"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.

"Not likely to get an apology for the wait," she mutters.

The door opens again and they are shown in and up a flight of stairs and into a sitting room. "You are unfit to hear Her Darkness's voice but her son can interpret," she says, "if they don't know how to use their hands in Noctimar."

"They do."

"You can leave him outside the -"

"He was expensive. So was the silk."

Hiss. She steps out of the room.

This is probably exactly how the pharaoh comes off to foreigners. Though at least he's not fourth level, that'd just be embarrassing.

Eventually the Princess - she's got a crown - shows up. "Belmarniss of Noctimar. Where in Noctimar?" she signs.

"Zalun." Belmarniss speaks aloud.

"I've never been."

"I can imagine why."

"Oh, no, at the time I made a visit to Noctimar it was under other management, but there was a plague there at the time."

"Before I was born."

"Yes, you look very young. What are you doing in Osirion?"

"Adventuring. Didn't like being limited to a schoolgirl's understanding of magic."

"Are there many adventures?"

"Sure. Desert ruins."

"I mislike the idea of all the surfacers knowing how to find us."

"It wasn't that hard. Sothis is a few hours' hike west from the seaside aperture to the north."

"I'll collapse some tunnels, if it's that simple."

"Suit yourself. You could come to them if you wanted."

"I'll tell her you were here," she signs.

"I'm sure," says Belmarniss.

"You're not going to say 'tell who'?"

"I'm a strange wizard with a slave I'm not stashing next to the coatrack and I wouldn't know the Princess to look at her, you're a cousin or something. I don't care, I'm not an assassin, I'm not grievously offended that I didn't get to hear your melodious voice even though you're not in charge, and you probably really will tell her all about it, or you'll send your own loyalists up to sell the surfacers things and bite their gold pieces suspiciously and bring home enough rice to feed an army and stage a coup, or whatever, I don't care, my job is establishing the availability of trade."

"I like you."

"Thanks."

"Is it nice? Surfacer food?"

"What, do they not give the body double cousins whole meals of it even on special occasions?"

"I'm actually a junior cleric."

"Surfacer food is fucking delicious but I won't insult you with any of the travel stuff I packed. Tell the Princess and in a year pomegranates'll be cheap."

Khemet would love this. Well, no, because he'd be a boy and therefore a slave, but Khemet would love this if he were allowed. It's all so ridiculously twisty. 

Belmarniss is - really fascinating, when she's like this.

"I will," signs the junior cleric, laughing silently. "Are you looking to buy anything besides the silk to sell?"

"If I find a real bargain. But I have to know the market at all, you can't dump a cartload of carbonado or bort on me, I don't know what would be a ripoff from you and I don't know what I'd get for it upstairs. Also I'd have to be really confident it was yours."

"It's a really nice cartload of bort."

"Another time perhaps."

"Thank you for coming."

"Is the interpreter her son, or your son, or some unrelated person?"

"There's more than one. You would have gotten her real son."

"Fun. Thank you for speaking to me." Belmarniss gets up, plops her hands on Hagan's shoulders and turns him around so he precedes her out of the room, and backs out of it herself.

And they can get out of there. "Are they all...like that?"

"What, pretending to be other people? Trying to fence stolen goods? Probing for weaknesses?"

"All of the above. So much - lying for no reason."

"There are reasons! Decoy royalty are a thing upstairs too, I've heard of it in surfacer stories although I couldn't tell you who actually does it."

"Probably countries that put low-level casters in charge."

"Oh, no, she could easily be way scarier than that. I was being polite. Ultimately manners are about making people more comfortable, and nothing makes somebody comfortable like knowing you're friendly enough to point out their mistakes unexploited and foolish enough to only identify the decoy mistakes."

"- huh."

"She could also not be very scary. Basically we have no information we didn't have before about that. Also I worry I'm making it sound like there was only one way to play that but it's not a choreographed dance, it's just a whole different set of background assumptions. She could have said Her Darkness was a powerful cleric and I could have said I appreciated that they weren't insisting on the spell resistance thing, and that would've been fine. She could have said that and I could have said, oh, what would Sovi have said, Sovi would have said 'then I bet she knows all about dealing with people more powerful than herself to get shiny things, and lucky me, I have shiny things'."

"- well, I don't think I could do it but luckily I can't do it for unrelated reasons. It's very impressive when you do."

"It's kind of fun but I do like being able to ever stop."