“This is the first time that the Circle members unanimously voted against me. Whatever I have promised you can only hold if I am still alive by the time things have resolved… Anything is possible. Be careful and take great care of yourself whether I live or not!” he says. Tirad is raged by his words and protests saying that no one dares to harm Hurmaz. But Hurmaz does not want to continue this conversation and won’t allow him to say more. He puts another pack of papers in front of Tirad and tells him that these papers are the more important matter right now. He wants him to go through them and as Tirad looks at the papers, he explains what they are for. The papers contain reports, some only written and some with lousy, hand-drawn pictures.

“This is your real mission! We better be sincere! I doubt that you can easily handle Mart and join the Circle; he will probably take all the credits and throw you out. But if he is to get in, I want to you to get in too, otherwise who knows what will happen to the Saviour Ship and to me. I want you to accept this mission as well as the one that the Circle has given you,” Hurmaz explains and points to the reports.

“There have been reports of the mysterious deaths of pregnant women in the sea… I want you to follow up this issue and give me a full report!” He moves and sits next to Tirad and shows him each report one by one.

“It started two years ago… At first, it was only missing reports for the pregnant women who were close to their due date. Then the bodies were found with the babies missing. The bodies of the babies were never found… If they had given birth in the water, their babies would have been eaten by the fish. The number of received reports has increased in the last few months, and it is worrying!” he explains. He takes out a paper from the rest of the reports and shows it to Tirad.

“This is the last report that I received today. The body of a pregnant woman was found in Oxan yesterday morning. A boatman had found it by the harbour. It was stuck in his boat’s chains… Here…look.” He passes the report to him. Tirad carefully reads the report. It is full of spelling and grammar mistakes, but it has explained the happening. According to the report, they could not identify the body, and since they had thought the woman had died of a sickness, her corpse was burnt according to Saviour Rituals and not thrown back in to the water.

“Are the reports limited to a special area?” Tirad asks.

“If you mean Oxan, then the answer is no. I sent a letter to Atlan a few months back and asked if they had any similar incidents. They had, but they believe it was some sort of a contagious sickness amongst pregnant women. They even wanted to quarantine their pregnant women. But I didn’t follow up the matter anymore. I also asked Harlan and they had only a few reports and had considered it as a random occurrence,” Hurmaz replies. Tirad shakes his head puzzled but Hurmaz comes to his help. He tells him that he should ask around and see which areas in Oxan had the more victims, put the numbers together, see which sicknesses could cause such deaths, investigate food and water supplies on the ships for signs of contamination and give him a full report on all that. Tirad understands and nods.