The group awoke to find that Arko Adi had returned, and was going on about a scheme to finance his friend Pilshur’s mining expedition to the Burkhdyn Gazar where he claims to have found a vein of blue moonstone.
After breakfast, they headed to Rosalia’s; she informed them that her friend Huaychet had gone missing. Huaychet was a bohemian musician and instrument maker who’d apparently gotten wrapped up with Pyko’s crew. Before vanishing, he’d given Rosalia a gift: a shona wood shawm (a recorder-like instrument) that he’d crafted for her. She suspected he’d been working at an abandoned villa/manor near Tobias and Rosalia’s old Scar digs.
Shona wood is sacred to the elves, and only rarely are small gifts of it made to other folk.
They then talked to Pella, who let them know that there were 2 different groups of people disappearing: some being violently abducted (related to the shadow hounds), and some that seemed to be caught up with Pyko. She had met with Seta in Maringa, but they’re very close-lipped with outsiders — perhaps Tobias could get more info from them.
They took a funicular ride to scope the manor from above, spotting a kid entering. Following that, they talked with Doctor Marbalay, selling him their kernu tusks and finding out that a kid who frequented the manor often had swamp mud on his boots. They paid Marbalay to point out the kid, and followed him back out of the city into the jungle.
The kid led them to a small encampment in the jungle, where they found a number of children being forced by guards to spin spider webs into silk. The spiders were kept drowsy by the burning fumes of shona wood. The group defeated the guards, killing most but capturing one and freeing the children — but the child who’d led them there (Kefilli) slipped away during the combat.
The group rushed back to town, reaching the safety of the walls before Pyko could be alerted and get a group of pursuers to catch them. They turned over information and the silk they’d found to the guards after being assured that they’d get the silk back post-investigation (but they kept mum about the involvement of shona wood).
Huaychet let them know that Pyko had forced him to spin silk after finding him skimming shona wood away, and that Pyko had once mentioned something about making sure that “the ambassador” didn’t find out about . . . something. he wasn’t sure what.
As the group settled down to sleep, Aiden wiped his face with the handerchief he’d bought from Raimon’s the previous week: its spider-silk cloth smelled faintly of the orange-and-cinnamon telltale aroma of shona wood.
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