"My mom'd hit me. But only in front of people? Like, she'd do it to demonstrate that she was doing parenting to a socially acceptable standard. She didn't do it when there wasn't anybody around, or even if it was just Sovi."

"That's - I think I'm impressed, if that's not condescending."

"I think she's really impressive but I don't usually go around saying that since, like, to the conventional mind it'd be somewhat overshadowed by the murdering my twin brother thing."

"Lots of people kill their babies, even on the surface."

"Yeah, but if a human does it it's 'that poor girl' and if it's a drow doing it it's 'those awful drow', you know?"

"I hadn't, but - figures."

"This of course being a vague gleaning of the aggregate cultural attitudes of surfacers as a group who vary individually and are not best described as 'those racist surfacers', of course."

"In Osirion I mostly hear 'that stupid whore' but one imagines it varies."

"I guess strictly speaking that isn't racist of them."

"Rovagug: also technically not a racist."

"Are you sure? They say it's down to him that we're pretty colors. Throw in enough prophecy shenanigans..."

"Okay, okay, Rovagug technically not racist when murdering everyone he can, arguably racist when he does other things."

"What if some races are easier to murder?"

"I still feel like that's not exactly racist. If I shoot a fireball into that crowd and by coincidence everyone who dies is a woman I don't know that I'm a sexist mass murderer."

"Hmmm, I suppose."

Speaking of the crowd, it's almost time to go back to pretending that she bought him in Katapesh. "What've you got on you that I can dip into here, it'd be fine if you were carrying all my gold but weird if you were only carrying some of it, I'll give back your change."

"Yes, ma'am." He hands over his gold.

Snort. "Good boy." She counts it, writes down the figure, starts shopping around for diamonds.

Rocks really are cheaper down here. The drow still don't love surface gold, even when its color is displayed and she lets them bite pieces, but she makes the case that the Osirians want to start trading with Shazeun and it'll be easier for a dealer in gems and metals to have coins minted to surfacer standards on hand in advance. One of the merchants takes the bait, calls over her sister, and they unlock the double-locked safe they each have one of the keys to, to get out the diamonds and sock away the gold Belmarniss pays for them.

He stays out of trouble and wonders if there's less demand among the drow for resurrections. You'd think there'd be more because of the lack of law enforcement? And because they don't make Axis?

Eventually she has the diamonds bought and paid for and they can leave Shazeun without further ado.

The best kind of mission, really. He asks his question about resurrections once they're out.

"Don't have stats. I think the rocks are cheaper because mining is an incidental to architecture, more than anything about demand."

"Huh. Everyone aboveground will be delighted."

"Mm-hm! And I get to time the market."

"Merenre must be so happy he found you."

"Does he express that very subtly?"