She can be directed to Luay! Cleric's robes. Golden coin for his holy symbol. Waist-length beard. He blinks at her a couple of times and seems to struggle a little bit for something polite to say. 

"Someone mentioned they'd suggested..."

"...that the only drow in town do cultural consultancy? Belmarniss, nice to meet you."

"Luay. I've been trying to work out whether we can trade with drow."

"Yeah, my adventuring companion Fazil got the idea from me. I think it's plausible and if you do manage it you can obviously save tons on shipping because it just needs a one-time excavation and pulleys and not boats or caravans, but it's not likely to be simple."

"What would the first steps be?"

"You'll wanna figure out who's down there. I know some passages into the underdark were recently sealed as smuggling routes from Katapesh, but there's probably apertures left, maybe you know where they are because your downstairs neighbors are stealing stuff already or maybe you don't because they leave you alone, I dunno, if you don't have an existing aperture you tunnel one till you hit cave and wander around till you find civilization. You could try to go to the queen or you could skip it - she almost certainly isn't setting trade policy at the national level, and also will laugh in your face if you blame her for any misbehavior of her subjects toward you so it's not a useful move for enforcing property law either, but they'd know people. Some risk around this stage that it looks like you're there to steal or kill people - if you go armed to the teeth - or like you are yourselves stealable people - if you look helpless. I think probably a safe balance is to go in numbers and not heavily armed but with plenty of utility magic in play, floating disks for your luggage and whatnot, so you look hard to take on but not like you're suited up to insist on it either. They'll speak drow but we have such long childhoods that somebody's sure to have killed a year learning Osiriani or Taldane even if it's rusty. Then you can start talking about what you wanna sell and what you wanna buy. They will want magic lights and surface crops and books and stuff, you will probably want silk and mushrooms and metal and stone."

"We can probably put that together. They'll speak drow? Is there a common language among drow?"

"It's related to Elven. They'd think I had an accent for sure but we'd understand each other fine."

"All right. We might want to put something like this together. Would you bring goods at first or would that just tempt them to steal things?"

"I'd suggest sample amounts, not shipments. Tasty foods. The things that especially wowed me when I surfaced were maple syrup and tree nuts and pears and oatmeal but obviously tastes vary."

"Huh." He takes notes on this. "If not the government, who would you talk to, just anyone you see, or -"

"Kinda depends if you find a city or a mushroom farm first? In the first case you probably wait for someone to stop you and then you explain what you're doing to whoever asks, and in the latter you ask whoever you find for their master and they bring you to some lady who owns a mushroom farm and you tell her what you're offering for some mushrooms and after that you can probably pass through the farm to her neighbors, ask her to tell her friends what else you're in the market for, etcetera. Mushroom farm's probably the safer result but if you knew any local drow to scry on you probably wouldn't be talking to me."

"We don't know any, no. There used to be raids but not recently, and we mostly only take human prisoners anyway." He sounds disapproving.

"Mm?"

"- well, if we had a different policy, we wouldn't be dependent on running into a lucky drow to make this happen, right - I tried to reach out to freed slaves but didn't get anywhere -"

"Didn't get anywhere like how?"

"No one replied. I don't know if they couldn't read or weren't interested in helping or if the messages didn't make it all the way there."

"Likely can't read. It's dark down there, on top of all the other reasons one might be unable to read."

"They work in the dark? That sounds nearly impossible."

"Not all of them all the time but enough that it's not convenient for them to sneak books if there's no work reason for them to read, which there wouldn't be."

Nod. "Well, I was going to try an expedition out to Andoran to ask again but it'll be much easier to plan with you, if you're willing."

"I don't mind, I have the downtime. I do want to be, like, paid competitively with using the time drawing scrolls or whatever if it's a lot of time."

"Of course! We have consulting rates."

"Ooh."

"This department's got lots of funding, we get to keep a cut of whatever we earn the state."

"Excellent incentive arrangement. I like that about Osirion."

"Thank you. What else surprised you, compared to drow countries -"

"Hm, I'm not sure surprise is the right word? We do know any things about the surface down there and I was able to extrapolate more. Notable differences though... The sexism going the opposite way. The giant unnecessary sky fireball. Everything being so big - we can see in the dark but not particularly far and while there are big natural caverns we didn't tend to dig new ones bigger than we could see across unless they were going to be lit anyway, and even the big caverns have edges. The background assumption that most people you meet are not seriously considering murdering you as at least plan C. Relatedly the attitude toward religion's very different. I haven't spent much time around surface elves so the compressed lifespans and their effects have been conspicuous as a surface feature even though it's not specifically a consequence of being on the surface."

"The attitude towards religion is different because everyone is damned?"

"It's not just that. Most drow prefer demon lords to actual deities of any stripe, most do not actually like or admire their chosen patrons but just consider them either socially essential to worship in life or workable to cope with in death."

"Do drow have some misapprehensions about how the Abyss...is?"

"They are aware it is not generally pleasant, though they're not conducting a lot of research into how bad. They think it's inevitable and that you get a relatively better place in it if you're prepped but usually don't look into that either except when it's politically expedient and they can't just lie, which is seldom."

" - huh. That's - hard to imagine. I guess if you live much longer."

"I'm a hundred twelve," she shrugs.

"Maybe that'd do it."

"I think most of it's just that people do the done thing."

"I guess so. Will they be interested in learning about anything different?"

"Maybe but I'd confine it to the ones who come to you unless someone's trying to level and do missionary work at the same time."

"Understood. Is there anything else important I need to know before I put a proposal together -"

"Uh, probably nobody should hook up with drow who haven't at least moved out of the downstairs and attempted moderate assimilation. Or do it on an own-risk basis. There'd be safeish ways to go about it but there'd also be, like, boys sleeping with Osirian dudes to get their moms to discount them so the girl they like can buy them and not really caring if their mom also decides to murder the hookup, so it's probably not worth it. Despite the existence of queens and nations and such you will not be dealing with centralized authority that attempts to or can exercise a lot of hard power on individual choices like murdering people's hookups so you should not expect there to be much help on that end with minimizing casualties from cultural friction, though they should be able to prevent actual war if they do not want actual war and you've got a good case for that."

"All rig -" he drops to his knees. "Your highness, this is Belmarniss. Belmarniss, Prince Merenre."

Prince Merenre has gorgeous presumably-magical jewelry and clothes indistinguishable from any other cleric of his level (ninth) and a slightly flushed expression, like he is perpetually or perhaps just at this moment stewing about something infuriating. 

Kneeling time! Okay. Down she goes. "Your grace."

"Welcome to the Trade Office," he says, "and to Sothis, if applicable - and don't stop your work on my account -"

"I've been in Sothis off and on for months. We were just discussing why it is a bad idea for Osirians to hook up with drow."

"Well, they'll kill your kids, right? Not that that'll stop everyone."

"I meant the kind of hookups Osirians are more prone to. Don't pick up drow boys. But yes, if you knock up a drow she will probably kill your kid."

"Recommend whether to ban it," he says to Luar, and "do you have a cost estimate yet?"

      Luar winces. "More than five thousand gold and less than five hundred thousand gold."

Snort. "All right. Perhaps you can update me later."

"If it matters it's not likely someone will knock up a drow even if he's very careless, we do have the elf thing where with some unpleasantness we can be infertile indefinitely till we change our minds."

"I didn't know that about elves," says Luar, "but I guess it explains why you aren't constantly having babies. Uh, for whether to ban it I'll mostly want to figure out what compliance would be like, which is less your department though if you have advice I'd still appreciate it."

"Opposite sexism works for you here, you're not likely to have Osirian girls wandering the underdark and the drow boys will less so but still mostly stay home."

"Abadar picks women sometimes, but I suppose for the average case it might work fine." He bites his pen and glances at the office where his boss has wandered off. "Can we get those cost estimates - firmer -"

"What are you estimating the cost of here, the initial expedition, the whole shebang -"

"Getting it to the point where private investors will put money in on their own terms and we aren't needed."

"What do you need to know from me to figure that out? You know your investors and I don't, and I've never been to any of the potentially relevant countries..."

"What kind of loss rate would you expect? How many people would you want to go in with? How long would you expect negotiations to take? Ranges on all of these is fine, you heard me say I think it'll cost between five thousand and five hundred thousand - Prince doesn't like "I don't know" -"

"I could give you decent guesses if you were going to Noctimar but Noctimar is under Taldor. I'd go in with twenty people and some of 'em have to be casters, clerics is fine if wizards are more expensive to tote along on church business, don't know if you need to pay per spell or per diem. If there's enough and they behave you can probably avoid a fight with some risk of losses up to TPK if you run into something other than normal drow metropolis, which you might because I don't know what's under you, call it a... two percent risk you run into something much more dangerous than normal drow metropolis. ...One and a half, if there were anything super aggressive it'd probably have turned its nose surfaceward ever in the history of Sothis. Negotiations, uh, you can probably walk out with a tentative deal for a trial purchase or some people who wanna come upstairs and talk to you at greater length or both in less than a day, you will probably know whether to give up or not inside a week."

He takes notes. He has more clarifying questions. He wants her back tomorrow to look at a business plan once he has one.

"Sure. When and how do I collect what you're paying me for this?"

"Up front, there, I can sign a slip for you with the hours." He points. 

"Thanks. See you tomorrow."

She pockets her cash and goes to the Onyx when she's done for the day.

He is about. Watching a drunken singing contest.

Belmarniss votes for the guy with the good tremolo and plops next to Hagan. "Yo."

"How'd it go?"

"Fine. His grace didn't put in much facetime, I was still mostly talking to Luay."

"Well, he's probably very busy being fancy or something."

"Does being fancy piss people off? He looked kind of pissed off. I heard exactly no gossip about his wife."

"You could meet her, if you wanted, she runs a fancy jewelry place. As a special indulgence of his she is sometimes let out of her house to do things at it."

"How nice of him. I got my anklet custom, do you know the name of the place, perhaps I've seen her already."

"Oh, man, I really should." He frowns, bites his lip. "Trilliant."

"Nah, anklet was at Zaki's Jewels, oh well."

"You think they'll go ahead with the expedition?"

"Not sure. There's a lot of uncertainty. I'm hoping they offer me a bundle to pull together my party and go scouting. Wouldn't that be fun?"

"Sounds pretty interesting."

"You'd all have to pose as my slaves to not look like we were there to take potshots though."

"Gosh, is that so."

"Adventuring party of mostly humans, scary. Foreign lady and her possessions less so."

"Pay'd better be real good."

"I'll ask before accepting. You wanna give me a number? And ask the others who do not seem to have dropped by for a visit."

"I was just very curious about the prince, you know how it is. Dunno. Mahdi's usually pickiest because he can make a couple hundred a day off selling spells here in the city. On the other hand a lot of that's scrying and he still needs to level... maybe five thousand."

"A day?"

"Nah, for the whole swing."

"Noted." She notes it.

"That is a discount because you are cool, other drow not substitutable."

"I will bear that in mind should the Crown pull one out of a sofa cushion and suggest swapping her in."

"I shall leave you to your very important negotiations, then."

"Going back in tomorrow. I'll take careful notes on the royalty for you."

"You'd have my wholehearted support in avoiding them entirely."

And he leaves.

She goes back as requested the next morning.

Luar is working out his business plan! He is in fact interested in having her go scout and find out who is in charge directly below them and how hard they are to reach.

"Should I bring my party? What're you paying?"

"What does your party hire for - who's in your party -"

"Cleric. 'Nother wizard. Guy who shoots things. Other wizard wants an estimated five K but I didn't get that from him direct, others'll probably go for cheaper if we wanna leave him home."

"Does having them along make the work safer or easier?"

"Depends on what I find. I'd have them posing as my slaves."

"Got a quote for you alone?"

"Uh, alone I want seven point five plus whatever it costs to insure all my gear because I wouldn't get it back if something happened to me. I think my gear is priced as you'd expect except the ring was my mother's and I charge extra for sentiment."

He takes notes. "Not my call, understand, not with numbers like those, but I'll have an answer for you by tomorrow."

"Sure thing. Anything else to cover today?"

"Uh, yes, actually, but it's not my department."

"Okay, should I just wait...?"

"Uh, the Prince Fe-Anar wants to learn drow. He - heard you were in town and figured it was the best opportunity, I guess."

"...if he wants to pay for my time I guess I don't mind, but he could also wait to see if you wind up with drow traders coming and going and get one who doesn't charge for time as a mid-level wizard."

"He seemed, ah, very impatient. I did mention the consulting fee."

"If he wants to overpay for language lessons to get them pronto that's all right with me."

"All right. I'll tell him." He writes something down and hands it to someone.

She sketches while she waits. A sunflower.

The Prince Fe-Anar looks a generation older than the Prince Merenre - father? uncle? half-brother? - and far more cheerful. He bounces on the balls of his feet. "Teach me drow."

"Sure, but tell me where you want to start, I have learned a bunch of languages and everybody does 'em differently. Personally I like alphabets, do you like alphabets?"

"I like alphabets fine, sure - but I made one up for transcribing sounds, because they mostly don't do that very well -"

"I can start somewhere else if you want. My surface Elven teacher started with numbers." She holds up a finger and says, in drow, "one", and so on through ten, and then she loops back and covers zero.

He takes notes and repeats things she says with very careful enunciation.

She'll just keep going, speeding up and choosing her sentences with less emphasis on repeating concepts as he seems to be keeping up exceptionally well. Drow don't talk about colors very much - there are words for them but they're not common or very different from the Elven - but they do have basic words for black, white, and five intermediate shades of grey. They've got great words for talking about being in and moving through and digging out caves. Her name means "bottomless pit" - that's an idiomatic translation. More literally it would be "hole in the ground that goes on forever" - belm is hole too small to live in, ar is ground but without the connotation that it's all under you, niss means limitless as in "limitless up" for sky and "limitless life" for immortality and "limitless misery" for wishing hyperbolically on your enemies or just limitlessness all by itself.

That is delightful, he is delighted, is it how most drow children are named? 

"I haven't met many drow from other countries besides mine so their customs might differ but it's not a weird sort of thing for a girl's name to mean. It's not all that common, though I did know another one - some common names are, like, Ilvaria, that means silk knot, and Johysis, that means sharp stone edge, and Pharnox is white haired. Boys get named kind of random nouns but usually are going by nicknames that just vaguely riff or pun on their real names by the time they're thirty if they live that long. I knew a Zov, which means spoon, that was his original and it stuck."

"Random nouns? That's - I wonder why there aren't any surface cultures that do that."

"You're less likely to murder your babies?"

"Well, I assume people who murder them don't name them first, at least."

"Yeah, the boys don't even get called 'spoon' if it's obvious right away they're gonna die."

"But a lot of them get killed after the stage where you name them? Why?'

"Uh, the typical thing is to kill a lot of boys right off and wait longer with girls to see if we're worthwhile but that doesn't actually mean a sickly girl baby is safe or a boy who pisses off his mom is either. Also sometimes 'right off' is like a year later if you can afford to dither."

'Huh, do drow have faster language development than surface elves, do you know?"

"Don't know, have never socialized with surface elves much."

"How soon do drow talk - or would I say, how early do drow talk -"

"Either's okay but 'early' is a little less awkward. Five to ten, anywhere in there, depends on the kid, my mother told me I had two-word sentences by age four but she might have been making that up."

"At that age you're how small? Or would it be, at that age how small are you?"

"Second one unless you want to express incredulity. Yea big age four." Gesture.

And he will continue quizzing her on drow society in steadily more proficient drow!

It's fun. She can stay up late if he wants, see less of the sky fireball.

"Is that what drow call it or just you?"

"I think we don't actually have a native word for it. I'd loanword the Elven if I weren't trying to complain about how silly it is."

"How do you grow food under the ground?"

"We eat a lot of mushrooms and meat that can itself eat mushrooms, there are magic light gardens, and there's theft."

"And now maybe trade."

"Yes, I hope you like mushrooms."

"Not especially, but I like foreigners, so it's all very exciting."

"Foreign we are."

"Not as foreign as I would've imagined! Thank you for the language, though."

"I've been upstairs for a while, I'm not evil, and I think I might be specifically talented at sussing out cultural differences. The other drow you meet may be pretty darn foreign."

"Oh, they won't let me near anyone very interesting."

"No? They don't have you meeting foreign heads of state?"

"Oh, I guess we will slide those in, but they don't usually want to talk about languages."

"So you'll leave it to someone else? What if the expedition comes back with the crown princess of Shazeun and she wants to use sign language because she thinks she's too good to talk to anybody out loud?"

"Might she?" He looks delighted.

"I have heard rumors that sign language operates as a power distance thing in Shazeun! I've never been there so I don't know if it's true."

"Is that the country we're trying to reach? Are you going to visit?"

"It's one of three countries that might be under you and I have not been hired for the expeditionary force."

"Well, maybe I can do something about that."

"If you like? I'm sure I can occupy myself if they'd rather send a team of clerics or something."

"Probably they'll do whatever they get the best bids on but sometimes when no one has any information that doesn't work out as well as they'd like." Shrug. 

"I don't have that much informational advantage. Shazeun isn't as foreign to me as a random Avistanian country is to you but it might be like the difference between here and Katapesh and I don't know in what directions."

"That's why I'd hope they'd send you to check. But I don't do politics, really. Thank you for the language - I like it very much -"

"You're welcome. You're very quick with it."

"I'll probably want to practice more tomorrow, this vocabulary's tolerable but I keep bumping into its walls."

"Sounds fun."

And he departs with his security. 

She's back at Onyx for dinner.

"Hey."

"Hello. Have I inadvertently addicted you to the hummus here or am I just so charming?"

"Gotta be the hummus. Unless I just want to bask in the reflected glory from all the important people you're meeting."

"This one wanted to massively overpay for language tutoring! It was fun."

Eyeroll. "Bet that's not even mission-relevant, there're spells for that."

"It had nothing to do with anything! He was very quick at it, though."

"Ah huh. The pharaoh's father."

"Prince Fe-Anar? He didn't specify, actually, but I guess he's the right age."

"That's the one."

"Missed his calling as - no, I suppose he noticed and merely had limited affordances to pursue his calling as a scholar."

"Lotta scholarship you can shove in under service to Abadar but not all of it. I guess most people who'd be great scholars never have a shot at it, though."

"In droves, I think."

"Put it on the list."

"Already is. Had slaves in the cave growing up. Some of 'em were bright."

"Couldn't take them with you?"

"Grandma sold 'em when Mom died. She had her own but I didn't really get to know them."

"What do people do with slaves when they're too old to work?"

"Don't feel like guessing? - what happens to 'em here?"

"Well, in the palace they keep the girls looking young right up until they die, the spell doesn't expand lifespan. Everywhere else - I think when most slaves had kids they'd look after you. Now that's not allowed, so - dunno."

"Downstairs people eat 'em, if they're really so feeble they can't even keep a kid out of your hair or cook or spin, but I figured that wouldn't fly here."

"Evil, see."

"Eating 'em or just killing 'em?"

"A good question I have never given much thought. I think maybe both? I know you get credit for treating the dead with respect."

"Good credit or just law credit?"

"I heard both but it is possible this was lawful propaganda."

"It can't be too good or all those dead people you aren't eating would kick you right into Heaven."

"I think probably 'treat the dead with due respect' means, like, bury them according to local rites and stuff, not just 'don't eat them'. But it hasn't really come up enough in my life to be relevant. - we try to bring corpses back if they might've made arrangements for a raise, obviously."

"Those of us who may have made such arrangements appreciate that."

"Is there more - royal attention stuff - to do?"

"Ongoing vocabulary lessons tomorrow. Otherwise nothing specific scheduled, why?"

"No good reason. Worrying you'll get attached to all the important people and leave us all alone, I guess."

"That wouldn't be very conducive to incipient godhood, I hear the pharaoh doesn't share."

"Right."

"He probably already speaks all the other languages I know besides the sign language, anyway, and I'm not sure he's planning to overpay for two language courses, so he will lose interest in me after, what, a week?"

He looks a tiny bit cheered by this. "I guess."

"We have a sign language to talk in excessively echoey spaces, and also in dark rooms with slaves around so they can't hear. But it's useful in so many situations besides those that I do kind of wonder about societies that manage bilingualism at all, like here where most people speak Osiriani and Taldane, and don't slip any sign in."

"It seems useful! I think it might be hard to pick up from a standing start. Not for - Prince Fe-Anar, though."

"Even a few signs are handy, though. Like, you nod and shake your head, that's like sign and it's useful on its own."

"Yeah. And I think lots of people have more than that, for 'stop that argument you're having' and 'you're embarrassing me' and so on, and maybe that gets them most of the utility? ...I don't really know what normal peoples' lives are like."

"Oh, let me think, most-used signs - 'wrap that up and find me when you're done'. 'I have already gotten what I came in the room for and you don't need to ask'. 'Sorry' without interrupting about it - makes compulsive apologizers less annoying. 'Can I have some of your food'. 'Wait a minute'."

" - huh. Those seem like awfully good ones and I don't think most people have any good substitute at all. Maybe you can get it to catch on."

"D'you want to learn?"

"Sure. -'m not as fast as Prince Fe-Anar."

"Man, imagine if everyone was. All languages would collapse into a single monstrous creole as everyone learned everything. People would differ only in accent, and then they'd all learn to do all the accents and it'd devolve into class signaling or something, and you'd break your back trying to carry a dictionary. I am capable of repeating a phrase more than twice, Hagan."

Snort. "Okay, teach me."

She goes through the phrases she outlined, and throws in a few more to demonstrate the component handshapes more simply - "why" and "maybe" and "please" and "hurry".

He will try to pick these up, then!

She will go over them as many times as necessary and steal his food to demonstrate in the one case.

He's not a wizard but he's not slow at it. He objects very emphatically to the food stealing with the "why, why, why" handsignal.

She signs "sorry" and forks it back onto his plate.

Long-suffering sigh.

Giggle.

And the next day she goes and teaches Hagan's Secret Dad more words in spoken drow.

He's delighted, more effusively now that he has more words for it. 

"D'you know anything about how they're setting up the expedition or are you not in the loop on that?"

"Oh, I have no idea. I think they were going to hire someone. Maybe you."

"Huh, they haven't asked me."

"Well, tell them to get on that!"

"What if they aren't gonna? Presumptuous, much?"

He looks slightly baffled. Not by the word, it's come up in their survey of drow vocabulary. "Then it's their loss I suppose but I don't see what's worse for asking."

"It just seems like probably not everyone who vaguely thinks they have the qualifications to do some project they heard the church is hiring for should go knock on someone's door about it as a matter of general principle without even seeing, say, a job ad."

"Well, sure, but you're already consulting on it."

"They seemed done with that! Now I'm giving you overpriced language lessons."

"Overpriced? No one else is selling them!"

"They might in a few weeks! And then you could buy them from cheaper people."

"I guess." Handwave. "I'd have been so frustrated if it somehow didn't pan out."

"If it didn't pan out I'd still be in town."

"You adventurers are always wandering off. I have a son who's an adventurer. Can never even figure out which continent he's on."

"Is he a cleric? I hear there are lots in the family in general and they're handy in an adventure."

"No, no, he stabs things. The pharaoh's a cleric, and Merenre, and some of my father's descendants by his second wife."

"Well, sometimes things need stabbed, too. I haven't wandered too far from the Inner Sea myself."

"Oh, sure, he does good work. Or might, at least, I wouldn't know. How'd you end up in Osirion particularly -"

"I wanted insurance. I also like the nice legible investment system, though I may eventually decide it's spoiling me or go to another country on some adventure and not bother coming back."

"Huh. The investors mostly seem like idiots to me."

"Well, their value-add is capital, not, uh, non-idiocy. I tell them a sad story or three and they give me money and I go zap stuff."

"Right, but why is the capital held by idiots? I guess less of it is eventually."

"I usually don't ask them how they made their money. It could be that adventurers are not a good investment so the non-idiots with capital are all backing, uh, grocery stores and smithies."

"I don't know. Merenre probably would."

"He hasn't seemed super interested in talking to me."

"Did you want to talk to him?"

"I don't know, should I? I usually don't know of total strangers if I will get something out of a conversation of them, let alone how to get something out of a conversation with them. You're unusual in this respect."

"Well, most people are boring to talk to because they're stupid, but none of my children are."

"If you want to introduce us I won't object."

"Sure." He walks over and knocks on the door. "Merenre!"

"- hmm - you. What?"

"You should hire her to go scout, get this thing started."

He looks over at Belmarniss more closely. "I haven't actually looked at our options yet. Luar'll probably have noticed, if it's a good idea. Are you done with your language lessons?"

"For now. She's very clever."

"I figured." He turns to Belmarniss. "I'm very glad you dropped by."

"So am I, I've been having fun."

"Oh good. You should get a discount," he says to his father. "For being fun."

"I wasn't behaving differently than usual."

"I did suggest that he could have saved money by waiting till there are more drow around some of whom are not wizards. Didn't seem a priority."

"Well, I don't know how long it'll take him."

"I don't know how long it'll take me. I have a betting market out on the question, though."

"Well, I didn't know that, so it can't be a very well-publicized one, that'll mess with your information gathering."

"Oh no! We post them all at Commerce. Is there somewhere else where you'd have seen it if it'd been posted -"

"This office, I guess?"

"Sure." He makes a note of it. "Well, what's your bet -"

"Tell me the exact proposition I'm picking a time window on!"

"Trade goods from a drow country freely available for sale in Osirion."

"Any amount of trade goods? Define freely available for sale."

"Any amount. Available for anyone with the money to examine and purchase, a private auction doesn't count but a public one in the bazaar does."

"I can have that done in, what, an hour."

"Well, then bet on that and you'll probably make a lot of money."

"Define trade goods? I don't wanna put a ton of gold on it and then it's something that doesn't count."

"I'd have to look at the wording." He pulls something out of a drawer. "Hmm, all right. Goods purchased in a drow country as part of an effort to resell them in Osirion will be freely available for sale."

"Then I guess I won't put down a couple K and go trade in my shoes to a secondhand shop after all since I did not have this in mind when I got them. I'll put fifty on the next three weeks though."

"All right!" He seems pleased.

"Do you know where to find any Underdark apertures near the city?"

"Ten miles north along the coast, there's the entrance to a cave system."

"You'll probably want to dig something if things go well but that's not too bad for initial forays."

"Yes, we've got a project planned to cut something more convenient in but it has opposition from some insurers. Once we know more it'll be clearer whether to go ahead, I think."

"Are you going to hire me? Any given day I'm not that likely to be hired to go dig through a pyramid or whatever but if I have a gig here I'd know to turn them down if it happened."

"I haven't looked at Luay's proposals yet but I think the only remaining uncertainty was about whether we wanted to hire your whole party. Makes it a fair bit pricier."

"Couple of 'em keep making noises about retiring, harder to tempt them with international commerce at that stage in the adventurer lifecycle."

"Well, far be it from me to discourage them from retiring, I bet they'll create a lot more value that way."

"Gotta get that last level and sell the big ticket stuff."

"Is that so. Well, consider yourself hired and I'll look at the budget and let you know about them by tomorrow."

"Cool, thanks."

"Can they stop by here as well?"

"Gonna have to get used to dealing with women if you want to trade downstairs."

"I don't, ah, take issue with women - it just might help give us a sense of who we're hiring."

"'Nother wizard, guy who shoots stuff, cleric. Wizard's the expensive one and also least necessary considering. I'd like the budget to bring at least one for watch-keeping purposes."

"Just, uh, three extremely generic examples of the type?"

"I mean, they have personalities and presumably also favorite colors, but if you assume that you won't be too far wrong."

"I feel like most adventurers don't travel with drow! Or women."

"They needed me for my darkvision and then looked me up again when they wanted to question a lady monastic."

"Oh, are these the ones who -"

"Think so."

"Ah hah. - I wanted to compensate you."

"Compensate us?"

"I heard that some adventurers inconveniently got into our foreign affairs at sea and got called off, and I thought you ought to be compensated about it."

"Wouldn't turn you down, though I'd also kinda like to know what was actually going on."

"Oh, we're enabling various shuffling around of navies so that the more useful parts of Taldor have its firepower and Cheliax subsidizes a lot of weaponry that ends up in our hands. I think, it's not my area of expertise."

"...huh. Well, uh, I... hope that works out, I guess."

"Me too! I hate all policy we can't set the betting markets on, honestly, but I expect it'll go fine."

"We were going to mess something up?"

"I don't know the details but I assume they wouldn't've called you off if you weren't."

"It could have been that we were going to learn too much. But here you are not even swearing me to secrecy so perhaps it wasn't a consideration."

"I'll be fairly annoyed if you go tell Cheliax but I'd be surprised if that's why they wanted you out of there."

"I do not plan to go tell Cheliax."

"Convenient!"

"Do you mind if I tell my party?"

"Well, are they going to go tell Cheliax?"

"No."

"Are they going to tell everyone in town?"

"I would not expect so."

"Then go ahead. Operation's wrapping up anyway."

"Cool."

"I should look at that report if I'm going to authorize it by tomorrow. Interesting to meet you."

"Likewise."

He sits down and pulls the report out and starts studying it. 

"What do drow say for 'nice to meet you'-"

"Literally 'nice to meet you' but that's awkward, Idiomatically we'd say 'you're over there' - I'm not sure why but I could wildly guess if you like - or 'I'll sleep all right' but that's an insult if you're not careful."

"Huh! Why -"

"My speculation about 'you're over there' is 'I am aware of you and have no special reaction to this' - people take it badly if you start acting really happy about their existence and you just met, it comes off as scammy and weird at a much lower concentration than it does in other cultures, for comparison imagine maybe you're trying to buy something and the salesman puts his arm over your shoulder and starts telling you that you're his favorite person? And 'I'll sleep all right' aims at 'I am not parsing you as a threat to, for example, my future sleeping self, and am not poised to freak out if you twitch' but if you do it wrong it comes off as 'you're pathetic and weak'. Oh, and obviously you don't say 'tonight' about when you sleep, people are on all different schedules underground. If you want to refer to your personal upcoming night-equivalent you say 'quiet hours'."

Vocab lessons are fun.

They are!!! Eventually he will have a better grasp of drow idiom and will thank her earnestly for the language lessons and leave.

Then she too will leave.

As is a habit lately he drops by her hotel.

"Evening. Your theory about doings on the high seas was on the money."

"Oh good. I hate being wrong. Even about politics."

"They're gonna hire me to go down, still dithering on bringing company."

"Is it safe for you to go alone?"

"Uh, sleeping'd be dicey. Maybe they'd loan me a ring, cut it down a bit. Otherwise not that bad unless I have bad luck."

"I'm not that expensive."

"You think I should subcontract if they cheap out?"

"Maybe!"

"You any good at acting? Because you'd have to, to not mostly wreck my presentation as a fellow drow. We show up and it doesn't look like I'm very in charge, they get suspicious."

"I can mostly stay out of trouble on the surface. I don't know what they'd be expecting."

"Uh, my first choice of backstory would be 'oh, I bought him in Katapesh'. Since I don't expect 'em to look up whether you can transport Katapeshi slaves through Osirion."

"Then that works."

"Saves having to come up with a criminal past for you. Wouldn't be the moment for the funny story lever. Do you still have the darkvision goggles?"

"Fazil does but I could get them off him."

"Good, carrying a light for you would look a little weird. You should still have one while I sleep so you can see farther but for travel the goggles're better."

Nod.

"If they want to spring for Fazil too I'd take him and spin it differently, harder to pass off a cleric as a purchase, but if it's just you you'd have to mostly not talk, not evince annoyance when we talk in drow, pretend you don't understand it even if I hit you with a Tongues while nobody's looking, act kind of scared of me, do whatever I tell you to sharpish and with a minimum of followup questions, and carry anything heavy we wind up with."

"All right, I'm in. What's the story if they'll pay Fazil?"

"He could pretty much just go as himself and sell the thing where Abadar is just super into trade, you'd be with him, I'm your loosely native guide - we don't want to look like, altogether, an adventuring party, adventuring parties from the surface are typically bad news and it's not unheard of for them to contain ethnic drow, so I can't look that assimilated."

Nod.

"I'm making it sound very complicated but it could wind up being a pretty simple trip. Go down, bother a mushroom farmer for directions, buy a bolt of silk and haul it topside so I win a bet, easy."

"Win a bet?"

"There is a market in how long till trade goods from a drow country are freely available for sale! Unfortunately it was worded so I couldn't clean up by selling stuff I have owned for more than three years."

"How inconsiderate of the Prince Merenre."

"So inconsiderate! I like my boots but way less than I like the boots I could get for what I woulda won."

"I guess it could be argued that the taxpayers shouldn't be buying you boots but I think they could stand to be more generous, really."

"The people who bought into a betting market without checking whether I bought my boots downstairs would be buying them."

"Ah, well, that's on them. - you're probably not the only one here with drow souvenirs, I guess. Might be the only one who bought them."

"If someone got their hat off a dead drow that doesn't mean the hat was drow-made. We steal, you know. But I can vouch for the provenance of my stuff."

"Well, we'll have to run off with their money some other way. When do they want you to leave?"

"Said authorizing it tomorrow but didn't give a departure date."

"Pretty quick moving when they wanted us out of the sea."

"Yeah, I think it'll be soon, but that could mean tomorrow or the next day or in a few."

Nod.

"How much will subcontracting you run me?"

"Haven't got anything better to do. I guess you should feed me."

"What, no hazard pay? You have to look the part, you don't have to get that deep into character."

"Fine, toss me a thousand, but 's not really a lot of hazard. Know a guy who'll raise me."

"You could get captured and sold into actual slavery, if it goes pear shaped enough."

"If this is not an improvement on getting my guy to raise me it seems likely to be possible to turn into that."

"...I mean, you'd probably manage eventually but the struggle over whether you are permitted to thus ruin your purchaser's investment wouldn't be the most fun time you've ever had. I think I can navigate the situation but unless you have actual practice biting through your tongue as an emergency measure I wouldn't count out some nasty midgames altogether."

"Are you trying to talk me into demanding more money? I will also take two thousand."

"I don't actually have a strong opinion on how much money you should charge but I want us to be mutually clear on what you're charging it for!"

"I do a lot of stupid shit for only moderately good reasons and I don't really have an endgame, now that Fazil and Mahdi are talking about retiring. Can't exactly settle down uptown with a girl, a housekeeper and a cook."

"If you say so.

You ever think about settling down overseas, would that work?"

"Dunno. I'd - I don't know for sure Abadar wouldn't pick my kids."

"You could probably find a way to not have any. I can just see you married to a strix or something wacky like that."

"Maybe? It feels like it'd be a bit of a sham but maybe I'd feel differently about it if I met the perfect strix."

"Why would it be a sham? I mean, assuming for the sake of argument they have acceptable marital practices, I only met one briefly."

"Like - you were talking about how part of what a marriage is, for you, is the buying thing, and it'd just be a bit sad to get married but only a little bit - I think I kinda feel that way about a marriage without my family's permission or any plans to have my own family - it'd be shaped so much by all the things it was dodging being that I don't know if it'd have the things I'd want."

"Oh, I guess that makes sense. Leaves you kind of squished in the negative space."

"Yeah. If I don't have kids for some good reason, that's one thing, if I end up defying my parents, that's one thing, but I don't like having it shaped that much from the get-go."

"I will screen any strixes I meet so they're recommended for more than just laying eggs, then."

"'s not the end of the world. I'll probably run ruins for a while, die eventually, meet someone after that."

"Worse ways to end up."