"The fun thing about the prevalence of bigotry is that for you guys the Onyx would be a splurge but for me it's an incredible bargain because the proprietor only charges me as much as he charges everyone else!"

"Good on him! Is that the drow or the gender, a girl adventurer told me once that the only hotels that let a single woman book a room are really classy or really, uh, not."

"It can be either or both! I have gotten both 'what even the hell are you' and 'who's escorting you, miss, we'll be happy to show you to a room as soon as he's here', plus 'aren't you that kind of elf where the women are crazy, get out of here'. But the Onyx guy has a sign up with prices, and I said 'how much for a room', and he said 'I have a sign, don't waste my time' and I immediately put down a week's worth in advance including breakfast and dinner because you have to reward that sort of thing."

This makes them all three smile. "Good for him. We'll stop by tomorrow, if that's all right?"

"Sure, as long as you aren't going to be terribly startled six months from now when people are wondering what I've done with our baby."

"Well, I'd given up my grand ambitions of marrying into the Dome."

"You can carry a frog around and say you Polymorphed it 'cause they're easier to take care of."

"Ha! I assume that doesn't work well because I know somebody's tried it but it'd flummox a garden variety idiot."

"Please don't try it on any real babies, I expect they'd miss developmentally essential nurturing and turn out terribly wrong."

"That would be my guess about why it's not popular downstairs!"

They're starting to attract stares. 

He shakes his head. "All right. See you tomorrow! Thank you!"

"Seeya." She goes into the Onyx with a wave.

And they drop by the next morning for an overpriced brunch.

"I did a couple scries," he says. "None gave us anything good to get a location off. It's worth trying to get more names from her, I think."

Belmarniss wraps up some breakfast pastries as bribes. "What all did you see?"

"One of them was sleeping. He did very considerately leave a light on next to him but I need angles of shadows to start guessing at a location. Another one was abovedeck but it was cloudy."

"And we don't have weather data, all right."

"I'll keep trying both of them and probably catch one abovedeck eventually but some more to work with would also be good."

"You noted the time in case they have consistent sleep schedules?"

"Yeah. Got one last night and one this morning." He makes a face.

"He spent three hours scrying this morning and two of them made their saves," says Hagan, patting him on the shoulder. "We should all be in awe of his sacrifices."

"Poor Mahdi. So long-suffering. So well-incentivized to get me leveled."

"We should go fight a sea dragon right now."

"Here're the names that I want you to check."

She takes the list. "Unless anybody wants more cantaloupe or something I'm ready to go."