If the Shenga exists, he’s been running things for at least twenty years, keeping order so that he can control the city. Whoever’s been killing people with Blue Crystal, importing Ventrazi to terrorize the town, riling up a human sacrifice cult and openly threatening me, is not that calm, calculating figure who hides in the shadows. So either the Shenga’s real and something’s happened to change him, or this person is not the Shenga.
Nothing he does makes sense. If I’m so dangerous to him, why not kill me? He had me completely helpless, and just complimented my disguise and whispered an implied threat in my ear. He knows every place I live. Well right now I’m only living in the palace, so what? And if he’s powerful enough to hold a group of people in place for minutes with a thought, why send his lackeys to steal the scroll from the locked door in the library? He could do it himself. The only conclusion I can come to is that, for whatever reason, he can’t kill us, and he can’t go into the library himself. But that doesn’t make a lot of sense either.
If I were smart, I’d back down, slink back into the shadows and become the man I was just a few months ago. The Blue Crystal is all but gone, after all, and the people of my quarter, even if they’re now under the thumb of Torenaga, are at least employed and fed. It’s all I could have asked for.
But I can’t back down, not knowing that Clarys will keep on going without me until she gets killed. I hate to admit it, but I actually care for a paladin of Mystra, someone who under other circumstances would…
So I have to beat him at his own game. He’s taking the purple crystal. That makes him incredibly strong, but it also makes him weak. He’s dependent on a drug that turns him into an invalid two days out of three, and whether he has twenty years of experience or a hundred, he’ll drop his guard someday.
I’ve uncovered the Duke’s network of spies and assassins. I know which palace funds are being syphoned off to pay them, and it will only be so long before I can trace that money to its end. And then if I can convince them that Clarys will be the duke indefinitely and that I’m her representative, they can become my network of spies and assassins. It may require a slight pay raise, but we can afford that now. And then I’ll have them watching for this real or false Shenga. I’ll tell them not to touch him, not even look at him if they can avoid it, and to take their time. I don’t need to know where he is now, just where he was a few hours ago. If they’re as good as I hope they are, the spies will be so visibly unenthusiastic that they won’t be noticeable at all. Subtlety to an extreme is the way to do this. And I’ll figure out his patterns, find out when he takes the crystal by looking for two-day periods when he’s nowhere to be seen, and someday, I’ll know every place he lives.
Look at me, plowing into danger like the kind of crazy person I’ve been trying to avoid my whole life. This is going to get me killed.