Ah, what a normal thing for a city to have a contingent of.

Despite its highly opinionated exterior design, the inside of the Manus is mostly a normal city, just with wider roads and different styles than Liscor, and a heavier touch of urban planning than Zeres. The city's escalating layers of defense are, it turns out, cheating: the throughfare from the gates reveals a sloping geography to the land, meaning the inner rings are built on higher ground than the outer. With a straight shot uphill and what seems to be an implicit [Drivers]' lane that pedestrians keep clear of, the carriage makes good pace for the city center.

Their identification gets checked again at the inner walls. The other passengers have their passports stamped, and Blai is issued a temporary travel document which is also stamped. The inner city has a stronger resemblance to a military town, less casually residential, the stores hawking more practically oriented wares, conspicuously nondescript buildings haunting the side streets, and uniforms or armor spotted here and there in the mix of people.

Their stop is one such large, nondescript building, off a nice but low-traffic avenue beneath the final walls that cordon the innermost citadel. A doordrake confirms who they are and summons someone to receive them.

Blai treats his temporary travel document with great care. It goes in his pocket and he keeps a hand over the pocket.

The staff will show Blai to his accommodations and explain how to arrange meals. It's well past sunset, so he has the rest of the night to himself.

"I will make arrangements for tomorrow," Ferris says. "You'll be working with a [Source Handler] to work out the details of the exchange. Wall Lady Rafaema may also wish to meet you."

That's such a specific class. How do you even get that class, how many Sources are they Handling. "Understood."

Then Blai will be left his own devices until next morning, when he will be informed that he's expected at some room two hours to noon.

He can count time by Prestidigitation durations if there's not a clock around. He arrives punctually.

They have clocks! Not all guests have Prestidigitation durations to tell time. When the time comes, the handler is already there, a female Drake with an implacable demeanor and grounding aura, who introduced herself by name, no title.

"I'm a source handler, reporting directly to Manus' central intelligence forces," she says. "If you're not familiar, that means my job here isn't to pull whatever metaphorical teeth I have to in order to make Lady Rafaema's pet project go well. It's to make sure we reach an arrangement everyone is satisfied with, and that you feel empowered and safe to reach out or be reached out to by Manus if similar circumstances arise again. Does that make sense?"

"I believe so."

"So the brief says you have information to trade on the potential identity or location of a dragon, in exchange for commuting an associate's charges to nominal military service. And that you have sources other than yourself which you could be willing to name, but which may or may not want to work with us. Am I missing anything major, or is there anything you want to add to that?"

"That's all correct."

"Are there any elements of that information which, if disclosed, you foresee complications, conflicts of interest, or conflicting obligations against?

"In and of itself no."

"If we close the deal such that you tell us everything you know about this dragon, and in exchange Manus commutes your associate's sentence as offered, do you foresee anything going wrong with that?"

"I can imagine things that might but do not foresee them, no."

"One of the tripping points we encounter often, with second-hand information, is details about how upstream sources came to have the information, or what they plan to do with it, or what they meant to achieve by distributing it. Could there be any concerns with sharing those details?"

"Possibly as regards that last thing."

He can say what they plan to do with it, but not what they meant to achieve by distributing it?

"Would that be due to a danger to you, a danger to your source, because it was told in confidence, because you don't want us to know it, or some other reason?"

"I don't believe it was intended to be kept in strict confidence, though due to the confidence around this deal itself I was not at liberty to check. It's complicated."

"It's a little surprising that you'd be willing to share what they plan to do with the information, but not what they intend by distributing it. At this stage you don't have to explain if you don't prefer to, but just to confirm that I'm understanding you correctly?"

"I can see why that would be surprising. It's possible that I am not intuitively dividing up those categories in the same way you would."

"There are a lot of confusing elements about your association with parties we suspect to be involved based on knowledge already at our disposal, which it would be productive to have clarified, but I don't know if you consider that information sensitive or valuable in its own right."

"I don't know whether to expect withholding details of that nature to make a difference to the Voyager's outcomes, and I am doing so on a precautionary basis."

"But after a commutement of her sentence is guaranteed, or as an element of the exchange for it, you would be willing to share?"

"If I am correct about the nature of your curiosity there, yes."