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- well, she was sitting at her house in the stupid demiplane that Diamond Queen Elizabeth had a bunch of people stuck in, doodling things in her notebook, but now she's somewhere else. They're on the outskirts of a town, near a pedestal with a pendant on it. There's tape around it, but no glass.
She's so tired of this stuff.
She holds him. It's so nice, getting to snuggle him while he sleeps, knowing she's allowed, knowing he trusts her. She is not tempted to try making any terrible decisions. She is maybe the tiniest bit tempted to kiss his forehead. She doesn't. Better not do anything she wouldn't do when he was awake.
She has no idea whether she'll regret - letting herself maybe feel things, letting herself talk about maybe feeling things, with no idea what he means to happen, no idea how seriously he's taking whatever this is. But he cares about her, and he wants her to feel safe, and wants her to feel loved, and she has so little of either that she feels like she'd better not throw it away just because she doesn't immediately have a clear picture of the specifics. Besides, he's important to her. Her friend. Worth more than gold or diamonds, Cecelia said, and you don't throw away gold or diamonds, now, do you.
When they reach the town she wakes him up.
“Right.” He fixes the collar of his weird local clothes. “Does the amulet have a backstory for us?”
"It doesn't know that we'll need an extensive one. Uh - obviously you're from some other region of the planet that has a different dominant language, and possibly your first wife died and then no other unmarried women were around and you were directed to marry me because I was the closest available person who understood you at all, apparently that's the sort of thing that can happen here. Came here for work. We'll probably want to not use tongues on you; apparently these people also mostly don't have magic here, anymore, and they won't understand what's happening. I can just speak for you and we'll find you something that doesn't take a lot of talking. Stable hand, or something."
"Probably wouldn't want to talk to these people much even if you did speak the language, considering."
"I'm pretty sure these people are a lot worse than normal people. They only have the one emotional valence, when they're not in the middle of being insane, and they have this particular set of inane phrases that they keep repeating to each other whenever they don't have anything in particular to say."
A lot bigger than the other; probably not as big as Sothis. Most of the buildings are exactly four stories tall. That's a hospital, this is a school, apartments, apartments, restaurants, stables, apartments, office building, bank, general store, clothing store, more apartments. Everyone has the same vacantly content expression that they did in the other place.
Also it's pretty thoroughly trashed. Looks like they had a festival here, too.
"Did the artifact explain what's up with the festival?" he murmurs as they walk slowly.
"Needed to maintain the mind control. Without it people start slipping in less obvious ways."
This building has a room, it says so in the window.
She stops at it and knocks on the door the pendant instructs her to. There's a man, older than most of the others they've met. He smiles warmly.
"Joy to you, friend," she says, serenely. "My husband and I are new in town. The sign says you have rooms?"
"Of course!" says the old man. "And all members of the Body are welcome to them, for all are one in Landru."
"Landru is in all of us," agrees Korva.
It's a small apartment. One bedroom, a bathroom, and a sort of combined kitchen and dining and sitting room. But the pendant informs them it's cheaper than most, and the old man says it's perfectly well suited to a young couple without any children.
She tells the old man they'll be happy to rent it right away. He doesn't bother checking whether they can pay for it. He offers a few more platitudes, explains that the bathroom sink is broken but will be fixed on Tuesday, and then leaves them alone for the night.
"Well. That was easy, I guess."
"Should we look for work now, do you think, or will we have to wait for morning -"
She checks out the window. "Getting dark. We should probably look early in the morning. - I guess we've sort of wrecked your sleep schedule, huh."
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