"And we all know there's only one of us in all the world. Who, where?"

"Coupla men, in here earlier. Priest and a fireball and an archer. Said they'd done a run with you six months ago. I said, you know, I think that's too soon to meet the kid, and they left."

"Well, you know, gotta catch it early, elves aren't very good with babies. They say where to find 'em?"

"Slate and Barrel. It's down two blocks towards the river."

"Thanks."

She heads over to the Slate and Barrel.

It's crowded. A couple of people were just thrown out for fighting and now a table is overturned and someone's purse is missing; the furious proprietor is threatening everyone in sight who doesn't look rich, and attempting to appease the ones who do. 

In a corner there are some familiar people. Hagan's face is covered like it always is in the city. Fazil's priest robes indicate he's levelled. Mahdi is observing the kerfuffle with great enjoyment.

She edges in around the crowd. "Some guy told me you three were asking after our baby."

- for about half a second each of them stares at the other two suspiciously -

"Rajan! Probably. Told you you should've let me punch him in the face, now see what he's done to your reputation."

"Better my reputation than your knuckles," he says very seriously.

"Oh, is there a healing spell for reputations now?"

"Sit down, sit down, we don't want the proprietor deciding you look suspicious," says Mahdi, pulling out a chair.

She plops, snickering. "What's up? Another caving trip?"

"Not exactly."

"Fighting smuggling on the high seas! But this part of it's very boring, we just need to talk to someone and none of us can do it."

"She's got a life sentence in Saint Hadassah's. I don't know that it will be very boring, she was convicted of, ah, what was it all - crossdressing, tariff evasion, conspiracy to overthrow a duke of Taldor -"

"Burglary, shoplifting, the transportation of persons as goods, proselytizing, and piracy."

"I'd been going to ask if you left all your Comprehend Languages in your other pants, but I suppose instead she's been forbidden to talk to men because that's where she got all her good wardrobe tips and she must be stopped?"

"Saint Hadassah's doesn't permit male visitors. They offered to have a woman read our questions to her but she apparently declined to answer."

"I didn't take the enhanced interrogation elective."

"There's some reasons she might've hesitated to tell the church about it."

"The smuggling operation she was a part of was doing a lot more geopolitical meddling than smuggling operations usually are and we suspect them of involvement in additional crimes here. She's not going to tell her jailors that."

"And they'd let me talk to her unsupervised? - does she have any motive to talk?"

"Maybe we should get a room."

Fazil glances around at the other people in the inn.

Patpatpat. "Just prepare two of the reputation healing spell tomorrow."

"I heard a story about some folks who always talked about sensitive stuff with their female party member way up in the sky so everyone could see they were several feet apart but hear nothing! You wanna try that one?"

He looks slightly tempted but shakes his head. "Let's not attract more attention. We have a room upstairs."

Up they go.

They close the door and Alarm the room and sweep for invisible people.

"So this started about four months ago with a contract to rescue some sailors taken prisoner when their vessel was hijacked by pirates. One of them was minor Taldoran nobility. We went out for them and found an operation that was much more sophisticated than we expected, and not one but four vaguely important Taldoran people. Barely made it out, with only two of them alive and one raiseable body so we take them home and learn from their parents that they'd been being blackmailed for money and apparently-innocuous favors. Playing with foreign poltics is a good way to get yourself killed, so we tried to decline to get involved, but the angry relatives of the initial contract - he was dead and gone - threatened us with criminal charges. So here we are, doing antipiracy work for Taldor until they've calmed down and we can plead urgent business elsewhere."

"And they're oddly organized pirates. Operations here and in Absalom and in Taldor and in Cheliax, much better funding - much better magic items - than they could possibly be getting off, uh, legitimate piracy. The woman we're after was arrested with six men, and they were all broken out a week after sentencing."

"Any idea why she's been left behind? Or is that likely to be temporary?"

"We don't know. But if they've abandoned her maybe she's sour on them. And if they're taking her, maybe she doesn't want us to take this trend we've noticed to the authorities. - which, to be clear, we have done, we're up on all the paperwork, they haven't done anything about it yet."

"Can't go back and execute someone you sentenced to Hadassah because their friends broke out. Sentences are final until evidence you've failed to comply with terms, or broken another law, surface."

"Makes sense. Do I have some kind of cover story about why I might be convinced to let it lie, here, in the latter case?"

"Like all good pirates she reportedly buried her outrageous hoard of treasure somewhere."

"Do the authorities want her outrageous hoard of treasure or does it come with the job?"

"Depends where it is, actually? If it's in Taldor we would probably end up parting with most of it in the course of getting them to drop their spurious charges. If it's here we'll just get a flat 15% finder's fee but it wouldn't be complicated. If it's elsewhere I don't know. We haven't travelled to Cheliax as part of this whole mess yet, despite some of the pirates clearly originating there, and I'm hoping we won't have to."

"Am I going to get caught up into your spurious charges, coming into the mess at this hour?"

"I wouldn't visit Taldor until it's all resolved, assuming you get involved at all. But they're not going to come here for you."

"Where's Saint Hadassah's?"

"Forty miles from here. Up the coast."

"Is there a take if she doesn't have a stash? How do we split it?"

"Two hundred for talking to her. If you want in on the whole mess, we're drawing a salary from Sothis and averaging twelve thousand when we stop a ship."

"Nice. I can probably walk on a boat these days, even, I got somebody to stick my cantrip to an anklet. I'll talk to her and then probably join up."

"Thank you."

"We haven't got much more on her. We can give you the questions we had in the letter."

"Don't think it'll mess things up if she recognizes them?"

"It's really hard to guess that off her rap sheet. I guess use your best judgment?"

"I'll paraphrase at least to start. You guys still have a magic carpet?"

"Yes."

"Nice, I've been feeling the lack since last I rode it. When do you wanna leave, I'm between stuff right now."

"If we head out at sunrise you'll get there around when it opens, I think."

"Cool. You want to meet me at the Onyx or should I come here?"

"We can meet you at the Onyx. This place is a bit downscale but we didn't know how long we'd be waiting for you."

"What, am I the only woman you've ever met? Visiting a monastery isn't exactly high hazard pay stuff, you could've roped in somebody's sister."

"I don't really want to drag anyone who isn't an adventurer into this."

"Both my sisters are pregnant anyway."

"I am sisterless."

"Fair enough. Congratulations and/or condolences on the pregnant sisters."

"Human women are usually excited to become mothers. - at least, Osirian women."

"Are they, or is it just the sort of thing they worry will be socially unacceptable to be wailing and gnashing their teeth about? One does hear restrained complaints about labor and sleep deprivation and chafing and so on."

"It's hard when they're new if you don't have any servants."

"I think lots of people are legitimately having a really positive experience, even if they'd probably choose to have fewer if it were their choice."

"If you say so."

"Her given name is Abada. She was going by the Dread Dagger, when arrested."

"I haven't heard of her but I'm not really up on my maritime villain flashcards."

"They're as melodramatic as adventurers, it's terrible."

"Hey, Belmarniss is my real name. It does mean 'bottomless pit' but that's just how drow names are, man."

"Met a guy the other day who claimed he was the resurrection of Aroden. He had the same beard as the one portrait in most Osirion history books, that was the only resemblance."

"When I started adventuring there was this asshat who claimed that his family was eaten by the Tarrasque." 

Hagan flicks a pebble at him.

"Investors like the dead twin angle on my research project, it's sort of cute."

"Investors are all very dense and I don't understand how the industry survives. Someday the money will stop flowing and everyone will have to get day jobs."

"Wanna make ninth first," he says fervently.

"Do they not get okay returns?"

"The returns are quite good when they don't get wiped out by legal problems or party deaths, but those happen often enough to make the overall returns worse than for shipping. - at least, worse than for shipping when there's not a weirdly organized pirate ring on the seas."

"Are the shipping folks subsidizing the adventurism investors?"

"That's a good question. I ...think so. As are various governments with interests both in adventuring and in having a population of high-level retired adventurers."

"There's government interest in that? I guess there would be."

"So they can put you to work, if we're ever invaded. Plus the crown is the most significant purchaser of the most sophisticated magic items. And they need people who can scry, for all those afterlife statistics."

"And give tours of Axis. That's the main reason I'd like to make ninth."

"I can see you as a glorified tour guide."

"I'm not sure that's a compliment." But he's grinning.

"I want to sell Teleports. Make 900 gold once a week, spend the rest of my time picking up a literature hobby or something -"

"You'll get bored."

"Nonsense. Boredom was made up by rich people so poor people wouldn't be jealous of them."

"Writing the literature or just reading it?"

"I think the fashionable thing to do is to say you just read it, and write things in secret and tell your descendants to burn it, and then they'll read it and obey your wishes if it's dreadful and publish it only if it's so good that it was worth defying you for the sake of Art."

"You'll mess with their alignment," he says disapprovingly. 

"We're getting a little ahead of ourselves."

"Oh, Hagan doesn't want to tell us his retirement plans, drat."

"Maybe I shan't retire. I hear Chaotic is hard to maintain retired. Maybe I will adventure until I've started calling everyone 'foolish youngster'."

"Could aim for neutral good, when you retire."

Shrug.

"I've been working on it in my spare time! The people teaching those econ classes they give out for free have no idea about the depth of my scheme to cunningly only ask questions after raising my hand and being called upon."

"Sure you want to join us on a piracy-related adventure? Fazil's clung on to lawful but only by stepping up his prayer habits, Mahdi dipped into neutral."

"I have time. And Nirvana's plan B anyway. Praying is lawful, or is it only if the god is or only if you do it regularly?"

"Structuring your life more can be lawful, and praying to lawful gods is. I don't think I was actually very close, but it'd be more disastrous if I hit neutral than it is for Mahdi so it seemed prudent to take no chances."

"I will drop my tentative plan of repeating 'hey there Desna you might be vaguely acceptable' for an hour every day."

"Well, far be it from me to discourage anyone from religious observance but if that makes you lawful I'll eat my holy symbol."

"I don't want to overshoot, see."

"Heaven's so bad even lawful good people don't want to go there."

"That's not why."

"No? I'm curious, actually, the church talks up Axis, you're planning to professionally talk up Axis..."

"My family'll be there. Of course I'd like to make Axis. But - I think people ought to do good, if they can, and have faith that it'll work out however it's meant to. Maybe I'll end up down to neutral once I've retired, or someday need to do something counted Evil, or maybe they need me in Heaven, in which case I don't want to try to arrange to be unavailable."

"Do you have particular reason to think there's that much micromanagement going on, even of clerics? Especially with prophecy broken."

"I don't know. I think there's some, at higher levels, with the sort of complicated stuff we're getting into. Abadar has part of himself in Osirion, right, reading policy papers and listening to debates and all that - I don't think the gods make arrangements with a specific destiny in mind, but I expect they know what tools are available to them."

"Yeah, all right. It does seem a little odd to be sitting yourself in the heavenly toolbox when your own very god receives his worryingly literal mail in Axis but I suppose the philosophy could hang together."

"Good needs the help more, frankly."

"I don't disagree."

"Well, it's good to have you aboard. We'll see you in the morning?"

"See you."

She takes her leave. She's back at dawn all dressed up for an adventure.

And they can flying-carpet out of Sothis and on north. Hagan lets his snake hang out of his sleeve and watch the horizon. Takes the mask off once they're well clear of Sothis. 

"What's the deal with the mask?"

"When I was very young I ran into the man who is now the Grand Vizier Of Internal Affairs picking his nose. I immediately backed away, but he turned around, and saw me. My face is etched in his memory, and his in mine; I will always recall the chilling hatred with which he looked at me before I vanished into the crowd. I am the only one who knows his shameful secret, and if he ever sees me again he'll surely have me killed."

"I like how you have a lever attached to you which reads 'pull for a funny story'. How long before you start doing repeats?"

"As a ninth level ranger I get three a day and can't come up with new ones until the next dawn."

She cackles.

"Saint Hadassah, over there," he says, and points.

"Heck of a place to live out the rest of your days. How are its stats?"

"Eighty-eight percent success rate, which is below average, but they get all the hard cases. People who were randomly assigned here versus somewhere else do six percent better here."

"Good on them, that's barely worse than the national rate including all its unsupervised randos."

"And their population is starting more than half evil and more than half chaotic. Our friend the Dread Dagger was of course both."

"Do people ever wind up here being neither? Some neutral good person puttering along and winding up in a confusing legal pickle, gets a not very sympathetic judge..."

"I don't know of a law outright prohibiting that - and, of course, most peoples' alignment isn't knowable - but women's monasteries are expensive, they don't pay for their costs in labor, and the intent is that people only get assigned there if it's needed to save them."

"I wonder what they do all day. I suppose I'm here specifically to ask some questions."

"Feel free to do sociology research while you're there."

"Do I need a particular credential to go talk to her or is being female enough?"

"Should be enough. I'd be more sure if it didn't seem probable you'll run into some racism."

"Lemme see your list of questions."

Some practical ones: was she associated with such and such hostage-takings and maritime disasters and exchanges with various authorities. 

Did she know about the escape of her confederates? Why didn't they come for her?

Who was paying them? Is she safe here from whoever was paying them? 

Where's the treasure?

"Okay. Discern Lies et al aren't in my book, obviously, but I can, like, take notes on whether she's spouting obvious bullshit."

"Yeah. We can check up on a lot of her answers, if she'll give us anything at all."

"Cool. I'll meet you back here when I'm done, I suppose." She salutes and walks up to the door. Knock knock.

A woman in priests' robes with a very severe bun and an aggressively ugly hatpin for wisdom opens the door. "It's not visiting hours for three more minutes," she says disapprovingly.

"It's not? Oh no, perhaps I need to buy a watch. I can wait."

She closes the door. 

Three minutes later, the bell chimes.

Knock knock.

Same woman. "Welcome to Saint Hadassah's," she says stiffly. "You're visiting?"

"Yes, I'd like to speak to Abada, the erstwhile Dread Dagger."

She raises an eyebrow half an inch. "I will see if she's available."

"Thank you."

She returns a minute later. "She will see you. The visiting booths are this way."

"Are visits supervised?"

"Do you want to be supervised?"

"Not at all."

"Then you needn't. Call for help if there's any trouble, some of our residents have violent histories."

"I understand."

She sits in the booth.

The girl walks in. She has black hair, cut short, and some scars on her face that she must have kept deliberately; she's thin and kind of short and scowling. 

"Well?"

"Hey. Your buddies all got busted out, did you know?"

Blink. " - sure."

"You get news here or you saw it coming?"

"Not a lotta news here."

"Why'd they leave you behind?"

"Maybe this place has more security."

"Didn't exactly background check me."

"Well, maybe you're my ticket out. Are you?"

"Got a list of things I wanna know if you were in on." She reads them off.

"Who do you work for?"

"I might be too chaotic to work for people. Were you in on those?"

"Sure I was."

"Very busy life you lead. Who was paying you?"

"Whoever I had at the point of a sword."

"D'you think the security here is good enough to keep them all off you?"

"Oh, absolutely not."

"That's rough.

Where's the treasure?"

"Do I look stupid?"

"You can tell whoever shows up next you gave the location to somebody already, maybe they'll leave in a hurry, try to beat me there."

"I'm sure you'll leave me here to tell your competition all about it."

"I'm chaotic good."

"Pretty sure good people can kill evil people if they feel like it. Fighting evil, that's like, what paladins are all about, right?"

"Sure, they're allowed to go underground and murder my whole family if they want, it sours me on the subject."

"Huh."

"I'm not gonna kill you, seriously."

"I'm not going to tell you where it is for anything short of a ticket out of here. - and then I still won't tell you, I'll show you. Nice try, great talking with you, have a good day."

"That where your buddies went? Leading people to their stashes?"

"Nah. Just back to work, for them."

"What makes you so special?"

Snort. "I'm better at my job."

"Don't think they were happy to bargain for their tickets out?"

"I doubt it was their friends that got them."

"Revenge? Wanted them to finish out a job? Good prices on their heads in Taldor?"

"You don't know the first thing about anything, do you? The treasure's secondary. Everyone who is still alive in this industry knows things."

"I'm catching up from all the time I spent living under a rock."

"What, this rock?" She kicks the floor.

"Avistanian rock, if you're actually curious."

"Are even the underground Avistanis whores?"

"I knew a poor lady who'd rent out her husband by the hour, but it's not understood to be classy."

- snort.

"You want an honest opinion? I think you're probably not getting paid enough. I wasn't getting paid enough and I was rich as sin. There's all kinds of idiots striving for control of the Inner Sea and a lot of them have a lot of money."

"Yeah? How much should I be asking for?"

"Hell, they're playing for kingdoms, ask for one of them."

"Tempting. How do kingdoms wind up table stakes?"

Shrug. "I have no idea how any of those idiots get into power. Well, except in Osirion, where it is widely known that you fire off a few Heal spells and say you're a god."

"It's foolproof, I don't know why more people don't do it that way. What idiot things are the idiots doing -"

"We were taking money from three different national governments and six dukes of Taldor, at one point."

Belmarniss whistles. "What's going on everybody wanted to know about so bad?"

"Wouldn't you like to know."

"It'd sure put me in good company."

"They all paid."

"And they're real mad at your friends and maybe just taking their time getting around to you. If they wanted more of it, after you all get caught's not an opportune time to pressgang you into another fact-finding mission... so maybe the info wasn't good."

"Figured they might just not know where I was. They all thought I was a man."

"Could be a good smokescreen, I don't actually know how my source knew where to find you. You want me to tell your jailors in case they can beef up security for if it gets around?"

"- they're one of the people that'd be looking."

"I think they're pretty serious about getting people into Axis and this is how they do it but if you don't want me to I won't."

"'s fucking stupid, right. As if I'd be different in Axis."

"They probably figure in a monastery you die old and apart from the lich population old people are pretty mellow and maybe it'll stick."

"Drow don't make Axis, do they?"

"I was told growing up we all go to the Abyss no matter what we do. Why?"

"I was wondering if they'd bother with the monastery treatment for you. Wondering why you'd want to live in Osirion."

"It's not like I plan to retire here."

"I guess. Did you really just swing by in case I was bored enough to tell anyone who asked where there's treasure?"

"You're acquainted with the fact that some people'll pay for information. Far as I know I wouldn't be selling it to anybody who wants worse for you than a solid stint in Saint Whoeverthefuck's, if that matters."

That gets a little bit of a smile. "Hadassah. Husband was an angry drunk and she patiently obeyed him and kept his kids out of his way until he kicked the bucket and she could take his money and get all her favorite religious books copied by captive pregnant teenagers."

"And here I was told women's monasteries were expensive because they didn't generate revenue from labor. Maybe it's very expensive to teach the pregnant teenagers to read."

"No one's tried teaching me to read. Spin cloth, yes. I have no idea if it pays my room and board."

"Sounds dull."

"'s dreadful. You could break me out."

"I'd rather Nirvana than Elysium, I'm trying to cut down on blatant acts of illegality."

"I thought it was the Abyss regardless?"

"I'm not sure they're right."

"Man, that seems even more pathetic than what the rest of us are doing. At least we're all groveling for the approval of a system that bothers to wave in our face the proof it'll work if we try."

"I mean, also nonzero of the contents of your rap sheet are actually bad."

"Guarantee you whoever you work for's just as bad."

"Then maybe I won't break them out of monasteries if it comes up either."

"Still not totally clear on what you want, here."

"Answers to my questions. Also wouldn't turn down the treasure."

"All right, what're the questions?"

She reads them off again.

"He's dead. He's also dead, I think. That one's still alive last I heard. I dunno who he works for. Not even a good question. Everyone works for everyone. Yes, that includes Cheliax, why wouldn't it? Still don't have any reason to tell you what they're all after."

"What would be such a reason if you had one?"

"Ride out of here. Protection, maybe, if it had some plausible configuration that wasn't a ride out of here, but I'm not thinking of any. I guess you could credibly threaten me?"

"Hm. Are there visiting hours every day?"

"Ah huh. Dunno why, it's too far for families to visit regularly."

"Maybe a decade ago someone was like 'we will have visiting hours every day' and everyone is virtuously obeying them."

"Can you imagine the kinda person who decides this is what they want to do with their life? They're all horrible."

"Man, I have complicated feelings about what literally everybody decides to do with their lives, maybe all their other options were worse or something. It does sound like it sucks for you to be here but I hear they have an eighty-eight percent success rate and I assume that means Axis, you probably have an even better chance of getting that or Boneyard or Maelstrom. Or Nirvana if you get a decent advocate."

"Don't really give a shit, honestly."

"I guess that's a way to be."

"You can't just spend your whole life slavishly obeying whoever has the sharpest sword. So Pharasma's a bitch, that doesn't make us hers."

"What're you gonna do instead? More criminal geopolitics?"

"Gonna sit here and spin thread, apparently."

"I mean if you did get out."

"Pick up my stuff, retire somewhere very very far away. Adopt some dogs."

"Sounds nice."

"Could even dump some of the gold on a charity, if I decide to play the stupid game."

"Faster than this nonsense. Why were you in the piracy etcetera business to begin with?"

"It's interesting and it pays well."

"And you didn't know yet that you weren't getting paid enough?"

"Eh, I mostly got unlucky. Or was betrayed, one of those."

"Any idea who'd've betrayed you?"

"I have a list, why?"

"I hear sometimes people want information. I dunno if it'd be useful but if you don't mind saying..."

"One of the boys who got captured, thus arranging their way out and not mine, but then why kill me? People we'd screwed over recently -" she lists some, counting off her fingers. "Thought it might be the Osirians, if they wanted something from me, but they haven't done anything but stick me in their stupid monastery and give me some lectures about womanhood and lawfulness and obedience and so on."

"Womanhood too, wow."

"Did you know that the gods designed me to give my husband babies and take care of them and raise them to honor him? Real stupid of them giving me a brain, if that was the plan."

"Gosh, gods designed you? Such privilege. Better patch all their design flaws for them."

"Half the girls here are hoping for a husband. Means they're allowed to leave. Not much chance, but, you know, some men can't find a free woman."

"The kind with that much of a selection deficit might not improve much on spinning and staring at the same walls every day."

"They'll hit you, they'll fuck you, they'll occasionally feel bad and buy you presents, hard to say if that adds up better or worse. I'm not chomping at the bit."

"I'm probably never going to get married myself but maybe it'd sound great after a week of spinning. Should I let you get back to that, or is there anything else I should know?"

"Eh, come back if you wanna pay for any of the rest of it."

"Will they even let you keep money, in here?"

"Nah. But you could let me out, or...give us a real big rainstorm, it's too damn hot on land, or make a big donation for me."

"I'll think about it. Maybe I'll see you tomorrow." She gets up.

She watches her go.

Belmarniss goes out to meet the others. "She doesn't like it in there," she reports.

"Well, maybe she'll thank them someday."

"Could let people for whom lawful is a lost cause go for good."

"You could probably make that happen if you were willing to pay for it."

"I wish."

"It sounded like she'd maybe pay for it if she had her treasure but wasn't about to give me directions. I did get some answers." She offers Hagan her notes.

"Huh." He glances at it, passes it to Fazil. "- thank you."

"No problem. I think controlling the weather's beyond our pay grade, unfortunately. What's this tell you on top of what you already had, anything much?"

"We didn't actually have confirmation of which parties were involved in the whole mess, though I'd started to suspect the answer would be 'pretty much everyone' just because there's so much happening. Were gonna contact this guy, guess we won't if he's dead."

"Suppose there's a way to - if our own government is involved, then surely they have the information they'd need to tell Taldor we didn't do anything and to leave us alone -"

"I don't know who I'd ask. This is clearly secret."

"No one's going to give a fuck. We handle it ourselves."

"I assume springing her's a no-go."

"I'm assuming we probably don't want to marry her?"

"She's not uncharming company but I might have odd tastes and she didn't seem in the market."

"Then it's a no go. I doubt she really cares that much about one rainstorm, feels more likely she's angling for information about what kind of options you have on tap."

"That's a sixth level spell?"

"Seventh. Can't cast it and can't afford it."

"Do they ever get, like, the option for supervised trips out, to visit family or make, uh, pilgrimages or anything..."

"Saint Hadassah's for escape risks, I think. Other ones do more of that."

"I dunno that we need more from her. We've got a couple people who are still alive, we can drag them to Taldor. We're not going to unravel an entire complicated multinational thing, we just need some people clearly more at fault than we are."

"If they throw off a scry you have an idea how you'd find 'em?"

"They have some known associates. Maybe we can get a couple more off her."

"I was going for the rapport angle since I didn't take enhanced interrogation, maybe I'll bring her a snack or something, bet the food in there sucks. Maybe she'll tell me more."

"You got a lot off her! I don't think they can possibly afford antiscrying for everyone, so we can probably find someone eventually."

"I liked the plan where we ask the government for help," says Mahdi, pouting.

"He hates scrying."

"It takes an hour."

"Would you like me to entertain you for that hour by singing you traditional drow songs some of which are about baby murder? It'll be fine, you won't understand the lyrics so you won't know which ones."

He makes a face.

"Think about it. If we go to the government now, we get told to stay out of it, we retire, you have to sell scrying for the rest of your life. We go track these pirates down and learn why everyone in the Inner Sea is paying them, you make ninth level, you get to sell Teleports instead -"

"I'll try the known associates and if they don't work Belmarniss can go back and ask for more associates. And bring pie."

"I was thinking something I could tuck in my sleeve, you think they'll let me haul in a pie?"

"Oh, I have no idea. You could haul it in my bag -"

"They have antimagic up."

" - guess not, then."

"Maybe some little hand pies. Or just some candy."

"She can peg our power level at somewhere between 'can get her some fancy candy' and 'can cast seventh-level cleric spells easily'."

"It'll add to my aura of mystery."

"Is there delicious drow candy you can get her?"

"I guess I could go down a ways and see if they have sugarwebs here but I'm from under Taldor, so I can't assume much culinary similarity."

"Would that be risky? - not that it's remotely worthwhile in this case, I'm just wondering whether drow have international tourism."

"Some, though there's lots of political drama all the time so it fluctuates. I'm not certain how all the underdark borders match up with the surface - for one thing there are caves under the sea some places - so I couldn't tell you if we're even over drow or something else here, let alone whether, if drow, they're from Nemret Noktoria or Shraen or Shazeun. Though it'd be one of those unless something major's happened in the last few years."

Nod.

"Should Osirion be, like, trying to have trade relationships with drow or something?"

"I feel like the chaotic evil thing would be a speed bump?"

"Little bit. But who knows, maybe everyone'd meet in the middle."

" - so, in Abaddon?"

"We have trade relationships with most of our neighbors and lots of them are chaotic, or evil. Admittedly not both."

"Nemret Noktoria and Shraen and Shazeun all at various times managed productive trade relations with Noctimar, where I'm from. Whatever your best practices are for trading with chaotic and/or evil people might work and you could maybe sell 'look, Abadar is just majorly into trade' as a justification to anybody suspicious of Osirians sniffing around downstairs."

"Abadar is just majorly into trade. Reportedly tried to open negotiations with Hell once but they were too difficult to work with."

"Shazeun exports nice silk."

"There we are, then."

"Is there some kind of suggestion box? Dear pharaoh for my birthday I want a silk shirt from Shazeun."

"There's no way to contact the pharaoh. You can write papers for the church, foreign policy's a bit outside scope but I'm sure someone would publish it if it was reasonably about trade."

"Think the pharaoh sits in his beetleshell with a wife for every day of the week reading theology papers?"

"Probably. Since he is an aspect of Abadar."

"I've never tried writing a theology paper. Maybe you should do it."

"Once I retire, maybe."

"I guess it's sort of an awkward occupation to parallelize with adventuring."

"A little! And I'll have to pick up some new hobbies. Lots of people report finding retirement boring and expanding their drinking hobby, which seems tragic."

"That's not even a hobby."

"Why, what is it?"

"I'm not sure it belongs to an entire class of activity with its own name like 'hobby' but you'd know better than I if there's an Osirian word for it or something."

"Some people taste expensive wines and I guess that's a hobby and not very tragic."

"My hobby's going to be finding a wife."

"Also not a hobby."

"Also if you keep it up too long you'll wind up having to work more than once a week."

"1100 gold a Teleport. That's three households, maybe four..."

"Or one very nice one."

"You could live in the Dome."

"But then you'd never visit me."

"Allergic to beetles?"

"Violently."

"How do you even find a wife, is it like the opposite of how we do it minus the explicit sale? Ask your friends for a sister or cousin they think you'd like?"

"Some people do that. Some people hire a matchmaker, they get to know lots of men and women and try to guess who'll be suitable. Friends in the church have started mentioning daughters to me, when I'm in town."

"Are the matchmakers a third miraculous gender or just above reproach somehow?"

"Elderly women, usually."

"I wonder how they get into the line of work. Set up all their grandkids and get antsy when they've married off the last one and don't have great-grandkids yet?"

"I think friends go to them for advice informally, and then word gets out that the matches worked out well, and then enough people want their advice they start charging for it. But I don't really know. We couldn't afford that for my sisters."

"What'd they do, then, did you recommend them to your church friends?"

"For my oldest sister we had a widowed neighbor - neighbor was ideal because she could still watch the younger kids - and then by the time my second sister needed arrangements I was better established in the church and could mention her to people. Got her settled and then started my life as an adventurer."

"Working out for them okay?"

"They're healthy and have healthy children."

"I guess I've heard of lower standards."

He looks slightly stung. "This life is hard. Gets easier after that."

"Sorry."

"He was ten when he ended up responsible for 'em."

"Can't all spring from the void fully formed."

"Sorry."

"I think the years when the kids are little are hardest, and then it gets easier."

"Can you hire them help?"

"Gave them my ring of sustenance, a while back. Helps a lot with babies, they share it between them depending who's got a new one."

"Aw."

"I told them it cost a hundred gold and they were terrified they'd lose it."

"Twenty five hundred. Right?"

"- yeah."

"Tsk, tsk, not very lawful."

"It did cost a hundred gold! Also some more gold after that."

"Would've sounded like a pretty wild amount to me too. My mom was actually a sorcerer too but didn't level far and didn't have the business sense to do much with it, plus her family took most of what she did earn."

"And men can't work?"

"Oh, my dad worked too but he died when I was pretty young so it wasn't a major factor in household finances that I can actually remember. Also he wasn't a caster so he didn't earn his wife a caster's income."

He nods. "We were unusually poor, a lot of boys stay in school until they're twelve and do an apprenticeship after that."

"Mahdi stayed in school until he was twenty but that's because learning to read was very hard for him."

"Yes, that's why." He makes sparks fly menacingly between his fingers.

"Well, congratulations on your persistence."

"Hagan can't read at all."

"In my homeland reading is scorned as an evil art. It's believed that when you read words they vanish from your internal monologue and then you can never think them again."

"...huh."

" - he's lying. If that wasn't clear."

"Oh, now we don't approve of lying."

"I figured, just momentarily I entertained the scenario and it's the exact opposite of me."

"You learn words reading them?"