The people below talk for a while. Then Mahdi sits down at the base of the rope and Hagan wanders off.

"What do you think they're gonna do?"

"Dunno. Lawful good, right? Can't break the laws and can't ignore the people, not if they don't want it to count against them. I doubt they have to fix the problem, though. Probably just have to talk it over long enough that they feel like they considered it, even if they know the answer already. Maybe spend some spells on healing."

Sigh.

She keeps watching the people.

Fazil comes back first, after about three hours. He is soaked through and muddy.  

"How're you two?" he asks when he reaches the top. "Sorry 'bout the mud."

"I can fix it!" She starts up prestidigitation. "Uh, we're fine. How're things down there?"

"Very good," he says tiredly. "They're - cold and wet and hungry and they're worried whoever comes out on top in Galt will come here for them before Andoran reverses its policy. I don't know why they think Andoran'll reverse its policy. Healing's not even very good for cold and wet and hungry."

"Could they go somewhere besides Andoran?"

"'pparently most of the countries around here closed their borders with Galt a long time ago. Not very surprising, it's been having revolutions nonstop for decades now. 

Osirion'd take them. But they don't speak the language and it wouldn't be - easy -" He shakes water out of his hair. "Maybe they could go to Osirion and then to Andoran from Osirion? Thirty-six hours of travel if we don't stop, we could fit seven at a time with one person piloting. Maybe twice that if we take some chances with the bag of holding. There's a couple hundred people here. - where's Hagan?"

         "Took the carpet and left after you did," said Mahdi.

" - ugh. I'm out of spells. Would you go and find him -"

          "Then you would be here alone," says Mahdi. 

"Is the being alone thing really really important?"

"You would be entitled to consider it so," says Fazil.

"I don't think we do?"

He glances at Korva.

"I think someone should go find Hagan."

Mahdi goes off down the rope.

"What do you think he's doing?"

"I think he's going to try to airlift everyone into Andoran," says Fazil. "I thought that right away and I didn't pick a fight with him because we have more important priorities right now but - I don't think it'll help very much - and we could use the carpet to get them somewhere that will take them -"

"Won't Andoran just find them out and turn them back again?"

"This is why I want to do something else instead."

Nod.

Mahdi and Hagan return not all that much later.

"You can't leave them here."

        "Yes," Fazil says. "I noticed. You can't move them over, the border's not magic, Andoran will still notice and kick them out."

"I was trying to find people who already have family in Andoran. We can drop them off with the family, harder to notice, more time to figure out - papers or whatever -"

       "We could take them home -"

"Penniless, don't speak the language, visibly foreigners -"

       " - and put them on a ship going to Andoran from Osirion. Andoran takes refugees from us, right?"

"- yeah. We don't have time. My way is a two-hour carpet trip each, yours is a full two days."

       "A bit less. Could put them on a ship in Absalom, maybe, that shaves off another six hours."

"My way they're not worse off if Andoran does find them, they just get sent back here. Your way, they're stranded with no way back to Galt either."

       Fazil sighs.

She absentmindedly cleans them of mud.

"You said earlier your lead in Galt might not last."

"Yeah," says Fazil with a sigh. "Might already be dead, what with the latest revolution."