Seregal, you head east to the Hex Market to find as much gossip/eavesdropping/information that you can. Unlike the impulse buy stalls at the gates, or the larger market square and fashionable shops, Hex Market is clearly a place of bargains. A huge tattered awning of reddish fabric radiates heat down upon the crowd and gives the entire place an eerie sanguine glow. More than one entrepreneur has lit torches or glowglobes or other bits of lit numenera to dispel the color and illuminate their goods more honestly.
Beyond stalls selling clothing and bedding, bags and sacks, rations and canteens, glowglobes and lanterns, scavenged patchwork material, pack animals, cheap jewelry, little bits of frippery, guard animals, pets, or plants, are various staging points for merchants looking to hire guards for their trips out. Signs written in Truth, or those with pictograms indicate how many they need. The people hiring here are not the most prosperous merchants, or else they would not be at the Hex Market, but they are still selling what people are buying.
You are asking around (or listening as people run on) about Jastor Knoop, but keep an eye and ear on the rest of the market around you. To your amusement, you spot Duncan and Antor talking with a thin, bald man, and much more rugged-looking fellow, Duncan taking the thin-man's hand, and then your two new companions beginning to drift back. A query or two lets you know that the thin man is no less than Sevarr Trim himself. Well, that saves some time at least. Turning your attention back to what could make this quest easier, you follow several rumors until you find someone who's actually met Jastor. He's a baker, of all things, his shop tucked into a corner of the Hex Market and full of savory aromas. The man's name is Orwal, and he's short, burly man who could be any color under a dusting of white flour.
"Jastor? Hmm, I know the man. He comes in here when he's in town; claims my bread is just like his favorite back home. Gives my business a bit of a boost to say an Augur likes my bread, I'll tell you!" Orwal deftly turns to the oven and uses a bread paddle to fetch out several loaves, putting them on the counter for cooling before loading the oven back up again. "Tall man, hair black as midnight, handsome, always on the lookout for... how's he put it... 'fresh talent.' Likes to give other people the opportunity to look into things for him. Pays well too. Hmm... Fancy talker, has a weakness for seedcakes, and carries more bits of numenera and more books and scrolls in that glowy orb that follows him around than I've ever seen in my life." Orwal's gestures with his paddle indicates the size of the "orb" to be at least the height of a human. "'Course, you can't always see it. Otherwise it'd be the target for every ne'er-do-well ever spawned, and he knows it. Last time I saw him..." Orwal pauses, munching on a fresh, hot roll, tossing one to Seregal to eat, "Three moons ago, and heading back to Wislayn. Leastwise that was what he said."
---
Wisco, as Duncan and Antor walk away, Sevarr turns to you. "Being as you know more than a bit about the wilds, I have a bit of a side job for you. We're going to be traveling during prime dessan spawning season, and I need some of them."
Dessan, Wisco knows, are the pale blind squid that appear from under the mountains in the pools at the sides of the Sheer, then swim up the waterfalls to the top of the Clock, presumably to spawn.
"Help me find and harvest them, and I'll give you two shins a head, above what those rascals bargained from me for the guarding. What say you?"
---
Duncan and Antor, you arrive back at the Scavenger's Way without incident, though you notice the blind beggar-woman has moved her post to near the door. Inside, Echo is bent over the map, holding it to different lights. Beside it, on the table, is the curious metallic puddle that follows her around. It's currently in the shape of a pyramid, and sitting on one corner of the map.