When Inquisitor Shawil's adventuring party returns to Mut, the place is a ruin of what it was. The population has fled to the Thuvian side of the river, where they've erected temporary shelters and are doing what they can for the sick, discussing in hushed voices whether they need or want to buy the medicine from the Thuvian traders to cure the scorpion paralysis, and what it will mean if they can't and end up signing one of the contracts to work in Thuvia for a harvest. The other side of the river is deserted, although the occasional unnatural puffs of disturbed dust and sand hint that the ghost scorpions are still about, crawling through fields and homes like they own the place.
Abdul's daughter Naima, who only left a month or so ago and still has her baby in a sling, takes it all in quite matter-of-factly, and then sets to work healing the people who were bitten or stung by the scorpions. She can't cure the paralysis, but she can close wounds like a cleric. Once, twice, five times, a dozen times, four dozen times, until she has healed every person has so much as a scratch. Then she goes on to their animals. She barely talks to anyone, except to announce what she's going to do and then do it.
The woman is a witch. The people of Mut don't know what technically separates a witch from any other kind of suspect magic user, but they know that she's not right, not natural, and most of them are simply glad that she's away, now, under the watchful eyes of the church. But her former in-laws feel very strongly that she isn't fit to raise her late husband's baby, not if she's going to go about making deals with dark powers and flaunting it out in the sunlight where everyone can see. So after Naima has healed a large portion of the Mut encampment, a group of people, led by a man perhaps sixty years old, approaches the inquisitor.
"Greetings, Inquisitor. We're grateful for your presence here. If you have time right now, I'd like to speak to you about Naima," says the man.