Against the perpetrator? They've killed a person; they're not going to go quietly.

Against everyone. Cops have statistics, which is a kind of score if you squint at it, and if there are scores there are high scores. Whether it's cases closed or some other metric, Gwen is aiming for a leaderboard position.

That must be why Gwen was dispatched without backup. Everyone else was dissuaded by the political ramifications, and with someone coming from Starwatch she wasn't going to be stuck without help.

But then… why did she come here alone? And why does that question make her feel nervous?

The nearest temple is the converted residential building you're about to pass. Go left here, follow the stairs around the bend to get to the front door.

Right, and how is she going to explain this unaccountable intuition to Gwen without sounding like a lunatic?

You don't have unaccountable intuitions. Your intuitions are more accountable than a kid whose hand is trapped in a cookie jar. Nothing but valid arguments and sound conclusions. Raw facts harvested from the bounty of your sensorium, seasoned with delicious inferences and refined into a banquet of comprehension. Master of deduction, you know whereof you speak.

All of these flowers are roses, even the white ones.

The roses? Really? That's induction, not deduction. I withdraw my endorsement.

You're going to miss the turn if you keep overthinking it. Just go, and let Gwen follow you if she wants. She will.

"It's this way," she says, stepping awkwardly behind Gwen to get to the left side of the intersection.

"How— fine, if you say so," she mutters. No sense demanding an explanation for this yet; she may not even know the reason herself.

There's a reason all right, not that she feels competent to explain it. The best she can come up with is the garden's mere existence. None of the other greenery they've passed up until now has been intentionally cultivated. Are gardens rare enough that spotting one incidentally rises to the level of a clue? Is there a god of gardening? Why do the roses matter?

It was definitely a residential building at some point, which means finding the entrance isn't hard. She knocks.

After a long delay, the door is answered by an elderly man. He stoops with age; nothing about his attire shouts 'cleric'.

"Yes?" he says expectantly.

"I think I'm going to die. Can you fix that for me?"

"Everyone dies, kid. Anyone offering to fix that, you'd best stay away from them."

"No, I mean I'm potentially mortally wounded and need magical healing. Potentially wounded, not potentially in need of– I don't know exactly how much, but, if you imagined a lot of people kind of like me and tried to pick– can you please channel positive energy at me?"

"She claimed to have a serious head injury while under Abadar's Truthtelling less than five minutes ago," Gwen clarifies, though she couldn't sound any more bored by the situation if she tried.

Merlus Ragar does not advertise his ordainment. He's barely even a cleric, and the days when that mattered were long ago. Nevertheless, these two know something they shouldn't. One of the sad truths of this world is that the kind folks at your door are often up to no good, and that goes double when they're the strange sort.

Trouble is, he can't think of what their plan might be. Even the most convoluted fiendish plots rarely start with a sincere-sounding request for healing – sophisticated Evildoers have their own ways of recovering, and wouldn't go begging for help unless the need was dire. If they're trying to get him to waste his first channel of the day, if something depends on him being at full capacity… no, that kind of Asmodean madness is silly. Best to take them at their word for now. If they need setting straight, he can do that later.

Merlus plucks his holy symbol off the thin chain it hangs from, holds it in front of his heart, and channels positive energy.

Do you feel that, sister? Do you feel the sizzle beneath your skin, the crackle running through your bones? That's positive energy: torch of the gods, first light of the cosmos. Bask in it, and let the problems you didn't even know you had disappear like bad dreams.

The pretty light show has not restored your memories. It was also massive overkill for a couple of scratches and a hangover, all of which have now been reduced to the purely psychological fraction. You are not fragile by any stretch of the imagination.

"Did that work?" Gwen asks, once the golden light fades away.

"I feel much better. Still can't remember anything."

She can't help but feel disappointed, even though this was the expected outcome. The cleric's posture also hasn't improved, despite being subject to the same wave of healing magic. There are limits to what channeling can do – limits that seems to hew towards the mortal conception of 'injury', come to think of it.

Kyphosis is a disease of old age, and the ravages of time are not so easily unwound. Positive energy can restore you to perfect health if you're missing four pints of blood but fares poorly on illness and amputated extremities. Those call for more specialized magic.

But now is not the time for amateur theology. Now is the time for action! If she has to solve both mysteries with this millstone around her neck then so be it.

"Thank you," she says, addressing the cleric. "That solved the hard-to-describe bad thing I was worried about. On a hopefully-unrelated note, I am a lieutenant in the watch, as is she. We're here to investigate a murder that happened in this part of Escadar a few days ago, and I want to ask you a few questions."

"Glad I could help. If you've got a blank spot in your memory that shouldn't be there, it could be sorcery hiding something from you. You'll need someone stronger than me to deal with that." He sighs. "I don't know what else I can tell you about the death, but you may as well come in. I'll put the kettle on for tea."