To Shrilynda's surprise, no stabbing or paralysis was needed to locate Cliff. The first bartender in the first tavern she walked in knew exactly who she was talking about, and he pointed her in the right direction without batting an eyelash. Unfortunately, this meant her target was well-known, but she toyed with the related hope his death could be easily explained. Powerful men were often enemies of other powerful men, the kind who hired assassins.
On this front, however, she was disappointed. Cliff was not so much powerful as he was loud. No wonder everyone in town knew who he was.
When Shrilynda found him, he was giving a speech to a group of well-dressed men and women. Shrilynda would have assumed they were local merchants if she cared that much. She did not care. She had a headache brought on from the crash after the dark magic influx of the knife, and she merely wanted Cliff to cease talking and get himself to a remote location.
Just as she was considering setting fire to the raised platform Cliff was blathering from, a ball of fur made an appearance. More accurately, a tiny monkey launched itself onto Cliff's head right when he was announcing the dates of the opening of a new dockside market. The animal snatched the papers from the podium in front of him and pitched them into the crowd, screeching. Apparently somebody other than Shrilynda also thought the meeting was running long. The merchants used the interruption to close the meeting themselves, thanking Cliff for all his hard work and dedication before fleeing to their shops and businesses.
He sighed and wished people well while gathering his papers and chastising the monkey who was hopping up and down on his head, seeming more proud of herself than chastised. Soon he was alone in an empty square, but Shrilynda could hardly remain unnoticed accosting him in the middle of town. She pulled her cloak around herself and followed him down streets. She received a few side glances, but Baysellians were generally good at keeping to themselves and pointedly ignoring what wasn't trying to kill them.
Cliff argued with the monkey the whole way. Although it may have been more accurate to say he argued at the monkey the whole way, the ball of fur did respond in shrieks and squeals, so the conversation seemed two-sided. Shrilynda never had the patience for animals.
Unfortunately, Cliff was headed to another public place—an inn for a late lunch. Shrilynda had hoped the monkey would be left outside, but when Cliff turned to the monkey on his shoulder and asked, "What today? Pecan pie?" and she shrieked and clapped her hands together, Shrilynda understood the monkey would be accompanying him. She needed to stage an unfortunate accident for this man sooner than later. Poison would be satisfying.
She slipped around the back of the inn. The door to the kitchen hung wide open in an attempt to bring in cooler air to the poor souls forced to prepare food next to the fires of the kitchen. Of course, the air outside was not remotely cool, but even so, Shrilynda could feel the kitchen heat wafting her way. The wooden door swayed with a rush of sea air, and Shrilynda was able to get a good look inside. No one was in the kitchen.
Seizing her opportunity, she stepped inside. In a glance, she saw a large pot over a fire—simmering stew, most likely. The smell was nauseating, both due to the fact that her head was pounding and because she rarely ate. A large trough of water sat next to the door. Long loaves of bread sat cooling on a tall counter. Shrilynda crossed her arms and tapped her fingers on one arm. Any one of these items was suitable for poisoning. Being presented with the opportunity, however, filled her with unwelcome pause. Since Namon preferred slow, arduous deaths, the poison was likely to be slow-acting. Namon may have savored the panic of poison victims, but Shrilynda had no use for and no way to manage a panicked room of dying people right now.
She rubbed her throbbing temples. Of course, she could not run the risk of killing the monkey. The only chance to use the stone was if it stayed active, which meant it had to stay inside the monkey's living body. As soon as the monkey was no longer touching the stone, it would no longer call to the sea creature. Besides, while she was trying to think clearly, she had to admit the deaths of everyone at an inn in Bayselle might call down unwanted attention. She just needed to lure the monkey away. Perhaps she was making things too complicated. She could have a worker here snatch the monkey and carry her outside. Then she could go prepare a pain-dulling potion for herself.
She withdrew the knife from her belt, but before she could move herself next to the door and out of sight, a man burst through.
"Ack," said the man, jumping back. She had run right into Cliff. Or, more accurately, he had run into her. "You scared me. I'm looking for the ale?" Why was that a question? "Lucia has her hands full, and I thought I'd give her one of mine, or two, even, but if I'd known you were back here, I would have just let you handle things. So the big party out there—you know—the Elana clan and the Zuros—"
He continued speaking after that, but Shrilynda did not know, and she did not want to know. If Cliff had the monkey with him, she would have stabbed him right there, but he was monkey-free. She slipped the knife back in her belt. She needed a reason for him to take his pet out of this busy place. Vague mass poisonings were one thing, but witnesses reporting dark, hooded women skulking about near the site of multiple magical stabbings was definitely attention she wanted to avoid.
By the point she had mulled over those thoughts, the man had stopped speaking and was headed back in to the main room.
"Wait," she said.
He froze and spun around on his heels, blinking his dumb, pale blue eyes curiously.
Unfortunately, she had no follow-up.
"I need..." she began.
"Oh, you don't work here," Cliff said. "I'm sorry. I just assumed. Anything I can help with?"
He was a helper who was friends with everyone, it seemed. Shrilynda should be able to come up with an excuse to lure him out of here. Shrilynda had lived with a helper-type for fourteen years after all.
"My...horse," she tried, waving vaguely in the direction of her non-existent animal. Helper-types loved animals, or so she assumed. "It's been attacked by..."
Cliff gasped. "Did you get hit by those bandits outside town? I can't believe they're still out there, attacking people with impunity." And then his whole face lit up, like this was an opportunity. "We need to report this to the new law council." He clapped his hands together. "Oh, a few more of these attacks will really legitimize a local protection force. And—" he blinked, focusing back on her. "I'm sorry to hear about your trouble. Not from around here? You have an accent I can't quite place."
"Not from around here," she agreed. "But if you could hurry..."
"Oh, of course!" he exclaimed, springing into motion. "Just let me grab Quita and we'll get you some assistance."
"Perfect," she said. "I'll meet you outside."
It looked like she would be able to save some valuable poison for another time.
"Where did you say you were from again?" he said, but she pretended not to hear him while she slid out the back door and settled near the corner of the building.
She closed her eyes and leaned against the warm wood, listening to the sounds of the bustling town. She was tired. Being unable to take immortality potions for the ten years she had been trapped had drained her strength, and the weak ones she had been able to cobble together since were not enough to compensate for long. She needed a greater source of magic. If she could not find the divination stone...
Her eyes snapped open. She must find the stone, and quickly. She could survive indefinitely in hiding, scrounging out a living while waiting for Rin to die, but then what? She would always be at the mercy of the most powerful person in the world, and that was no way to live. The Glade should be hers.
Despite her eyes being open, the whole world had washed white. Shrilynda rubbed her temples. In lieu of the stone, she would take someone with magical blood. The Sorceress outside town was off at Crystal Palace training, but maybe one of her brothers would suffice for now.
Shrilynda felt a hand on her shoulder. She barely stopped herself from slicing her attacker's throat open.
"Sorry I took so long," Cliff apologized, oblivious. "Quita wouldn't leave without—"
Shrilynda forced her eyes to focus until the white drifted away. She saw the monkey on Cliff's shoulder clutching a brown-wrapped wedge.
"It's not important," Cliff interrupted himself. "Which way did you come into town?"
"North," she replied. "Along the coast." She happened to know the perfect abandoned spot.
"North! Were you attacked by a pirate band?" he asked, nearly squealing in delight. "Oh, if we could impose more sanctions on them..."
Her reply was unnecessary to this one-sided conversation. However, there was no way she was going to be able to tolerate walking any distance with this man. She decided to trade caution for sanity. In an instant, she had a handful of crystal powder in her hand, and she was tossing it at her feet. In a cloud of soothing smoke, she and Cliff were standing in the sand in front of a crumbling dock.
"You're a—you're—" he sputtered, backing away. "What are you?"
She tossed a handful of sleeping powder in his face, catching the anxious monkey on his shoulder at the same time. Both of them dropped to the sand. The quiet was satisfying, but she really should have asked him for the whereabouts of the control rune before she silenced him. The stone inside Quita was of little use without the rune to control it. Now she would have to wait for him to wake up in order to threaten any information out of him. At least the sleeping powder was old and barely potent.
She searched Cliff's pockets and a fancy leather case with hard sides containing mainly speeches and notebooks and contracts. He had no runes on his person. Shrilynda sighed and dug through her own bag for some rope. Everything was covered in sand, and she was hot, and her head hurt. She just needed this man to die horribly so she could move on. Unfortunately, she needed to know if the Sorceress Rosaliy had sent the rune with the monkey or at least what the rune had been carved on so she could track it down herself.
If such a rune was safe at Crystal Palace, no one in the course of Shrilynda's spying had mentioned it. The only conclusion Shrilynda could draw is they must have thought its usefulness spent. She could create another one, but that would take moons of curing. Runes had to gather power before they were effective, and that took time. Everything took time. At least she had more time to spend than most people.
As she mulled over the possibility of traveling to the Burning Mountains to infuse a runestone with power, she stashed the monkey in her bag and yanked rope tight around Cliff's arms and legs.
"You're Malum," he murmured weakly. Only his mouth had returned to conscious, as if his ability to speak was stronger than magic. "You're the woman after the Queen's kids."
Confusing. Although the attack by the Flifary was well-known, Shrilynda's return was not common knowledge.
"Where did you hear that?" she asked.
"What?" he slurred, trying to stir but finding his arms and legs pinned to his body. "You're—I won't tell you anything."
"Although I would normally appreciate your unwillingness to talk on any subject, I am particularly interested in this one," she mused, reaching into her bag. She shoved the monkey aside in order to grasp the wrapped vial underneath.
"Well, you're out of luck," he said quite boldly for someone lying on the ground while tied up like a hunk of stuffed meat. "I would never tell—" The rest of his words dissolved into choking gurgles as she poured liquid down his throat.
"Concentrated anguis sap will fix that problem," she said while he coughed flecks of the thick liquid.
"I'm going to tell everyone you're here," Cliff babbled as soon as he could talk through coughs. "The law council and Sorceress Jadelynn, and Queen Kat. Oh, she'll be relieved to find you."
"Since I don't want my whereabouts widely known by all of my enemies, that plan of action is unfortunate for your continued survival," Shrilynda pointed out. "First things first. Where is the control rune?"
"I don't know what you're talking about," Cliff answered.
"The stone that puts Granpulpo under control," she clarified.
"Quita ate that."
"No, she ate the stone that calls to the giant octopus," Shrilynda disagreed. "But it would be insanity to attempt to call to Granpulpo without some assurance of control."
"I'm pretty sure that's exactly what happened," Cliff answered. "Rosaliy and Jadelynn didn't grab any control rune."
"From where?"
"From the palace. You know, where they picked up the stone in the first place. We had to break in to get healing draught to sell back to them, because that's their cost of doing business, and the Crocs were going to kill me if they didn't get enough to pay off the pirates."
She was almost sorry she had given him the anguis sap at all.
"Focus, Baysellian," Shrilynda hissed. "The stone."
"Oh, well, Jadelynn and Rosaliy were looking for that, too. What part are you not following here?"
"The part where they didn't pick up an essential piece of a carefully crafted magical tool," Shrilynda answered. Cliff blinked at her and went back to wriggling against his bonds. "To be clear, Rosaliy did not locate the control rune?"
"Nope," he agreed. "She wasn't looking for one."
"So the rune may be inside the castle," she said to herself.
"Probably," Cliff said. "The king had quite the stockpile. I'm sure Queen Kat would have looked into what's there by now, but the pirates are being really difficult about this whole peaceful transfer of power thing."
She had never met someone quite this susceptible to anguis sap. Shrilynda retrieved the knife from her belt almost unconsciously while she pondered her next move.
Cliff squealed as the knife glinted into view. "You don't want to kill me!"
"What part of our short acquaintance could possibly have given you the impression I don't want to kill you?"
"They'll come after you," he babbled. "If I turn up dead, they'll know!"
"Do you know how rarely begging for your life works?" she chastised him. "Quickly, useless man, who is 'they'?"
She expected to hear a sob story about how close he was to the royal family, but when pressed the point of the knife into his chest, he came up with more believable names.
"Drake and Rosaliy," he yelped.
Shrilynda let out a disgusted sigh. "You'd like me to believe you're friends with Drake and Rosaliy?"
"The best of," he insisted. "They won't take this lightly. They will hunt you down across the face of—"
"Stop talking," she hissed. Although he might be exaggerating, he was under the influence of anguis sap, she begrudgingly admitted, although that only proved he believed what he was saying. He did have inside information, she supposed.
"You may be the first person in the history of pathetic begging for whom such a threat has worked," she grumbled. "Of course, if you know parties close to the Queen who can make continued life in hiding difficult for me, that makes you necessary to dispose." She brought the knife to his throat.
He yelped. "I don't even know anything. It would be better for you to leave now, before you call down all the rage."
"Don't know anything," Shrilynda murmured, loosening her hold on the knife just slightly. The problem was, he knew too much, but that was a problem she could fix. "You make an excellent point, overly chatty Baysellian. Come with me."
"I can't exactly—" he started to say.
"On second thought, it's a long walk to the Senira, and I will kill you if I have to travel any distance with you," she interrupted. "So this is for your sake as much as mine."
She tossed a handful of paralysis powder on him, making sure to sprinkle extra on his mouth. She should not have been wasting such a valuable substance on him, but she could hardly have him attracting attention while she paid the Senira a visit. After tossing some fallen palm fronds over Cliff's body, she headed down the coast.