Mobs of Shoanti and Varisian people, shouting at each other about murder and arson and stolen bodies, broken up by a harried squad of the guard with a wand-charge used to fill the street between them with a globe of inky darkness. 

Two mothers talking in hushed whispers about a butcher in North Point, giving out free meat to the people in in the know. 

Gamblers singing a drinking song about spiders and dice, on their way to Eel's End.

Tavern debates over who killed the king. His wife? One of his many lovers? A secret child, a secret brother, the seneschal, the high priest of Asmodeus, the headmaster of the Acadamae? One of the Catsdew Lofties, setting their sights on scaling the castle instead of the homes accessible from the Shingles in a burglary gone wrong?

Speculation about which of the funeral and coronation traditions will be upheld by the new queen. The commandant's pledge? A regnal name? A general amnesty? Will she favor the church of Asmodeus, coming here from Cheliax as she does? The masons fret about whether the statues of the king will suffice or if they will have to hastily convert them into depictions of the queen before the crown releases the promised payments.

Soot-fingered workers conspiring over drinks, whispering about a shutdown of the Ironworks to compel the new queen to amend the city charter to permit their secret and currently illegal guild.

Bitter complaints among a group of noble teens about other nobles sneaking off to the elven enclave for illicit liaisons.

Four people engaged in vigorous debate over whether to pawn everything they can to buy a lawyer who can save one of their number from being tried by the Hanging Judge, Zenobia Zenderholm, or whether he should not burden his peers and throw himself on her mercy with a tale of the desperation that drove him to looting during the riots. They have lots of advice on how to sound pitiable and sympathetic.

A worker with a paste-bucket putting up posters for Exemplary Execrables, promising gruesome spectacles of strange specimens in jars, staged violence like the theaters of Cheliax, and a functioning guillotine imported from Galt.

Lifelike ball-jointed dolls, moving as though alive to welcome and serve shoppers visiting a shop selling figurines and toys.

A beggar with a terrible cough alternately cursing and praying to Urgathoa between hawking phlegm onto the cobbles. 

The sense of the city washes over her. Criminals and artisans and nobles and ordinary folk worried about the future.

She says a brief prayer to Ragni, for the sick beggar- Prayers for herself are one thing, but for others... Perhaps less objectionable-

Maybe she should offer more such darkness items to the guard, used for peacekeeping. Good will and good public order. Later, perhaps.

And she stops by the ironworkers whispering, a sudden grin on her face, currently disguised as a generic rogue type. She approaches their table and 'whispers' to them- 

"O stout laborers, a union is a worthy cause. I'm an adventurer now, but hearing such talk reminds me of home. There they said 'divided, we beg, united, we bargain'. I'm not one of you lot, but how might I help?"

"You and your big mouth -"

"Hold on, this could be an opportunity -"

"A opportunity to get us all killed, this could be the gods-damned queen for all you know -"

"Would the queen ever say that?"

One of them gets up and storms off, whipping round at the exit to point a soot-stained finger at the other two. "If either of you two loose-lipped idiots say one thing more..."

With him gone, the two who remain invite Weiss to take a seat and lean in to speak quietly. 

"Obviously we can't tell you anything about our plans -"

"Whatever plans those might be, existing or not."

"- but if you did want to help us, out of solidarity or Magnimaran spirit, well... if you do hear about the queen or any of the great houses having plans that need a big order of foundry iron, that's something that the people who'll be asked to make it ought to have forewarning of, no?"

"And if the Ironworks do get shut down, for whatever reason, nobody wants brutes like the Dusters or the Sczarni breaking in and blundering around and beating up innocent laborers, bringing their own substitutes in to get the fires going again when they don't know how to work the forges. Stopping that sort of crime and violence and wickedness would just be good citizenship, you know?"

"I haven't heard anything about upcoming large orders of foundry iron... I have some vague ideas about steel making, actually, and the ways they do it back home, but I have only vague notions... And I'll certainly keep in mind the safety of any ironworking interlopers. Have to keep them away from the forges, wouldn't want fools to hurt themselves, hm? It's for their own good."

She snickers, and pushes her hood back - the appearance-curse was making her ears slightly obvious anyway - and produces a wooden stick from a pocket. "This will last about a week before vanishing. If anyone breaks it, I'll know, and know where it is, and assume there's trouble. Take it, or not, as you like."

They exchange wary looks, and then one of them pockets the stick while the other is still staring at her ears.

Pushing any more than that right now would be counterproductive even with this lovely headband! If anything, it helps her put herself in their heads even more; You don't make friends with cautious conspiracies by smiling really nicely at them. Usually.

A little nod, and she puts her hood up again. "I'll leave you to your drinks then. You could also leave a message with the Abadarans for Weiss Faron, and it'll get to me eventually, for less emergency-like things."

...To the guardhouse, next, perhaps, or whatever passes for one? Talking to cops always gives her kind of a slimy feeling but slimy feelings shouldn't get in the way of Trying To Help.

The guardhouse is Citadel Volshyenek, headquarters of the Korvosan Guard. Unlike the palace, this is an ordinary, functional citadel, overlooking the Jeggare Harbor. 

The walls of the citadel are bare, and there are only two junior-looking guards keeping watch at the main gate. They look distinctly nervous as Weiss gets closer. 

"H-halt! Who goes there?"

Hands splayed wide, hood off.

"Weiss Faron, adventurer! I saw some guards using illusion items to break up fights and thought- Hey, I can make those and they could probably use some more."

"You are? We'd better take you to the Field Marshal."

One of the guards will escort her through to the central keep, where a tired-looking woman in red armor is working at a desk inundated with paperwork and reports. A map of Korvosa is spread over another table, dotted with a small forest of markers. With visible fatigue, she rises to greet Weiss. 

"Hello? What's your name? Please, take a seat." 

Srsbsns mode, yep.

"Weiss Faron. I saw some guards break up a nasty street fight with a big 'ol orb of darkness and figured you might use some more of those? Breaking up fights is all well and good."

Behold: Orb of darkness in her palm.

"I can make items of 'em. Not proper ones, they'll disappear in like a week, use 'em or lose 'em. But a lot cheaper, I figure. Sorcery."

"That would be exactly what we need right now, to minimize the bloodshed until the city can calm down. Every little bit of aid we can get from upstanding citizens like you helps. You will of course be well-compensated. How many could you make, and how much would you want for them?"

"Kinda depends on how much else I expect to be going on, how much I'm willing to run down my magic for it. Couple hundred at the very highest bounds? It doesn't have to be exactly like the one I saw, though it's probably more convenient for it to be - don't have to retrain anyone. As for how much... I'm not really an Abadaran, I'm already buying some less chaos in the city, right? I dunno, the more you offer the more I'll probably decide to make. In the range of silvers or single digit gp, maybe."

Her eyes widen. That's significantly cheaper.

"Say fifty of the darkness ones? Are there any other of these infusions that you could make, ones that would be suitable for stopping riots, putting out fires, that kind of peacekeeping?"

She guesses that 'infusions' is the term for them, that's what the alchemist who she adventured with for a time called his temporary potions.

Slight shrug. "I'm mostly all about the illusions, I can be pretty free-form with them. I could fight fires in person? There's a little bit of control over flame. I can make illusions that are forceful enough to have physical effects but... Eh, maybe inefficient? How about voice-link rocks, to coordinate people? Make the darkness a cone? Voice amplifiers? Bubbles of silence? Alarm sticks that let me know if they're broken, to be used for events like fires? I do wanna help folk, much as I don't necessarily want to work directly for cops- I mean, the guard. A stirge-extermination spree was suggested to me if I had a boring afternoon, fr'xample. Fifty gp for fifty single use sticks of darkness, plus two complimentary so you can pick two random of the lot to test. I need to define a trigger for them, a physical action like breaking it or a command word."