She leaves.

Chal takes much longer to say anything.

When he looks up he doesn't recognize Belmarniss; he squints at her, figures out how to turn his head, looks at his wife.

"It's Niss," says Rynaeri. "Sovi's at home. We'll get her when we're ready."

Chal looks at Belmarniss for a bit. Then he looks at Hagan. Belmarniss says, "He's my adventuring companion. - I'm a sorcerer like Mom and a wizard on top of that."

Chal considers this. Spends a few minutes working out the process of adjusting his cloak.

About an hour later Belmarniss convinces him into the rest of his clothes and he winds up sitting on the floor with his head in Rynaeri's lap, still quiet. When the sun is low outside, Rynaeri casts a Floating Disk and piles her husband onto it and they follow Belmarniss out.

Belmarniss asks the receptionist on the way if Nefreti does consultations or if the cryptic advice must be had only incidentally in passing.

"Uh, we can put in a request but she usually declines them. What about, she's more likely to accept if it's about original magic research."

"It's about some things she said incidentally in passing about me and my, uh, adventuring career - and how many of me there are whatever that means - has she got a glossary - but I have some original magic research projects cooking if that will get me the opportunity to encounter more incidentals, there's a spell downstairs for letting allies through spell resistance that I'm wondering if it can be adapted to various other purposes."

"I'll put in a request. You'll have to make a substantial donation even if she accepts, so you know."

"How substantial?"

"Probably around another thousand."

"Well. Not this month I guess. If she does wanna tell me anything about... how many of me there are or whatever... I can usually be reached at the Onyx."

And she catches up to her parents.

He will shadow until she has them settled in, just in case.

"I was expecting this to be a weird day but I did not see the way it was weird coming."

"Nefreti? I hadn't met her before but everyone says Nethys drives his clerics a bit crazy, eventually."

"She knew about my brother. Though I guess I could be reading into it."

"Yeah. She might have, but also - fake two-bit psychics with a ball that can't scry sometimes do a damned good job, just mumbling under their breath and seeing what you react to."

"Or it could've been a lucky guess just 'cause we're drow, in retrospect. Though there being only one dead one is a lowball."

"Tried writing it down. So you could read it back over when you were less distracted. I probably fucked it up, but."

"No, that'll help a lot even if you only got the occasional word actually, I'll try to reconstruct it without looking and then check against yours, see where it's fuzzy."

"If she wasn't making shit up I still don't know what she meant by lots of you. Unless she was just being racist, I guess."

"I mean to ask her at some point, although it's likely that my intention to do so will not keep pace with the substance of the requested donation."

"If it's a scam it's a very comfortable one. That palace is as nice as the pharaoh's."

"Oh, how would you know." She elbows him.

"Ah, you see, I was born a girl in Qadira, and shipped to Osirian as a slave, and chosen for the pharaoh because of my great beauty. But he was no great beauty himself so I ran away by weaving a girdle of sex change out of my own hair and then walking out in a guard's uniform."

"I didn't know you could weave!"

"Well, only when I was a girl. The girdle of sex change does a number on that kind of thing. I cannot cook or flirt anymore either."

"Oh no, a terrible tragedy. And your great beauty, of course, that's gone too."

"The price I paid for my freedom was terrible indeed."