"Someone was looking for you," a drunk, muscular man applying some paint to his fingernails says to Belmarniss as she walks by. "Drow girl."
"Hey, hey, if you start getting mean then I start getting mean and I'm the one with the nail trimmers."
"But seriously? Is it Osirion? Asking because the pharaoh is my brother and I want to give him a hard time about it over our next family dinner."
"Well, your grace, prince among mermaid food," says the bantery pirate, "you tell him that funding pirates is a great idea and he should do lots of it and start with us, just let us go and send us right back out again."
"I told you to shut up."
"Except for him," continues the first, "he needs to go to a monastery and work on his sense of humor, that's what they're for as I understand it."
"I'm not going to call you 'your grace', I am very sensitive about people's grace what with my chronic tripping condition," remarks Belmarniss, helping secure pirates for toting back to Sothis.
"No one's going to call him 'your grace', that's a crime. At least once we're in Osirian waters."
"That's a crime? Wow, I'll avoid it extra hard. Are we allowed to take, sell, and keep the proceeds from the pirate ship?"
"Oh yay, that makes up for discovering this morning I still can't prep scrying. For me. Bet Mahdi's peeved."
They can pay some of the sailors to skeleton-crew the pirate ship home. They're underway by the time Mahdi wakes up.
"They look too wimpy for me to learn anything from my target practice," he says regretfully. "Maybe you should fight me, Hagan."