessary to reliably identify spells, but she can recognize the spell. She's cast it many times herself. Very interesting: this guy is a caster too. She wonders what circle he is.

Elias and Felicia remain with the group with the chest and wait for the man to finish 'negotiating' with the woman at the door.

"Yeah you should come in, it's dangerous outside at night. Just knock next time, okay? You really know how to scare a girl."

Belt nods with his hands loose at his sides. "Sorry, ma'am."

Ring, Blond, and Braid follow Belt and the woman into the house.

A few minutes later the four men exit, staining to carry the chest. There is no sign of the woman.

Ring points towards the river.

Belt walks close to the chest, which Alieta is riding on. "That's a pretty robe."

"It is!" Without looking away from her Detect Magic sweep, she pulls it open to show the pockets on the inside. "It also has straps to hold my most common focuses and material components against my skin so I don't have to reach for them.

Come to the Marran camp within the next week to commission one!"

"... Not as pretty as you are, though."

"Indeed!

If you want to look nicer, we don't have anything for sale to mortals, but Marra's outsiders are beautiful! What's your alignment?"

"Lawful Evil."

Braid slaps him. "Quiet, boy!"

It's only a minute more until they reach the river. Ring and Blond rest the chest on the ground and Ring approaches Felicia. "The boat is about 40 feet long, with a single mast and a row of oar-slots on each side."

Felicia looks a little taken aback when Braid slaps Belt, but she shrugs it off. Right, they're Evil. Her church is the anomalous one that doesn't do any slapping. Anyway, she came here to do a job.

She subvocalizes the description to herself and casts Guidance on Elias before breaking off their handhold. She kneels and begins chanting and waving her hands in the air for ten rounds before she plunges her hands into the river. It's much more pleasant doing it here in Bellis, rather than the freezing and occasionally tainted waters at Sarkoris Scar. Her eyes widen and glaze over as her sight is taken over by view from the magical sensor.

There are nearby forks of the river downstream, and there's one small tributary a little ways downstream that feeds into the main river. The boat is where the tributary meets the Sellen. Fortunately, the boat is on the same side as them, so they won't have to make a river crossing. It takes three minutes to find it, since she had to backtrack.

She stands back up and shakes the water off her hands. 

"I've got it. It's at a meeting of a small stream with the Sellen. Let's go."

The boat is pulled close to the shore for easy boarding, near a rock that partially obscures it when viewed from the main river.

The customers lift the chest onto the deck and then - "Stay up here and keep watch" - down a ladder.

After a minute, there is the sound of angry mutters, then a clatter, and then grunting and thumping and a ringing blade.

The two of them do that. The sounds are getting very concerning, so they ready their weapons and divine foci.

What are those sounds? There seems to be fighting belowdecks. Aren't they supposed to be protecting the cargo from external threats?

"That sounds bad. Alieta, let's go down. If we see something we're not supposed to see, we will act in all ways as if we didn't see it - I hope that's a deal the customers would have taken. You two, can you commit to that?"

Tos looks intently at Alieta and gestures am-I-correct?

"No, we can't. And not just because of alignment: it is unwise to do so. What we're doing...probably isn't exactly legal...so if we simply do not see what happens, we can truthfully testify that we didn't see anything. We're not stopping you from going down, but don't ask us to. We can ensure no one else comes down, though."

What is Tos asking? He's in charge! And why did he ask am-I-correct and not do-you-approve, if he's faltering and wants her to take the lead?

Oh. He's asking if his plan is Lawful enough. He's asking for spiritual guidance. That's scary - she's not qualified - but if she wants to be a cleric she needs to learn the skill, even if it's hard and stressful.

They were hired to guard the cargo and the customers. They did not agree to obey arbitrary orders. She thinks there's an implicit understanding that they should obey reasonable requests, but not if that conflicts with their explicit agreement... Except that requests to stay away could be understood as partially waiving the agreement?

Ah the key here is that it appears that the customers were mistaken about the safety of going below.

She nods at Tos and runs for the hatch. The ladder is sized for humans but she easily drops from rung to rung.

"Fine. Cover us!"

The ladder leads to a corridor. The customers are peacefully standing around the chest twenty feet away.

A Fireball zips from behind and explodes.

The customers are all dead. The chest is burning.

Alieta lost most of her skin. She falls to the ground and screams uncontrollably.

Tos spins around and charges the attacker.

He almost calls for help, saying that there isn't anything secret down here, but remembers just in time that he can't say that, because he needs to act exactly the same whether or not there's a secret to protect. Stupid Lawfulness.