He watches her and occasionally smiles encouragingly until Fazil wakes up. Then he goes back to sleep.

And eventually they reach the port city of Xer.

It's smaller than most of the other cities they've been to. It looks to be in even worse condition than Isger. There are still plenty of ships in the harbor, but many of the homes and businesses have been boarded up. There are obviously homeless people in the streets. There are also people wearing gold masks and dark robes, especially near the harbor, where they can be seen boarding and leaving ships.

They will just keep their heads down and hide the carpet while out of sight and look like foreigners but not ones up to any trouble. Ideally.

Is there an inn?

Yep! Not quite as nice as the others, but it has a roof and some empty rooms.

That's all they need. 

Then the woman at the counter can give them a room number and a key.

"You're aware that worship of all deities besides the living god Razmir is strictly prohibited in Razmiran?"

"We are," says Fazil, "thank you."

"Okay. Don't make trouble."

They have one large room with two beds and a nook with a table. There's a window facing the lake.

Well looks like no one's changing clothes, then.

They sit, kind of tense.

He wants to ask Korva if she only talks to people when alone or what but this would be - rubbing it in, that they were alone, so he cannot. He stares out the window instead.

She flops on one of the beds. "So where's the lead?"

"There used to be a university in this city," says Fazil. "We don't know if it's still open, or where the people who used to do research there might have fled, if it has closed. But they published some books about the Deep Plane. If they're still around they'll be our greatest asset."

"Do we know where in the city it was?"

"No. We'll probably have to ask around, which is awkward, might draw attention."

Nod.

Oh ha there's a way to access alternate-Korva who has a personality - "did you ask Fazil? About Augury?"

" - what? Oh. No."

Well probably he shouldn't push it.

"Mmm?" says Fazil.

"Uh. Hagan mentioned that you had a spell that let you ask Abadar whether something would go well or poorly. I guess I have the impression that you don't use it very often and was kind of wondering why that was."

Laugh. "It's very limited. It's not prophecy, to be clear, prophecy's misbehaving for Abadar as for everyone else, it's just a locally-very-knowledgeable glance at events that can tell, say, if there's a dragon your party can't handle right around the corner, or alternatively if proceeding at full speed will let you come to a burning orphanage in time to save the children. It's fine to use if you are ever unsure which of those two states you're in. But for the more complicated problems people usually really have, I find that level of assurance is easy to overrely on.  There's nothing wrong with using crutches when you have a broken leg but you'll mess up your stride, if you use them all the time because you're not confident in walking, and the same thing about trying to make minute-to-minute decisions with direct divine guidance. I know, broadly, what I'm supposed to be doing, and I know that I'm meant to do it with my own will and my own perspective and my own goals or Abadar would just do it himself. If you check in too often you're just - I don't know, if the crutches doesn't do it imagine a toddler imitating older children at play, only they're having fun and the toddler is just trying to move all the toy soldiers exactly where he saw his big brother move them. Imitation at the small scale impeding imitation at the scale that actually matters."

"Also it's a pretty frustrating spell."

"Yes, also Hagan hates it and if we do things on Augury's word he'll mope the whole time."

"I see."

"Did you want me to check something for you? It really does have to be very immediate, "should we go downstairs now" is fine - I guess now that we have the teleport we have more scope for immediate actions to ask about -"