Small Secrets
First Day of the Twelfth Month 293 AC
Sorcerer's Deep, The Great Market
The air was alive with the clatter of fine Everfire Steel and the clink of Myrish glassware tightly packed with straw, Dornish Red sloshed in painted amphora and fine Naathi silk fluttered in the breeze, for the merchant the bazaar promised fortune, for the visitor wonders uncounted. Who was to notice or to care for two more girls in dark green a little frayed around the edges speaking quietly in a corner. A stranger to the city might think them the daughters of middling craftsmen, a local would know that shade of green to mark an orphan under the care of the Crown, but in this case both would be wrong. Neither was orphaned, though one was thought dead and the other had walked close indeed to the chasm and it had marked her, but most remarkable of all in that willfully unremarkable pair is that both were agents of the Inquisition, by the king's own hand.
"What did you find out?" Ysilla Royce asked, carefully pitching her tone just above a whisper so that it would be lost in the rustle of the market.
"Looks like your suspicion was on the right heading," Kyla Fairwind replied in like tone. Her shadow shifted ever so slightly in nervousness, excitement, or perhaps a little both, but she leashed it quickly before it could give away her magic. "Magister Daelor is surprisingly cheerful for a man who supposedly has to sell his dyes under the market price to save the estate of his 'poor dying mother' back home. He's been drinking, dicing, and... the other things for five nights straight, according to his maid."
"Don't you Braavosi call that 'visiting courtesans'?" Ysilla asked archly, though she could not quite keep a blush off her cheeks too.
"Courtesans provide other services, you know. It's not just a fancy way of saying..." Kyla began.
"Alright, alright," the young Royce scion raised a hand to forestall further talk of the subject. "So smuggling... all we've got so far is circumstantial. It's not ilegal to make bad business decisions or lie about them after all. Did the servants you talked to have any idea of how the goods got to Sorcerer's Deep?"
"Yep. I've got a warehouse address and the name of the company that actually handled hauling the stuff," Kyla replied, flipping over the pages of the palm-sized booklet she used in her investigations, enchanted to be able to turn the ink on any page invisible or erase it on command. Ysilla always thought that was a bit of a waste of money, though she admitted that may have because she couldn't justify using the stipend from her father to buy something like that.
Maybe she could ask Waymar...
"You know that was pretty stupid of him, hiring bulk haulers, instead of making a deal with longshoremen piecemeal, it's a lot easier to trace," Kyla continued, drawing Ysilla from her thoughts. "Do you think maybe they're trying to lure us into a trap...?"
"I think criminals are as likely to get lazy and sloppy as anyone else, more so in fact, or they wouldn't be criminals,"Ysilla interjected before her friend could dream up a whole complicated intrigue in her head and maybe suggest involving Ysandryx again.
That would be an interesting conversation to have with their trainers. 'We thought blasting dragon-breath would flush them out, honest.'
"Do you think they're ever going to give us proper Inquisition work, fighting Deep Ones, fiends, and rogue magicians?" Kyla asked with a small sigh. "This is more like lawman's work."
"This is a lot what the Inquisition does, only with traitors and enemies of the Crown not smugglers," Ysilla pointed out. "We'll get better assignments as we prove ourselves and as long as it doesn't put anyone in danger to hand them off. It's more important that the magic troubles get handled, not that we be the ones to do it."
The younger girl sighed. "I bet Dany never had to deal with stupid smugglers."
Because there was no one else around to help, Ysilla thought. All things considered it was more than a fair trade in her book.
OOC: A glimpse into what that training you guys agreed to a few months back. Not yet edited.
