When Irkels had emerged like a cobra on the hunt from the hole that the elusive Tristan had used to effect his narrow escape from the imposing forces aligned against him, he might have continued deep into the forests, chasing the reclusive wizard, who had for a brief time made those trees his home.
Yet a chance visit to the nearby town of Ringsetter had altered his pursuit of the wizard inexorably and set the chief of the Varco on a very different quest.
While in Ringsetter, he had barely been able to believe his eyes when he saw Smokeless Green being openly consumed and sold as if it were no different than tobacco, coffee, or sugar. A small purchase and a quick test had promptly ensured him that his eyes were indeed reporting the events accurately. From there, he had changed his disguise and gone to the city of Sivingdel, where, again, he found the substance he had known his entire professional life as a Metinvur agent as Valder being openly sold and consumed.
Irkels knew that none other than his esteemed countrymen were up to shenanigans on a level even he had never treaded. For such a massive operation to be undertaken without his knowledge, and while he was sent on a mission looking for birds, was more than enough proof to him that he had been deposed as chief of the Varco.
It was an old trick. Rather than killing a deposed Varco chief, it was common to send him on an isolated mission, during which the king installed a new chief and commenced a large-scale operation. Once the hapless Varco chief discovered this, tradition dictated that the only honorable solution was self-imposed exile. He could live the rest of his life without fear of assassination, provided he never approached another Varco agent again for the rest of his life. Failure to abide by this tradition would result in the deposed chief becoming the top-priority target for all of the Varco.
But Irkels felt he was quite a bit too young for early retirement, and he was also nearly certain of who had passed this idea along to the king as his own, given that Irkels himself had once jokingly mentioned it to Selven—whom he was now virtually certain had replaced him as the chief of the Varco—as a potentially effective, but overly risky, operation.
He would be damned if he was going to sit back in self-imposed exile while his erstwhile pupil took the credit for his idea. He had spent the ensuing years in a bit of nostalgic bliss, pickpocketing and shoplifting with an ease that made those dispossessed of their wallets and other small valuables think later that surely they had just misplaced their goods somewhere, for never had they felt even the slightest caress from the man who so casually made their property his own.
Irkels studied the various drug peddlers carefully, for he had a very particular object in mind. He was looking for someone powerful. Someone who could appreciate the skills a man like Irkels could bring to his organization. And then, that man could help him achieve his own ends.