"Hey, hey, if you start getting mean then I start getting mean and I'm the one with the nail trimmers."

"I open up to you about my hopes and dreams and this is what I get," says the pirate.

"Stop bantering with the adventurers," says another pirate disgustedly.

"But seriously? Is it Osirion? Asking because the pharaoh is my brother and I want to give him a hard time about it over our next family dinner."

"Well, your grace, prince among mermaid food," says the bantery pirate, "you tell him that funding pirates is a great idea and he should do lots of it and start with us, just let us go and send us right back out again."

"I told you to shut up."

"Except for him," continues the first, "he needs to go to a monastery and work on his sense of humor, that's what they're for as I understand it."

"I'm not going to call you 'your grace', I am very sensitive about people's grace what with my chronic tripping condition," remarks Belmarniss, helping secure pirates for toting back to Sothis.

"No one's going to call him 'your grace', that's a crime. At least once we're in Osirian waters."

"Ah, but see, pirates love crime."

"That's a crime? Wow, I'll avoid it extra hard. Are we allowed to take, sell, and keep the proceeds from the pirate ship?"

"Yes."

"Oh yay, that makes up for discovering this morning I still can't prep scrying. For me. Bet Mahdi's peeved."

"He'll cry on all his money."

They can pay some of the sailors to skeleton-crew the pirate ship home. They're underway by the time Mahdi wakes up.

"What'd I miss?"

"A good fight!"

"Oh no!"

"You would've been out of spells, sorry you slept through it."

"I guess I'll just have to go out and fight my own pirate ship to get even."

"I can cut one of them loose for target practice."

"Untie, don't cut, the rope is perfectly good!"

"They look too wimpy for me to learn anything from my target practice," he says regretfully. "Maybe you should fight me, Hagan."

"I'll ruin your pretty face."

"Bet you wouldn't get the chance."

"You're o-"

"Gaseous form."

"Oh, come on."

Mahdi grins at him.