"Pharaoh says maybe just call it privatized noninstitutional incarceration. Also Osirion has abolished slavery and now has that."

"Charming."

"He's talking to you somehow?"

"He just used a Message spell to confirm that they can conduct the scrys for us, after I said I thought they were probably doing that."

"That sounds really useful, we don't have a spell that works like a phone call."

"It only works at very close range or while scrying someone, so it's fairly expensive. It's convenient for something like this, though."

"Oh, yeah, we have close range options, but not scrying like you have."

"The pharaoh is an alternate of Timothy and I?'

"Yes, and very pleased to meet you but security constraints don't permit him to leave the plane and hang around a crowd of people that apparently includes a notorious mass murderer."

"That wasn't in the emails I got."

"What does 'notorious' even add, would it be safer if I were an obscure mass murderer -"

"I don't know about safer but we wouldn't know your family from the history curriculum."

"Why did you ...do a mass murder."

"They stole something of ours which we needed and we'd told them we would go take it if they didn't give it back and they didn't give it back."

"I guess there are reasons that are harder to work with."

"Speaking of how the pharaoh is apparently spying on us, can he do that, like, at any time, because that's not cool."

"There are spells that counter scrying. I'd be pretty surprised if you couldn't alter the protections on your house to do it, though I guess I don't know how our magic systems will interact. There are also expensive magic items that block it. You can also sometimes throw it off, scrying on an unwilling target has fairly low reliability. The pharaoh obviously does not habitually spy on strangers but most people who care a lot about no one spying on them adopt protective magic."

"Most rich people. Weren't they having trouble finding you before?"

"Were the wards already blocking you?" he asks the ceiling. " - yeah, that's it. Okay, no one can target a scry inside your house but one was able to follow me, you can maybe tweak it to prevent even that. It's true that most poor people can't do anything about anyone spying on them but the retail price of a scry is more than most people make in two years so this doesn't come up much."

"Hey, I wanna go to the alternate Earth the Andalites are having their war on with something for translation that'll last me a few hours. Now. Or, not now, but at the time I'll get it if I ask now. Aim me at - there." She has a map on her pocket everything and is pointing somewhere in the Rocky Mountains. "Do I need to leave the ward?"

Blink. "No, though I suspect you won't be able to get back into it. Are you going alone?"

"Kefin'll catch up. If anyone else wants to tag along I can probably work around them but I'm feeling a lightweight team on this one."

Merenre raises an eye at one of the wizards in his entourage. 

       "Extended Tongues."

"You know that Plane Shift misses by up to five hundred miles?"

"I said aim me there, not that that's where I hope to land."

" - all right. Good, uh, luck."