" - could detour to Absalom," says Mahdi, "they'll have it."

"Sure," says Fazil.

The carpet turns.

Bounce bounce.

And by lunchtime they touch down in Absalom.

Absolom is the city that Aroden made when he became a god; it's where the Starstone is; it's enormous and sprawling, even compared to Sothis, with city as far as the eye can see. The harbor is full of sunken warships. 

"All right, let's find a bookstore," Fazil says.

She giggles excitedly and follows.

She follows. Without the excited giggling.

Absalom's streets are full of animals, including camels, dogs, lizards, elephants, axe beaks and monstrous centipedes, with people riding them. There's an enormous building on a corner with attention-catching glittering lights and a shiny gold nude woman circling in front of it; Fazil steps between this and Zara and herds her in a different direction. 

There are bookshops! They have instruction on sorcery and on Celestial. It's not cheap. Mahdi pulls quite a bit of gold out of his coin purse.

"Eeee! Thank you thank you thank you - "

"You had better study every day," he says to her, "and never use magic when we tell you not to."

"I will! I promise!"

Then they can buy lunch while they're here - some fried seafood kabobs and sticky dough things - and then head back out.

She happily reads her books.

And they point their carpet north again. Mahdi reads too. Fazil and Hagan talk softly in Osirian. 

Sigh.

She looks out over the water and doesn't do anything at all.

At some point Mahdi puts his book away and they switch to speaking in Taldane, possibly to be inclusive of her. It's still entirely gossip about people she hasn't heard of. Some recent projects failed spectacularly, delaying someone's retirement - "that's why it's dangerous to say 'I'll retire after this one', Mahdi says - some investors are mad - someone asked if Mahdi and Fazil and Hagan wanted to accompany a big expedition out to Tien - Mahdi's parents want him to settle down and tried to wave a bunch of girls at him to this effect -

"Do you expect you will?"

"Well, like I just said, you should never say 'I'm about to retire,' he says, grinning. "But we've been planning around the possibility I'll have Teleport, pretty soon, and - you can support a family comfortably in Sothis, doing a Teleport once a week."

"I suppose that makes sense."

"Or I could go a little longer, get to where I have two Teleports a day, do one outgoing one every morning and then come right back. You can buy anything outside the dome, that kinda money. Have fifteen kids. I'll put off all the girls if I ask them if they want fifteen kids."

"Ideally you put off all but one of them. Isn't that how courting works?"

"I thought Osirians didn't have that rule."

"Osirians are permitted more than one wife but it's not usually a good idea," says Fazil. "If your first wife can't have children or doesn't care for your company after a couple years that's different, but you shouldn't start out planning for it.  - at least I don't think so."

"I see."

"Being married at all will be enough of an adjustment," says Mahdi. 

"Does everyone in Osirion marry?"

"Nearly," says Mahdi.

"People in Osirion think of marriage very differently than people in Avistan," says Fazil. "- I don't know anything about Cheliax in particular."