Chapter 573: Chapter 557 – To Each Their Own Task

“Even if you could help make things easier, it’s often best to let the youngsters learn to do things on their own. Otherwise they might develop a dependency upon their elders which might not go away even when they grow up to be adults. Then you just get some useless adults instead of useful ones.” - Ogur Greatfang, tribal chieftain from the Western Isles.

Aideen stayed true to her word as she left Kino and Eilonwy to brainstorm with Aziza on how they would approach the assassination of the paranoid Khan while she headed out of the city and into the slums outside the walls. Sure enough, there were a multitude of people out there that could use a healing hand, so Aideen immediately went to work. 

 

She was more than experienced enough that none of the people noticed her passage, while those she healed, she kept sedated using her magic to ensure that they wouldn’t wake up until the morning. Aideen did however leave behind something that the people she healed would be able to recognize. A small bit of parchment with the emblem of Aziza’s trading house on it.

 

After all, it was best to garner the sympathy of the people when a revolution was imminent. Between revealing that the kitchens that helped feed the poor were their doing and this healing spree, Aziza’s people should be safe in the near future. Aideen saw no reason not to help out Aziza a little while she was doing what she did since it was just a minor thing for her to do, and she was going to do it either way anyway. 

 

When Aideen returned to Aziza’s place – the woman had offered them the hospitality of her own house, which was quite opulent for the poor nation, something that the woman explained was practically forced by the local culture, at least for the rich – she found that neither Kino nor Eilonwy had gone to sleep yet as they were still busy hashing out a plan together with Aziza.

 

While the house – as well as certain areas of it designed to accommodate guests and visitors – looked opulent, the inner chambers had a far simpler style to them, tasteful and comfortable without verging on opulence. Aziza likely maintained the more opulent parts to play the role of the rich merchant she was since that required socializing with nobles and other such people. 

 

The room Aziza and the girls worked their plan out in was Aziza’s personal office, which was practically undecorated other than a couple tapestries hanging from the walls and comfortable cushions to sit on around a low table. There was a drawing of the Khan’s palace spread over the table at the moment, and after a glance Aideen saw why assassinating the Khan would be a tall order.

 

Quite literally a tall one, even.

 

In terms of architecture, the Khan’s palace was similar to the typical architecture of the region, with the palace itself mostly broad and low. That said, the man clearly had a penchant for towers, as four tall towers jutted out from the four corners of the palace, with a larger tower that towered over the rest at the very center of the palace itself.

 

The Khan’s private chambers were located at the very top of said central tower. Naturally, security was extremely tight, with only a select few servants and trusted guards even allowed entry to the man’s private room. Even from the outside, the central tower was constantly guarded, as the other four towers of the palace acted as watchtowers that always had guards watching the central one.

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More than a few robbers or assassins had attempted to scale the central tower only to be caught and executed in the past.

 

Because of the tight security, Kino’s talents were pretty much unfeasible to use unless they wanted a massive spectacle out of it. There were practically no ways to get someone quietly into the palace unless she was to spend a long time ingratiating herself to the Khan to get into the man’s harem or something, but Aideen wouldn’t ever subject the girl to such a thing. 

 

It was fortunate that they wanted to assassination to look like an assassination in this case, as that would likely incite greater conflict between the Khan’s sons compared to a natural death. That meant that there were other approaches they could take that had a much higher chance of success without drawing undue attention to themselves.

 

Eilonwy was the one who realized that her tiny, spider-like undead minions would be perfect for this task, as they could be delivered to the top of the tower by an undead bird without attracting any attention. The difficult part was to find something that would allow those tiny, relatively harmless constructs to kill the Khan on their own.

 

A strong enough poison would have done the trick, but the group didn’t exactly travel with some in hand. Fortunately, Aziza’s reach was quite wide and included connections to the underworld of the Khanate, so she was able to procure ingredients needed to concoct one. Naturally, she did it in such a manner that it wouldn’t be traced back to her, as she mostly acquired the ingredients as part of purchasing other things unrelated to the poison from different places.

 

The concoction itself had to be done in secrecy, so only the four of them were involved in the process. Fortunately, Aideen’s centuries of learning about medicine and anatomy had not only rendered her a very skilled healer, but also very knowledgeable in things like poisons. After all, a healer needed to be familiar with poisons to be able to cure them and counteract their effects.

 

She rarely used that knowledge in this manner, but Aideen easily recited the formula of a poison that would cause effects not unlike that of the venom of certain snakes. One that would cause its victim’s nerves to malfunction and make their muscles seize up agonizingly until they eventually perished when their heart failed. A mere drop of such a poison would be more than enough to slay an adult.

 

Normally such poisons needed to enter a person’s bloodstream to show its effects, but the one Aideen made remained as effective even if it was ingested orally. All that was left was for Eilonwy to deliver it to its recipient.

 

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