"Uh, my first choice of backstory would be 'oh, I bought him in Katapesh'. Since I don't expect 'em to look up whether you can transport Katapeshi slaves through Osirion."

"Then that works."

"Saves having to come up with a criminal past for you. Wouldn't be the moment for the funny story lever. Do you still have the darkvision goggles?"

"Fazil does but I could get them off him."

"Good, carrying a light for you would look a little weird. You should still have one while I sleep so you can see farther but for travel the goggles're better."

Nod.

"If they want to spring for Fazil too I'd take him and spin it differently, harder to pass off a cleric as a purchase, but if it's just you you'd have to mostly not talk, not evince annoyance when we talk in drow, pretend you don't understand it even if I hit you with a Tongues while nobody's looking, act kind of scared of me, do whatever I tell you to sharpish and with a minimum of followup questions, and carry anything heavy we wind up with."

"All right, I'm in. What's the story if they'll pay Fazil?"

"He could pretty much just go as himself and sell the thing where Abadar is just super into trade, you'd be with him, I'm your loosely native guide - we don't want to look like, altogether, an adventuring party, adventuring parties from the surface are typically bad news and it's not unheard of for them to contain ethnic drow, so I can't look that assimilated."

Nod.

"I'm making it sound very complicated but it could wind up being a pretty simple trip. Go down, bother a mushroom farmer for directions, buy a bolt of silk and haul it topside so I win a bet, easy."

"Win a bet?"

"There is a market in how long till trade goods from a drow country are freely available for sale! Unfortunately it was worded so I couldn't clean up by selling stuff I have owned for more than three years."

"How inconsiderate of the Prince Merenre."

"So inconsiderate! I like my boots but way less than I like the boots I could get for what I woulda won."

"I guess it could be argued that the taxpayers shouldn't be buying you boots but I think they could stand to be more generous, really."

"The people who bought into a betting market without checking whether I bought my boots downstairs would be buying them."

"Ah, well, that's on them. - you're probably not the only one here with drow souvenirs, I guess. Might be the only one who bought them."

"If someone got their hat off a dead drow that doesn't mean the hat was drow-made. We steal, you know. But I can vouch for the provenance of my stuff."

"Well, we'll have to run off with their money some other way. When do they want you to leave?"

"Said authorizing it tomorrow but didn't give a departure date."

"Pretty quick moving when they wanted us out of the sea."

"Yeah, I think it'll be soon, but that could mean tomorrow or the next day or in a few."

Nod.

"How much will subcontracting you run me?"