<strong>Name:</strong>Peregrine<br/><strong>Location:</strong>Tivvum's Antiquities, Market Ward, Sigil<br/><strong>Time:</strong>Mid-morning<br/><strong>Tagged:</strong>Peregrine, Alzeggra<br/><br/>It wasn't long, at least, before Perrin felt she had dispensed her duty. She had been keeping an eye out to ensure Alzeggra was moving unmolested and caught sight of the women slipping towards the stairs, and then a minute later she was nowhere to be seen. Perrin put the dots together, and she hardly needed to distract a clerk anymore if there was no one to keep secret. Hopefully Alzeggra would have more luck in the private areas than the public.<br/><br/>Peregrine continued heckling or a minute later, idly wondering what next as she did so. Her compatriot was off doing sneaky things in a place she certainly couldn't follow, with undoubtedly a much better chance at finding something upstairs than Perrin had down here. That left her more or less to her own devices, even if she probably should wait around till she confirmed that Alzeggra wouldn't end up needing bailing out. Hopefully it wouldn't come to that, but if worse came to worse Perrin was entirely ready to buy and bribe their way out of the situation. She could always write it off as a business expense.<br/><br/>"…and so you see," she concluded to the somewhat glazed looking clerk, "It's really just a matter of we simply cannot work under such risky conditions. I do not know<em>how</em>you manage to stay in business like this, but I will certainly be speaking with your proprietor. Now, fortunately I can point you in the direction of a number of reputable banking houses and other organisations that will be more than happy to underwrite these operations."<br/><br/>That was a lie, or at least half of one. She knew exactly how they stayed in business after all — mostly by price gouging if she were to be a judge of it, but what good curio shop didn't do that? And with only irregular expeditions a fair percentage of which were probably illegal — every shop in the city did<em>something</em>illegal, a fact all the more impressive for how few laws there were — it wouldn't be surprised they wouldn't be insured, or would not be so that the clerk knew about it. Then again, if they really weren't she might have to return in a more usual appearance. She really did know most of the underwriters in the Cage, and would be more than happy to collect the appropriate procurer's fee for a new client.<br/><br/>She let herself be elbowed aside, metaphorically, relinquishing the clerk to an actual paying customer. He looked grateful to an almost annoying degree for the interruption, one more minor sin to add to the layout of their premises.<br/><br/>Granted, he wasn't all that interesting to lecture any more than he apparently enjoyed the experience. Now to give Alzeggra time to work.<br/><br/>Which mostly meant, for the moment, browsing. It was still for the most part a pleasant experience. Cramped, and someone stepped on her tail hard enough that she had to restrain the urge to bite the woman, but other than that it was more than enough to occupy her attention…<br/><br/>…and perhaps it even wasn't a waste of her time after all. She knew enough about the place to know it was what amounted to more or less a somewhat higher brow and less useless knick knack shop, with a healthy mix of genuine curios and oddities mixed in.<br/><br/>She hadn't known that they were quite that pushy about it. She barely even noticed the first time the spark hit her, the ephemera of magic trickling through her with a delicate subtly as it nudged her eyes to fall on just what she needed. When the second hit the entire ensorcellment flew apart. It wasn't much to begin with, a subtle suggestion that no one could say<em>really</em>was mind control, and between her familiarity with such things and the utter incongruity of her happening to need what looked for all the world to be a pen knife carved from bone and some sort of geared thing the purpose of which she couldn't divine left the thing in pieces around her.<br/><br/>Of course, with such elegant craftmanship to begin with, she wondered how it had picked such poor targets. Maybe it interacted weirdly with her, or more likely the entire thing was still on the experimental side. She placed the pen knife back — her curiosity as to the purpose of the other overwhelming her for the moment — and chewed on her lip as she considered.<br/><br/>It… wasn't<em>exactly</em>the same sort of feeling one got when one used a recording stone. There weren't any visions or smells for starters, but that would have only fooled the garden variety wizard. Perrin had spent an appreciable fraction of her life avoiding doing any work in a laboratory, and it had paid off. It might not have been a sensory application, but the spark of underlying, for lack of a better term, interest generation, was unmistakeable.<br/><br/>Of course, it could have been independently engineered, or the result of long observation from times spent in the public sensoria. But on the other hand it could have been the result of a clever idea had while deconstructing, studying, modifying, and reassembling a recorder. At least it looked as though their visit was not going to be wasted.