Omara

Omara is a woman of the campaign Yeni Dünya ("New World") who earned her living in Aquila by watching people for pay; she said that she had worked in the city for about five years. She was set to follow a band of adventurers, and when Sticks, who knew her, looked for her she could not be found, though she might simply have been well hidden.¹²

The night of the bolt

Towards dawn a note left under the door of the doctor Bruno's shop said that the woman following them had been killed that night. Then she reached the door herself, alive, shot near the heart with a hand crossbow and poisoned. Bruno laid her down and drew the spreading poison out into his black arm, and her eyes opened. Her wounds remained, but once she had been given water she could speak.³⁴⁵

At her neck she wore a crystal that served as a focus for magic, with a short sword at her belt and daggers in her boot. She said she had come as a last hope of healing: she knew Sticks by reputation and had heard Bruno's name in the neighbourhood, and thought her chances of living better with them.⁶⁷

Her account

Omara said she had taken the job through underworld contacts about two weeks before and had been following the band for five days. She was to keep a coded written report of their movements and meetings for someone who would come for it, but no one came. Her client was especially curious about visits to the palace, about two or three rich people who came to Bruno's shop with their faces hidden, and about Fauna's visits to her tribe. Except for Sticks, she said, the band was easy to follow. She had been paid forty-five gold in advance for what was meant to be a three-day job, with forty-five more to come.^89101112

She was attacked in the watching room she rented on the second floor of the building opposite, and survived by playing dead. She did not see the man's face; she saw no symbol or tattoo, only a light blue garment with brass or bronze details and a blade whose shape did not look local, which was taken to suggest the Geroni style. After the band met the noblewoman Rozanna, she said, Rozanna's men had followed them for a while.^13141516

She had hidden her clean report behind a stone in the fireplace and burnt her old notes, and Sticks slipped into the room through the window to fetch it and her bag; behind the stone he found a leather pouch with three small poisoned crossbow bolts, a plain dagger and a written scroll.¹⁷¹⁸¹⁹

Omara wanted to learn who had hired her so as to keep her "sisters" in the trade away from such work, and was angry to have been attacked despite keeping silent as her trade demands. She counted herself in the band's debt against their common enemy. Bruno asked no money, only that she pass on what she heard about him and his work, and Finli asked her to speak of his toy-making too. She left by the window and, once a little way off, drank a healing potion from her boot, which she had kept back because it would not work while the poison remained.^1202122