It had been a little over a week since her return to Bree. She'd spent much of that time catching up with old friends and acquaintances and, to one degree or another, making a few new ones. Her inquiries into the matter of the nameless upstart bandits, however, had yielded naught.
Much like the other towns she had passed through on the way here, most people had heard nothing of them, simply assuming that any such activity could be placed firmly in the hands of the larger, more established groups. Those few who thought otherwise yet had nothing of use to share. As for the larger groups themselves, meeting with several of their leaders had all resulted in the same response; they knew nothing of their new rivals, but would sorely like to. They didn't like their territories being encroached upon and were very much looking forward to giving these newcomers a few lessons in etiquette.
This was reassuring, but not entirely useful. At least, not yet.
She had known that this would not be an easy hunt. She had known, due to the nature of her quarry, that it would take time. To that end, she decided that she needed somewhere a little more static to work from.
She loved her tent, she loved that she could move it daily and thereby feel less trapped, less stagnant and stationary, but she also needed something a little more fixed in order to keep track of the next phase in her research.
To that end, she returned to the hidden cave at Nen Harn. It had been years since she had last been in this place, but aside from being rather more dusty and damp than she remembered, it remained much the same. Of course, the bedding on the old battered frame was musty and mouding, but the frame itself and the old battered table and chair seemed in decent repair, or at least decent enough for her purposes.
She had spent an hour or two cleaning the place up to make it more habitable, and setting a fire in the pit to help banish some of the damp. It would dry out well enough in time, but she had no particular desire to sleep in this place, so dry enough would do.
Her next task was to head into town to purchase a large map of the area.
She had just been coming out of the Scholars Stair when she had been called aside by a local courier. He had a package for her, all neatly and precisely made up with a coat of arms upon it. Strange, she thought, but perhaps one of the merchants she had reached out to had gotten back to her more quickly than anticipated?
Regardless, she took both the map and the package back to the cave, rolled the map out upon the table and then took a closer look at the package.
The coat of arms seemed familiar. She had seen it before, and fairly recently...
She put that thought aside for now and, instead, simply opened the box. Within was a bouquet of flowers. Strange indeed. Who could possibly be sending flowers to her? Who would bother? It's not like she had a vase to place them in or, to anyone's knowledge, a table to place such a vase upon. Those who knew anything about her were well aware of her nomadic lifestyle.
Perhaps it was that girl who had flirted with her the other morning? She had seemed interested, although she had also mentioned several times that she had a partner. So, no, probably not.
The man she had spent a pleasant afternoon chatting with? He didn't seem the type.
She puzzled a few moments more before sudden realisation dawned.
Thanadar! That was his coat of arms.
So, Thanadar had sent her flowers. But why?
She looked again into the box in case it yielded more clues and found, at the very bottom, a letter. It contained only three words; I am sorry.
The mystery deepened, for Silver did not recall him having done anything to warrant apologizing to her, and certainly nothing that would have called for a gift.
She shrugged it off for the time being. That question could be answered by the man himself when next she saw him. For now, she had a much larger problem to solve.
Taking a selection of her throwing knives from within her coat, she returned to the map. One knife was stabbed through the parchment and into the table for each of the bandit strikes that she already knew of. That made a grand total of five; three of them were against her own shipments. She intended to add several more knives in the coming days as information filtered back to her from her various sources.
By tracing their past movements, she hoped to predict future ones.
