So, after suffering a period of these demons smothering me between teas and cakes, I finally found out who they really were.
All of them, including the fox, were courtesans.
Yeah, I know--I know it might sound bad. But no, this wasn't Natha's harem or anything.
To be exact, the fox used to work as a courtesan, a high-ranking one, and for quite some time ran one of the highest-grossing entertainment venues in the city, if not the whole realm. And then she retired, while still retaining ownership of the pleasure house.
That was when Rubha met Natha, and they formed some kind of partnership. Because, lo and behold, the courtesans were actually informants. Not in the kind that they actively went into someone else's property like spies or doing investigations like detectives. What they did was escorting high-profile people and extracting information from them without the people knowing.