I muttered several curses as I sped over the landscape. A combination of Haste and Air Walk making the trip over the untamed wilderness almost effortless as I backtracked days worth of travel distance because karma was a bitch.

My initial plan had been to keep heading north until I hit the garrison city of Gil’ead, but not only was the city much further away than I expected there was still no guarantee they would have what I was looking for. So I was looking for solid leads anywhere I could find a Rider’s sword and would head there over Gil’ead depending on how good the info was.

And in the last town I had stopped in, I had gotten a confirmed lead on the location of a sword…in a city down south.

If it was just a rumor I might have continued on and investigated it later, but not only had the merchant I had talked to given me a story about how the blade was used as a showpiece by the local lord to cut normal swords in half, he even had a drawing of the thing - well a portrait of the previous lord posed with the sword drawn.

But unless a smith had gone out his way to figure out how to stain a normal sword a pale venomous orange I was looking at the genuine article.

Which meant if I wanted to actually find the stupid thing I needed to do an immediate about face and double time it in hopes of making up the time I spent wandering the completely wrong direction.

A small snarky part of my mind whispered that if I moved fast enough I might be on time to my own execution. Afterall, while Feinster was far away, I was pretty fast when I didn’t need to worry about other people keeping up.

-o-

“Reason for visiting?” A bored guard asked me with the same disinterested tone of someone who had asked the question so many times the individual words no longer held any meaning for him.

I had learned from my first disastrous attempt of entering a town. Instead of walking up in my normal outfit and just saying I was passing through, I had taken steps to blend in with the rest of the travelers. A simple brown cloak I had picked up, some random plants hanging from a pack I had made, and a bit of dust and dirt on my face and hands. All that combined with a polite but distant attitude made getting in and out of towns fairly easy. Especially if there was a queue like the one behind me now.

“Just here to sell off some medical herbs.” I said, idly waving towards the plants. It was a good thing Angela wasn’t here or I would have either been subjected to a long lecture about propagating misinformation or drawn into a vicious debate on what each plant did while trying to act as if I knew what I was talking about. I was knowledgeable about many magical things. Botany was definitely not one of them.

I gave myself a little mental shake.

Only a few days away from the Varden and I was missing the few friendly faces I had gotten accustomed to. Which was weird because I hadn’t missed Yoruichi or Kisuke like this despite being separated from them in a much more decisive manner. Or maybe it was because of it that I didn’t miss those two as much?

Maybe I subconsciously knew I couldn’t meet with them until I fixed my ship, fixed myself, and figured out how to navigate back so I simply didn’t dwell on it? Whatever the reason was, it would have to wait until I wasn’t sitting in the middle of enemy territory.

I was able to enter the city with no extra fanfare and started making my way towards the center of the city.

Ironically, ‘my’ upcoming execution was making it a lot easier to move around the city. There were simply too many people around for the city guard to realistically pay much attention to every single new face and since these types of events were supposed to be a combination of warning and entertainment to the people no one would pay me much attention even with my rather travel-worn appearance wandering around the more upper class areas a commoner might normally be chased out of.

Of course, I wasn’t the only one taking advantage of the event for my own ends. Plenty of minor criminals were out trying their luck on the crowds. I had already seen over a dozen pickpockets, thieves, and cut-purses going after those not paying attention, along with some other, much less discrete criminal behavior like snatch-and-grabs, muggings, and one possible kidnapping.

Speaking of muggers and kidnappers, I seemed to have picked up a few of those myself. A group of five had been alternating between following me and running ahead while pretending to be interested in other things while they watched which directions I picked so they could follow later.

I hid a smile and turned down a dead end alley. I was starting to get hungry and if a bunch of muggers wanted to donate to my dinner fund I wasn’t about to stop them.

When I turned around all five of them were blocking the exit with smirks on their faces, smirks that vanished pretty quickly when they realized I was not surprised to see them at all and was suddenly holding a sword I definitely hadn’t had on me when I was walking through the city.

“Hello, boys. Here’s how it's going to work. You drop all the money on you and you get to walk away clean. Anything else and I’m going to have to get a bit rough with you…”

-o-

“I’ll have the stew and an ale, please.” I cheerfully requested from the tavern waitress as I sat down in one of the more out of the way tables. I was feeling good. The group of muggers had been good stress relief and while they didn’t have a huge amount of money on them, they had enough that I wouldn’t need to worry about paying for food with magically projected coins for a while.

My good mood continued when the food was not only freshly made, but rather tasty too.

They actually used spices for once.

The ale was just an ale though. I probably couldn’t expect much else from a random tavern but it would be nice if I could find a decent drink outside of the dwarves or the elves.

While I ate I thought about my main goal here.

I needed to figure out how to not only steal from the city lord, but also get out of the city without an army on my heels.

My biggest issue was finding the sword in the first place. Just because it was important to me didn’t mean it was important to the current owner. Hell, it could be buried in some storage closet gathering dust for all I knew or it could be in the guy’s bedroom being polished daily. It was likely somewhere in between those two extremes but the point remained, I couldn’t exactly search the entire property for a single object.

So step one was to find out where the sword, if it actually existed, was located.

Step two was pretty easy, but came with conditions. Steal the thing - and do it unnoticed if possible. I was self aware enough to know that if one of Galbatorix’s pet Riders wasn’t too much of a threat to me, a random guard or hedge magician didn’t have a hope of actually stopping me. The real danger was if word of where I was got back to the king and he decided to drop by with Samuel and Murtagh. I was confident about one Rider. I wasn’t so sure about three.

Step three was simply get out of the city and back to the Varden. As much as I would like to continue gallivanting around the Empire I wouldn’t be able to move freely with a Rider’s sword on me. People would notice. Not to mention I needed to go back and make sure no one ran off with the sword I already had. I trusted the people I interacted with among the Varden but I was under no illusions that there were either spies or just greedy people that would take advantage of me not being there to steal my stuff if given the chance.

But back to step one of the plan…

I needed information. And there were really only two ways to go about getting it.

Get hired for a position where I could wander around the manor without anyone looking too closely or find someone who already knew everything about the inside or where the owner kept the sword.

The first was possible, but because of the execution scheduled for two days from now no one was really hiring new staff. In fact I would bet money that there were people watching out for newcomers that even tried hoping to catch spies or agents of the Varden.

I wasn’t even sure I would be in the city after the execution. Mostly because I knew myself and unless they were punishing an actual criminal and just plastering my name on her, I was probably going to stick my nose into things and helping her escape. I could possibly do that without anyone realizing who I was, but my luck wasn’t that good. I was expecting things to go to hell at some point.

So that meant going with the second option and convincing them to help me out within a day.

That wasn’t going to be easy. Once again I wished I had the convenience the local spellcasters had. This would be a lot easier if I could read people’s minds or create new spells on the fly instead of needing to work out the proper math. Oh well, nothing I could do about it.

I finished my stew, leaned back, and hummed in contentment.

Welp, better get started then.

-o-

My good mood dampened a bit when I left the tavern only to pick up a follower again.

Only one so far, but that wasn’t necessarily a good thing. If I was going to be mugged again a group usually meant they would lean into intimidation to get what they wanted. Just one person meant they were either skilled, desperate, or just planning on looting a body. And that was only if they were planning on stealing from me and not following for some other reason.

From the quick glances I managed to get I couldn’t actually tell what the person was after. They had a cloak on that hid practically everything about them.

Okay, I didn’t have time to play with every single person that wanted to stalk me.

I ducked into another alley and hid out of sight, a projected dagger falling into my hand at the same time. A little scare wouldn’t hurt them…unless they were stupid about it.

I waited until the cloaked figure walked past and reached out to grab their shoulder, planning to simply overpower them, shove them into a wall, and demand to know why they were following me.

I wasn’t expecting them to throw off my grip, grab my wrist and throw me into the wall instead!

My knife slashed up - nothing serious, just enough to give me some space - and bounced off a ward. Shit. Either magician or someone important enough to be protected by one. Options ran through my mind, but most of my defaults were too flashy. I’d have to give myself some time…

Or at least I thought I would need to.

My brain kinda blanked out when the person spoke up.

“You’re looking remarkably free for someone who is supposed to be waiting for their execution.”

I recognised that voice!

“Arya?!”