"Maybe Karver would have had a more difficult time getting into this room if the guard on duty had been there. But he's suspiciously absent from the entrance entirely, very peculiar. The journeyman is inside, right by where they discovered Sven during the party. The boxes that were tumbled on the ground or rifled through are being set to rights and he's desperately searching through them. There's an intense set to his furrowed brow as he thumbs through papers, creating a stack of searched and not searched."

It's a good thing there aren't any guards at that door, because there's another interloping making her way into the room. Upon finding Karver there, Lacie's eyes widen slightly in surprise and makes her way over to those tumbled boxes. "Karver," she calls out when she's close enough. "What're you looking for?" Her own brows are furrowed as her gaze shifts from her fellow Harper to the stack of papers.

Even in the midst of increased security, of latent paranoia, of wary guards and nervous Weyrspeople, business goes on, as it always must. Long ranging Trader routes make Weyr news a scarcer thing, for those from the road, and Ellen - heavy built, bare-footed, clad in travel wear with a satchel bag slung across a shoulder (gender aside it has more the style of a man-purse than a lady-purse) - has been likely stopped a few times by now on her way through the Weyr, by merit of being an unfamiliar face. Detour to detour, slipped passage and poignant questions have led the way here. Who knows, maybe SHE was the one that lured the guard away; her woeful pitbull-heavy features don't exactly speak of pristine intentions. Pat-PAT - she's coming in right on Lacie's heels as though the two KNEW each other, "So this is IT, huh?" Asked as though she were somewhat impressed. Cool murder scene, bro.

"I'm looking for the maps, for the… you know the ones, detailing the extent of the dig and the other tunnels and…" He keeps trailing off because he keeps pulling out yet another paper and staring at it. But they're never the ones that he wants to find. He looks up at Lacie from where he's crouched on the floor, eyes full and troubled. "I can't find them." Ellen comes in and the it of her sentence sends him into silence and he just stares at her from way over here.

"Maps?" Lacie echoes, watching but not really helping Karver search cause, well, there's only so much space. She does, however, move to crouch down as well and open her mouth to say something but the trader's interruption causes her to look over. The blonde Harper's first reaction is to also stare. But then the tone the other woman takes has Lacie frowning. "It's not a gallery to come and gawk at, y'know." It's a crime scene. Someone died here.

The stares are taken without complaint - Ellen, all unapologetically rude broad-shoulders and large hands, bears up under it like a boulder, hiking up her brows, "Yeah? I'd guess you were here to just admire the foliage then?" It doesn't harbor much censure, though. Well, maybe a little snark. With one hand hooked loosely at the thumb from her satchel strap, the other loosely crammed in a pocket, she's making a loose wander deeper into the Gardens at a diagonal path in Karver's favor. Tipping back her head to study the high window for a moment, she doesn't seem inclined to look at people when addressing them - so it could be to either Karver OR Lacie that she adds, lower, her voice a soft-scrape of husky contralto, "How long ago'd it happen?"

"The maps, the fucking maps. I would have sworn he put them in in here." But if they're in this room now, then Karver is having one hell of a time finding them. He slumps, knuckling his hand into his mouth and biting down as his eyes make a sweep of the room. He begins to say something to Lacie before he clamps his mouth shut again, this time allowing his gaze to pivot onto Ellen. He seems inclinced to assume that she was addressing the other woman and not him. Where is the guard that was supposed to be watching the door?

"Ooooh. The maps." Right. Those things? If they weren't in those boxes, then where could they be? Lacie would totally try to help Karver… in a moment. Maybe. But her attention's back on the other woman, eyes narrowing as she scoffs at the retort and watching carefully as the Trader steps further into the room. Lacie bites back her words she probably shouldn't say and instead answers, "… Nearly a month ago." She'll turn her attention away to rifle through those boxes now to help Karver find those maps.

Maybe Ellen dragged the guard off in a CHOKE HOLD, Black Ops style. But… probably not. Adding to the invasive-wildlife manner of her foreign garb, Ellen has an irreverently raccoonish manner of poking around, wandering towards, and then subsequently past the two Harpers at her own pace. She's just - going right ahead and TOUCHING things as she goes, fingers trailing along a wall, eyes drifting around on the ground. "Mnh," grunt, "maps?" Indulging her own curiosity, she seems only half-inclined to pay attention to the others in the room, and disinclined fully to pay the tension any notice. Her aimless wandering along the room's parameters leads her to a chair positioned against the wall. A hide or paper of some kind sits beside it, and she turns it over with a foot. Prod.

Karver is stalled out here, he's looked through the boxes and under them and all over. It's a possibility that the reason the area looks so shuffled through is because he's been in this room, hunting over and over for something that's no longer here. When Lacie comes out with the length of time they've been stuck in this nightmare, he bites down on his lower lip and brings his hand to his mouth. "Maybe they're in his room." Wherever these maps are, it's clear he can no longer tolerate being here. "Lacie." His eyes rest on Ellen and her toeing of the paper. "Girl." Whoever you are.

Lacie is very unsubtle in the way she glares at the trader and her raccoony ways. Her searching is paused, having been half-hearted to be begin with. Lace lets out a light huff, not bothering to answer the unwomanly woman and her grunting, going back to rifling through those boxes up until Karver makes a comment about Sven's room. A frown forms on her lips. She hadn't been there since… Lacie shakes her head before turning to the third interloper. "So you're really just here to gawk, then?" Because why else would she be here?

"Think gawkin' requires a little more breathing through th' mouth," Ellen runts mildly, all blunt no-nonsense - her speaking is thickened with a burred brogue, that roughens some of her words inconsistently. She pronounces 'mouth' almost like 'maynth'. turning only briefly to watch poor Karver make his leave. Scratching behind an ear like she might have fleas, she looks just as soon back down at the hide on the floor. Scritch-scritch… "Heh, 'cmere." Though she hasn't picked it up, the exposed side of the scrap harbors a sketch of - Sven, actually, rendered in profile. "Who y'suppose this bozo is." CLASSY, Ellen.

"Not necessarily, no," Lacie replies roughly, eyes rolling. Karver's departure is kept in the back of her mind, making sure to follow up with her fellow Harper when she gets a chance. After searching this room thoroughly once more. The trader's call to go over to where she is over by that chair over there. Lacie stalls for a moment before curiosity gets the better of her and she stands and heads over. The scrap is picked up and a look of pain crosses Lacie's face. "The guy that got killed in here," Lacie replies, expression hardening and walking away from the trader to go back to those boxes and just looking through them, not really looking for the maps… just looking. For something. Anything.

"What, really?" it's probably inappropriate to startled CHUFF-LAUGH when you respond to this news, Ellen. She stoops down to pick up the hide, "The shell's it doing here. This Weyr big on portraiture or somm'at?" She gets real country on that word. Por-TRAIT-cher. The humor in her diminishes some, after a few longer moments of looking at it, settling down heavily like clay in a lake bed. Gravity is unkind to her face, when it's not in motion; all grim heavy lines and compressed lips. And she says lower, after a moment, "…Y'realize. Whoever sketch't this piece mighta been the last to see him breathing." Then, just as frankly but with a renewed trace of gallows humor adds, "Or helped him on 'is way out." One fist on a thick hip, she turns Lacie-wards, "How'd he die, anyhow?"

Lacie doesn't grace the trader with a reply, especially on account of her laughing. No, instead, she gets a really hard glare from Lacie as she briefly looks up from her rifling. Something catches her eye in there and she pockets one of the documents within before her body stiffens at the other woman's next words. "Or it's been there a while," Lacie adds before going quiet at the question. "Stabbed… probably," is the eventual answer. "They haven't found the weapon." Or whatever was used to kill him. Was it really a dagger?

Ellen squints up one eye more than the other, "People leave shit like this just lyin' about?" She holds the picture away from herself with both hands as though she were near-sighted, and after a moment adds, "S'not bad." And then, more flippantly with a shrug, "I'da kept it." Which is apparently… what she plans to DO. Folding it in half, she tucks it into a breast pocket, hunting her eyes over the chair it'd been found by, dropping a hand on its backrest. Rocking it aside to look beneath. Letting it drop back to the ground. Thumping a meaty fist once, against the wall behind it, then moving on along the parameters (peering down into the little pond - oo, fishies), and washing up against a door that had been obscured by the shadows. She doesn't open it right away, but does give the door handle a little JIGGLE SHAKE to see if its locked. Rattlerattle.

Lacie looks up and over at the other woman incredulously, "You're keeping it?" There's another split second before the Harper rolls her eyes again and shakes her head. She's pilfered a couple more papers and stuffed them into her own jacket while the trader was focused elsewhere and now moves to stand up, organizing those boxes a little. "I wouldn't, if I were you." It's probably still locked anyway. With a light brush of her trousers, Lacie the moves to the room's entrance and go in search of Karver. "I'd leave soon if I were you, lest the guards come back and find you here." And with those parting words, she's on her way to Sven's room.