Also it was not like they were having any success, and they probably would not have any success until they realized that they should bring silver weapons. Nalimir was hopeful that this day would never come, since he killed them all every time they announced their presence loudly, as they usually did. That was not the point. The point was the unfairness of the thing.
It had occurred to him that maybe he had a new bounty, but that seemed unusually forward-thinking of the Rift's guards, since he had not been here very long at all and had surely not killed or robbed very many people. Of course, he couldn't know for sure, because the notes the bounty-hunters were always carrying around were full of words, and did not have any explanatory sketches, like perhaps a map of the territory they were supposed to be hunting in. That would have been ideal. Words were not so ideal. He had worked out bits of them here and there-- he was mostly confident that this word was "dead" so he was reasonably sure as to the general tone of the thing-- but his limited reading comprehension was not sufficient for the task.
Fortunately, he had a solution for this word problem. He just had to find a word person, and get that person to read the note. Word people, Nalimir knew, tended to camouflage themselves in places full of books, because this was their natural habitat. Cities were full of books, so logically there ought to be some word people in Riften. But if he did have a new bounty, he should probably not go into Riften, because it was full of guards.
So Nalimir, problem-solver that he was, climbed his way across several trees until he found one that was within sight of Riften's (apparently only working) gate, but which would probably be out of sight of the two idiots manning it, whom as far as Nalimir had ever been able to tell preferred not to leave their positions for any reason. He sprawled across a branch, holding the crumpled and blood-stained note out at arm's length and squinting at it. Now all he had to do was wait for someone to leave the city and wander sufficiently close to his chosen tree, and then he could make them read the probably-a-bounty instead.
It might take a couple of tries to get a word person, but he was sure one would come by eventually. He could be patient.
