There's this one right in front of her:

— from your peers in the art is invaluable, but better still is commentary from those intended to learn from the text. It is from the first attempts of novices that you will learn the important subtleties not yet put into words, and can amend—

Which is fairly close and visually similar to this one:

— on the grounds that the storm sewer does not meet the prescribed minimum sizes from the Manual of City Building. The Lesser Council voted to defer the expansion until the funds appropriated for construction were adequate—

And after the next step up there's this one, which is dissimilar enough to gloss as 'different handwriting' even though that's probably not how this works:

— son of Uriah and Bella Crussel, whose skill with the lute and the mandola is without equal on the island. He was chosen by Shelyn at the age of nineteen, and She bade him leave Escadar shortly thereafter. Though he has yet to return —

Genealogies and civic records, how exciting! She'll be sure to come back if she has trouble falling asleep tonight.

She's about halfway up now, feeling confident in her ability to finish, but the next segment is going to be a doozy. Her only options are a vertical dyno across an imposingly tall stretch of featureless cliff, or to traverse the damaged section over the entrance, which has plenty of handholds but would necessitate getting past the kid somehow.

He's still painting with a fervor, swaying to and fro at a dangerous pace as he brings his vision to life. At this distance it's easy to see that the kid's grey skin isn't a trick of light, nor can his unruly hair hide his horns.

A fiend!!!

This is bad news. He's occupying the ledge thoroughly enough to block her from going around if he so chooses, and he's not going to let her pass unless she answers his—

Gynosphinx.

Gwen said devils like to buy memories, and he's got the look of a devilish fiend. You could propose a deal: your recollection of this morning in exchange for passage.

But she hardly has any memories to sell! Even if he accepts that trade, she'll be stuck on a cliff with no idea what's going on. The idea of getting to the top of the cliff and needing Gwen to explain it all over again is mortifying, and that's if she doesn't decide to go back down instead.

You're thinking too far ahead in the negotiation. First ask if you can get by, then wait for him to start the haggling. Maybe you can get away with lowballing him.

"Hey kid!" she shouts."I gotta get through here! Can you let me by?"

He looks at her as though he's only just realized he has company. "The fuck are you on about, woman?"

"I'm trying to get past where you're standing! If you move a bit—"

"Whole island of nothing, you want to be exactly where Cuno is! Right here, this spot!" His intense expression morphs into a malicious grin. "Try that and see where it gets you!"

The detective has stopped to have a conversation, as one does. Who knows how long this will take?

Ironically this doesn't bother her very much, and not just because detours in precarious places have inherent time limits. Gwen has a grappling hook and approximately five minutes of antigravity remaining. She can entertain herself while she waits.

That's not a 'no'. Time to make an offer.

"What about a trade? If you let me by I'll give you, uh… how does a couple minutes sound?"

"… Is this a sex thing?" he asks. "Tryin'a perv on Cuno while we're all the way outside the city?"

This has got to be the least opportune position for solicitations. Seriously, you'd fall right off.

Gwen would be so much more understanding though! Not in a good way, mind you, but it would be less time spent on tedium after the fact, and the lieutenant values her time.

"Not right now!" she insists, shifting her grip and moving a bit closer. "I'm offering you a few minutes in the past! Just a few, mind you, but I had a lovely stroll through the city on my way up here…"

"You're on some wizard shit? You want that— HEY, you're smearing it!"

She looks down at the part of the cliff she just laid hands on. It's covered in paint – like most of the wall – but judging by the angles and the curvature, she's right next to the tip of the kid's latest masterpiece, and the paint is still wet. Her palms are black, and her handprint is now immortalized in the drying graffiti.

"Whoops," she mutters under her breath.

The grapnel is designed to catch on terrain after being thrown or dropped, which means its acuminate hooks are relatively easy to hammer directly into the ground from a kneeling position. The long metal prongs fit snugly under a convenient protrusion where tension will keep them still. Once it's in place Gwen tugs experimentally on the rope to be sure, then fastens the other end to her belt.

It turns out that maneuvering along a steep wall, even a steep wall with a lot of convenient places to cling to, is inordinately difficult when both hands are covered in wet paint. She drags them one at a time over unblemished parts of the church, scraping them partially dry with an account of a marriage ceremony from 2987 and a snippet of text insisting that unicorns are known to befriend people who are neither female nor virginal, though what the true prerequisites for unicorn friendship are and why anyone would care are either absent or illegible.

"Sorry about that," she says of the errant handprints. Her hands are still slightly greasy, but with a little extra effort she can still maintain her grip.

Cuno throws the paintbrush at her.

She's not steady enough to bat it away midair. Now she has, in addition to perilously slick palms and a mounting desire to solve her problems with violence, a slimy blotch of dark paint on her face. She opens her eyes after the paintbrush bounces off her chin and watches as it falls, inexorably, directly onto the corpse's head.

The unmistakable sulfurous tang of rotten egg and the earthy taste of charcoal… must be a homemade tempera.