"CIty's very pretty. I guess just because you oppress your men doesn't mean you do the same thing Osirion is doing but flipped."

"We do not! That guy's wife probably just doesn't like working shopfront. Or she's sick or something. It's a wife, not a mom, I've noticed all the obviously married guys around here have their hair over their ears and the ones who obviously aren't have it pulled back behind, I'm not sure if that's a... Shazeun ear modesty... thing or just an arbitrary signal but I'm pretty sure having walked around in there for a bit. Anyway, if you asked him he'd probably tell you he isn't a slave, he's a drow."

"Sure. They don't sell them in markets, they sell them in parlors?"

"There are so many trivial cosmetic differences they can imagine it's not the same thing under the hood. Parlors not markets, they don't do especially low-status work - some women do work shopfront, you don't find drow stirring nightsoil and sand and compost to make farm dirt unless something awful has happened to their family - they usually aren't resold, they get access to their kids by default unless the kids are dead, their wives give a shit about coexisting comfortably with them. Also, like, imagining telling somebody whose general competence as a person gets denominated in gold that if he lived upstairs and was a girl there his family would have to pay somebody to take him off their hands, isn't that the most insulting thing you ever heard."

"Guess so."

"I'd be kinda perversely interested in a study of concrete metrics of marital freedom between drow boys and Osirian girls. How many prospects did they meet, how many got their first choice, like that."

"Ooooh. That sounds interesting. I bet drow men are happier, just because having lots of children with no help is really really rough."

"If you can't afford a milk slave you don't have a kid, or if you fuck up and do have one you kill it immediately, yes. Anyway, it seems pretty chill down here. We can haul the silk up, win my bet, report in, that's really all they paid for, do you think I'll get a tip if I try to find the nearest noble family and pitch them on trade?"

"Probably!"

"See, I don't know why they wouldn't tell me that, I'd have been way more conservative about things without your telling me that and I think they benefit from me knowing. Okay, let's get dinner, you can try the mushrooms, we'll find an inn, should still set a watch in case I look too rich and friendless, and once we're up we can try that."

"All right. I dunno why they do anything they do, really, but you can complain to Merenre about that one when you get back."

"Perhaps I shall."

There are no restaurants in the market. Belmarniss asks directions from a drow girl who looks like she'd be seven if she were human who is muttering Taldane verbs to herself. Belmarniss justifies this interruption by asking also in Taldane. "Hey, where's the kitchen quarter in this city?"

"- what does kitchen mean?"

Belmarniss translates into drow.

"Oh! The kit-chen quarter is through that tunnel and the best place is Yuzua's."

"Is Yuzua your mom, or your grandma?"

"Nope."

"Liar." Belmarniss whistles a little, walking away from the giggling kid.

The tunnel to the kitchen quarter is a lot more crowded, so she can't stop to check in on the way there.

It's bigger than the market quarter across, but shallower, and it's full of restaurants, and a few non-restaurant areas with stoves and grills burning coal and individual drow and slaves cooking things there and hauling them out of the cave. A drow woman is taking coins for the use of the cookers. Belmarniss picks a restaurant without a line, which sells mushroom and fish stew in steel bowls; whether or not it is Yuzua's she doesn't say. She gets two bowls of it and nabs a place to sit which does not have a corresponding one for Hagan; if he looks around he can see there are a couple of slaves also eating restaurant food here today for other reasons and one is kneeling on the ground near his owner to eat off his knees and the other is standing beside the family that seems to own her, so probably he could pick one of those options.

Yeah, he'll stand. 

Osirion is so comparatively reasonable.

She makes short work of the food but strikes up conversation with a woman on the next bench. He can catch the words "Noctimar" and "Katapesh" and "Osirion" and "Shazeun" each once or twice if he's listening. Eventually she stands up and beckons to him and heads out of the kitchen quarter, up and over till she finds an inn. She exchanges gold for a room without ado; despite the watch set there's nothing untoward overnight.

She has directions to where to go looking for the princess of Zeun, from the kitchen quarter. After breakfast - more mushrooms - they descend into a new tunnel that slopes down and then turns into intermittent shallow stairs, spiraling around as it corkscrews deeper into the earth.

"You want a Tongues before we go see if the princess will talk to me? You still wouldn't talk, but you could at least follow along for an hour or so."

"It'd probably be more fun - you sure you won't need it for anything -"

"Don't expect to. On myself I can do comprehend languages and they'll all understand something I know."

Nod.

"Tongues."

And down down down.

He will follow her and stay out of trouble. It's honestly more interesting than lots of adventuring. 

They pass a temple to Baphomet. The people inside are chanting in unison about finding the way through a maze.

After the temple there's a fork, they go left, and Belmarniss knocks. With a ghost sound rather than actually touching the door.

There's a bit of a wait.

The door swings open.

It's a palace; it's maybe even more like the palace in the Dome than most palaces are, since it doesn't rely much on windows for its architectural interest. The drow woman who opens the door is wearing some kind of drapey silken uniform. "Who are you?" she asks.

"I'm Belmarniss of Noctimar, and I have a proposition for the Princess that can make her very rich," she says.

"Tell me and I'll relay it," says the woman.

"The surfacers nearest an aperture not too far from Zeun are worshipers of Abadar, who for all his surfacer nonsense is committed to avoiding war and promoting trade. The country under his guidance is likewise obsessed and they'd most likely neither attack nor cheat the people of Shazeun, but they'd practically drown you in grain and sugar and cotton for ore and magic items and silk, if you let them."

"What's your interest?" wonders the woman suspiciously.

"Oh, they're paying me. And I have a bet riding on it. I can probably win the bet by taking that silk up with me," she gestures at the silk, "but it'd be a surer thing if I brought them news of the Princess's interest. I don't need to see her in person."

"Wait here." She shuts the door.

She's very good at this. He assumes. Maybe someone'll stab them and he'll have to reconsider. But it seems like she's very good at this. Very small smile.

She smiles back a little.

The door opens. "I want you to drop your spell resistance -"

"And I want you to step on a sharp rock but we aren't getting what we want."

"I don't know if you're really a drow, let alone a neutal visitor from Noctimar."

"You thought I had spell resistance."

"Well, how do you think you can prove yourself?"

"My willingness to walk away. If you have the spellcraft for it I can show you my daylight skin but somehow I don't think so."

She hisses a little. "Her Darkness is a powerful cleric, know that."

"You're not telling me her level, so it's less than five, but I'm not here to squash her, I'm here to hook her up with enough sun crops that she can bribe everybody with a tongue and still have enough to take a bath in honey."

The woman closes the door.

Just hanging out quietly over here.