She is. "Some people invaded my country. We need to move a lot of soldiers so we can defend ourselves."

"Oh, you poor dear! What country? Is it far from here - you're gonna provide and pay for transport, yes...?" 

"It's called Cheliax. It's very far from here, it's on another world. We'll pay for and provide transport, we can travel between worlds fine, we just can't move large numbers of soldiers."

The woman looks kind of dubious. "Never heard of it, dearie." She does keep walking, though. 

They are inconvenienced by some street performers who seem to have gotten into a brawl with a different set of street performers who thought they had booked the same section of street to perform in. 

In Cheliax this doesn't happen. ...didn't happen. Right now there are presumably soldiers running through the streets of Egorian and much worse is happening.

Do your job, girl. She glares at the street performers and tries to skirt around the brawl.

Mama Raine bulls her way through, glaring as well. They manage to reach a tavern.

However, several uniformed City Watch officers are currently out front, apprehending a ginger-haired, ruddy-complexioned man who seems to be trying to talk his way out of it, but with a sheepish, guilty expression and an obvious lack of success. 

Mama Raine barges in. There is shouting. 

"- What do you mean, arrested on gambling charges?" she barks. "You hand him back to me right now - I'll box his ears for you, promise, but we're shopping for a contract here, this young dearie needs her country saved." 

Is this the kind of country where offering a bribe is a good idea or a terrible idea that'll escalate the whole situation. ...she'll follow Mama Raine's lead. 

"I need them to Gate soldiers to our capital city and stop the madman who just invaded it."

The Guard officers are not having it. Or, at least, they are set on dragging Mama Raine's mage to the watch house and then maybe he can be remanded back to Mama Raine's tender mercy. Later today. 

Mama Raine argues for a while and then flings up her hands. "Fine! We'll pick him up in a candlemark. Where's Pioter?" 

Pioter is apparently still upstairs in the tavern, having not been arrested on gambling charges and having wisely kept his head down rather than go down with his fellow mage. 

They go upstairs. 

Probably everyone else is having better luck because she's having the worst luck. 

She tries to smile professionally at Pioter.

Pioter is friendly and pleasant and very chatty - and also, as it turns out five minutes into the conversation, does not know how to do Gates; he's a weak Master-level mage and he's spent his entire career specializing in flashy combat and thus doesn't have great control. Possibly he could get one of his fellow mages to teach him the spell on short notice, if she's going to give them that much gold, but he doesn't think he's strong enough to do that many or that far. 

Ah well. They kind of need to move a lot of troops. 

"Can we ask - the one who quit - about one last day of work - nice pile of money for him to get married with -"

Yes, of course, they'll have to find him though, they can go to his soon to be father-in-law's house to find out where he is. 

Sure. 

(Aaaaaahhh.)

They trek there, fortunately it's a smaller city than most in Cheliax and doesn't take that long, but it is getting very hot and humid. 

The father's wife answers. Apparently Ratek and his fiancée are shopping for wedding apparel in the nice part of town. Mama Raine thanks the lady gruffly and forges off with Ramira in that direction. 

Ramira knows Endure Elements but she didn't prepare it this morning because no one told her this morning there was going to be a war which would involve mercenary recruiting in another country. Instead she will suffer. She reminds herself that it is a taste of the world to come, and you get used to that.

They find the Adept mage and his girlfriend at a fancy shoe store. The streets in this part of town are cleaner and there are no beggars in alleyways. 

Ratek seems pretty distracted by the burden of organizing a wedding. "Yes, what do you want?" His girlfriend is flushed and beaming and hanging off his arm. 

"I need some Gates very badly. Today. I know you're getting married really soon but we could pay absurdly well and it'd just be one day of work. My country was invaded this morning and we need to move our army so we can fight back."

Ratek hears her out and seems sympathetic to her plight and also very, very tempted by the promise of help with wedding expenses; he keeps glancing at all the clearly very expensive stores on the block. 

His sweetheart, however, is almost hysterical about the prospect of her beloved going off to help with a WAR which might be DANGEROUS and he could DIE on the eve of their wedding! She doesn't want him to do that at all! She's spent the last three years worried sick about him every time the company went off on a contract and he PROMISED he was done with that life and they could settle down and have a civilized, safe, comfortable life in the city! 

"We can include in the contract a paid-for resurrection if anything happens to him," she tries to assure the girlfriend. "And you could start your new life with enough money neither of you ever have to work again."

Okay now both of them seem to think she's probably lying because they've never heard of resurrection as a real spell that actually works, the Adept is pretty sure it's impossible and now wants to question all the other details of her story too. 

Gah - She's from another world. Her magic doesn't work like theirs; she doesn't know exactly how theirs does work but she can demonstrate Tongues, which is about to run out anyway. And she can demonstrate that there is more gold in her Bag of Holding than ought to fit in there, she hasn't seen anything like that in this city yet and maybe they don't have it. Different world, different magic, including resurrections, perfectly standard term of a contract, see, it's mentioned in some of the sample contracts she has on hand.

Wow, huh, all of that seems pretty convincing even though it's also absurd, and Ratek is starting to look tempted again and his fiancée is placated by the ridiculous amount of gold and looking hopefully across the street at a dress store. 

- and then a little boy comes tearing down the street. "Hey pretty lady sorry to bother you can you please please hold this for me for a bit I'll be right back–" and he shoves a bag into her hands and keeps running. 

...well maybe they can negotiate contract terms right here, then, if she wants to ...stay so that she can hold onto that bag for that random child?

They start discussing contract terms, with the active cooperation of Ratek's sweetheart - 

- and then the City Watch shows up again, five of them, with an angry shopkeeper on their heels, and they break up the conversation and start loudly accusing Ramira of stealing jewelry, gesturing at the bag she's holding, one of them has cuffs and wants to cuff her right then and there and haul her off to the watchhouse. 

Oh, good, she's glad someone came to pick up the jewelry, she was worried there was something suspicious going on there but leaving it in the middle of the street seemed worse. She's been engaged in contract negotiations for mages all morning and been with people the whole time and also obviously wouldn't have stolen anything because there are five hundred pounds of gold in her cargo bag, but it makes sense they'd want to clear things up, do they have truth magic?