"Any person, dead or living. I only prepared it once today and can only prepare it a maximum of twice in a day. It fails around thirty percent of the time for a caster like me in a world like mine, and could fail more or less here. It's less likely to fail if they're in a bad afterlife, because when it fails it's because of their subconscious will and people in bad afterlives have...less of that."

"Could you check where another person is for us?"

"Zales, it's a lot of work, and stuff - "

"I'm not holding a gun to his head. I'm asking a question."

"Maybe. First, you should know that this one's going to go in a couple of minutes and that if you'd like we could try to message her before it does. This fails more often than not, but I thought I ought to at least mention it."

" - yeah. We should do that. I wouldn't know what to - but we should try."

"Hell might cut us off so you should probably not count on a full conversation. You have to decide what you want to say before I can send it."

" - tell her I'm alive. And that dad's dead, I guess, I think she doesn't know. And I'm living with Azalea and we're okay."

Message, he says, and then whispers, conveying from your daughter Karen that she is alive, that your husband is dead, and that she's living with Azalea and okay.

The woman doesn't react.

He repeats himself. 

"I'm sorry. It usually doesn't work."

Nod. "Thanks anyway."

The scry fades.

"Can we compensate you for the effort of casting anther one tomorrow, is there anything you guys particularly need - "

"At home I'd sell scrys, I'm happy to do that here. - at home they're pretty expensive."

"Like how expensive."

"320 gold. 300 with a temple discount."

" - I have no idea how much that is."

"Gimme a second - "

She gets a computer and a piece of paper and a scale and looks up the price of gold and asks to weigh their coins and does some math and - 

"Twenty one thousand dollars."

" - no."

"It is very specialized labor."

"No one makes twenty one thousand dollars a day. Nobody who works for a living, anyway."

Tell him we'll give him five hundred.

Five hundred what, dollars?

Yes! Seems like a fair exchange rate to me, whatever the price of gold.

I know, just checking!

"We can give you five hundred dollars? That's, like, probably at least a week and a half at the inn?"