So they were spies.

Serena did not move or speak.

“And we think that troll guards the treasury of The Rising,” he went on to state.

“This is what I think as well,” she felt it safe to tell them. They were gnomes. They were also, as noted, spies. And finally, it was not a secret all gnomes (and charmed folk, and simply Dellish), adored True. “And thus, it’d be good to overwhelm that troll, breach that door, and put that coin back where it belongs.”

And it would be good.

It would cripple this bloody Rising.

She knew it.

Her mother knew it.

And that was her mission.

She’d had a hunch that the missing currency was here, in the Shanty. True’s people had been searching for it everywhere.

But not in the Shanty for no one went to the Shanty.

She’d worked toward that instinct before her mother made the Thicket for the summit, and instead of riding with the Nadirii, she’d been allowed to stay in the city to work toward seeing if she was right, or wrong, and in either instance, reporting to True about what she’d found.

“It would, but if we did that, we wouldn’t be able to identify and gather the evidence to try and then convict The Rising recruiters that scour the Shanty for soldiers and now also search it for their coffer of pilferings,” Gal put in after climbing back up to the seat of the chair.

She watched him make the table and stand by his mate.

When he did, she asked, “Recruit?”

“You’re too focused on the troll, and you should be. He is a drunk, but he’s functioning. If our guess is correct, he has been kept in his whiskey and food and promises of whatever it was he needed promised by the insurgents. He will not allow that door to be breached without a fight,” Brix told her.

“Recruit?” she repeated.

“In the interrogations of the archers who sought to murder our queen, it was discovered that fourteen of the nineteen were enlisted from here,” Brix pointed to the table, meaning the Shanty.

“They turn gratitude for treating their ill or offering opportunities to their children to allegiance to this Rising,” Gal took over. “But that is dangerous and could leave them exposed if not handled delicately. Especially now, as rewards have been offered for knowledge of just this thing. In our last meeting, True told us there have already been nine arrests across Wodell of priests of the Go’Doan who’ve been reported on by the people.”

Nine arrests.

It wasn’t much, but it was something.

“However, they were smart enough to diversify,” Brix went on. “Therefore, they recruit from places like this. The disenfranchised. Those who have nothing to lose, thus anything offered would be more than they could dream.”

She hated this was clever.

For it was bloody clever.

“As far as we can tell, there are four of them,” Brix shared. “Four priests that work the Shanty. They, like you, come in disguise. Perhaps at some earlier time, they were better at it, but in the now, although they wear rags and muss their hair, they wear good boots and they do not smell as if they have not seen soap for a decade.”