The shuttle reports back a minute later with the coins.

Excellent. Do they look straightforward to forge? Mhalir asks Carissa to check if they have magical properties to make forgery harder, just in case. 

She Detects Magic on them; they come up ordinary. "I don't think anywhere I've heard of has magic money."

<Well, that makes this easier, anyway.>

They turn all their gold and silver into forged Osirion coins, load Carissa up with a fat purse, and take her down in the shuttle to fly over the city. Mhalir, morphed as a crow, asks her where would be a good neighbourhood to drop her off; they obviously want to minimize how much time they spend wandering the city, since there might be random wizards around with Detect Thoughts. 

She can pick out from the shuttle where the magic shops are, and cast Tongues on herself, and go.

(Her plan is not to do anything suspicious, but she's not going to try to resist any spells anyone casts on her; if they are suspicious enough to read her mind, good for them). 

Mhalir flies above her, and finds a place to perch where he has a good view of the inside of the shop and can mostly hear the conversations inside through an open window, though occasionally gusts of dusty wind muffle the words. 

Hi, she would like scrolls of Protection from Evil and Air Bubble and Grease and Snowball and True Strike and Sleep and Floating Disk and Silent Image and Chill Touch and Ant Haul and Enlarge Person and Reduce Person and Arcane Lock and Book Ward and Summon Monster II and Spell Gauge and Daze Monster and Admonishing Ray and Scorching Ray and Continual Flame and Hypnotic Pattern and Invisibility and Cat's Grace and Bull's Strength and Bear's Endurance and Owl's Wisdom and Fox's Cunning and Eagle's Splendour and Knock and Rope Trick and Magic Circle Against Evil and Summon Monster III and Clairvoyance and Deep Slumber and Suggestion and Fireball and Tiny Hut and Fly and Shrink Item. 

(This is everything in the shop.)

(Carissa is really confused on many levels but also she's having the time of her life.)

The shopkeeper is confused and suspicious. She figures it's best not to answer questions. "You can check the money as much as you'd like."

Various other words of conversation are audible from Mhalir's perch. "Cheliax." "...not here." "Not married."

Mhalir waits, very nervously. He's more anxious about being somehow stomped on by a disapproving local god than about Carissa betraying him, right now, though he's not completely unconcerned. She knows where more gold and more shuttle rides to various cities would come from. 

<Is that all you need to put the magic in your spellbook?> he asks her once she's done. <Scrolls are not the same as spells in your book, right.> He knows a lot more about wizardry than he did before he was in a wizard's head, and he didn't even get to cast any spells; he's a bit disappointed about that, actually. 

"Not the same but I can work it out and then transcribe it from them." Bounce bounce bounce bounce.

She seems pleased, which Mhalir is happy about. He alerts the shuttle via thoughtspeech, asks for a pickup from a location where no one will see them vanishing into an invisible spaceship. 

Carissa looks intently at her new spells. She's going to push to get to go to Absalom, eventually. And she's going to get a headband - maybe just straight for the highest class of headband, why not - 

- and it honestly doesn't make sense to feel as conflicted as she does. This is fine. This is great.

They hang out in the cloaked shuttle above the city, watching the shop from above in case any suspicious legal authorities show up, and listening from a tiny concealed microphone that a crow could easily carry down. Mhalir doesn't see how they could know, but then again, he can't be sure no one read his mind while he was sitting there in crow form, it wouldn't have felt like anything.

If nothing happens in half an hour he'll take Carissa back to the ship in space, so she can work on her new spells. 

<Where would you go if you wanted to recruit wizards?> he asks her. <Also I could use your advice on a recruiting pitch. Your world has mercenary companies - are some of them very secretive, we could perhaps make that the cover story but I am not sure if it would sound plausible...> 

"Probably Absalom, lots is always happening in Absalom. Some are very secretive but usually those are dangerous to work for. I think I'd just - embrace that, say that it's very dangerous, you'll cover resurrection insurance. But I'm not - I wasn't an adventurer. You could maybe enslave an adventurer who isn't a wizard, just a powerful soldier or something, and get a sense from them of how it's supposed to work."

<The powerful soldiers are also difficult to capture, they are immune to stunning beams. I will think about it. What gods are found in Absalom, and is it full of people with Detect Thoughts?> 

"Yes, it is. Everywhere interesting is full of people with Detect Thoughts, it's a common spell. Maybe you should just invest in a lead helmet. Absalom mostly worships the ascended gods, I think. Since the Starstone is right there. 

Also obviously this is Good-need-not-apply but if you advertise it as Good-need-not-apply that's going to attract a specific crowd even among non-Good adventurers so maybe just turn the Good ones down quietly?"

<...Do lead helmets block it?> He gives her a thoughtful look. <Come to think of it, can you use your magic to cover me against it? I should test whether your magic is something I can learn, but blocking spells is not something I could do at first level anyway.> 

"Magic can do that but only really powerful magic can do it reliably. We can buy an item of it in Absalom, maybe, though not inconspicuously. Detect Thoughts is a divination. It's blocked by a foot of stone, an inch of metal, a fingernail's thickness of lead, or three feet of wood and dirt, like most divinations."

<I might want you to test whether it works for a hawk or pigeon to wear a tiny bird size lead helmet, and how conspicuous it looks, I will be going in bird morph most of the time. If you cannot block it with your own magic we can investigate getting an item in Absalom. You can disguise yourself as other people, right, so it might be suspicious but would not be traceable to our other operations there?> 

"Yeah. Though probably we'd have to commission it and that introduces the possibility of trouble when we go to pick it up."

<Right. We can consider precautions for that. May I read through your list of spells once you have studied all of them?> It's certainly a lot politer than reading her mind about it, he thinks. 

"Once I'm done, you may," she says, because there are no situations that are improved by signaling that you think you are actually being treated unreasonably well, though they're absolutely treating her unreasonably well. They've barely threatened her. It makes it all the more confusing that she feels so conflicted. 

Then Mhalir will do that, and think through his pitch for the mercenary recruiting. He probably does want them to Yeerk someone in the right field, but he feels oddly conflicted about that. 

For now they can just get lots of spells, and test the lead helmet, and if that works then they can make a trip to Absalom after scoping it out from above. First just to buy more spells, and any magic items Carissa wants to have or study. 

They have more gold and silver mined. Mhalir asks Carissa if Osirion coin would be accepted in Absalom, which founds like a very cosmopolitan place, or whether that would be suspicious enough that they should just arrange to steal a few sample coins and forge them again. 

She does not expect that to be suspicious. She should go in looking different so no one connects her with the person who bought out Sothis's magic shops but she doesn't otherwise expect things to be complicated. 

She really wants her ring of sustenance. She keeps having stupid nightmares.

She can have a shuttle ride to Absalom with another laden purse of coins, then, and Mhalir as a hawk wearing a lead helmet perching on a rooftop and watching her closely through the window, though he expects betrayal even less at this point. Mostly he's worried someone will at some point read her thoughts. Probably her main escape plan is hoping someone will do this, and so she won't even try to defend against it. 

Honestly Carissa needs to revisit escape plans, she's getting close to the point of no return where anyone who rescues her is presumably going to consider her complicit in all of this and so she'd better either commit to getting out or commit to not getting out. She wants her headband first, though. She doesn't think that's just being greedy; the headband will maybe help her understand how the Yeerks see the world, and then she can decide if it's worth probably losing everything trying to stop them. 

Going in and buying the most expensive kind of headband would be conspicuous but she can go to one shop and get the cheapest kind, and the ring of sustenance, and a cloak of resistance, and then go to another one and trade in the headband for a better one and buy a reasonable number of scrolls at each. The thought fixed loudly in her mind, in case anyone reads it, is that yes, she is a prisoner buying these on someone else's behalf, but the money is good and they're very dangerous and she doesn't recommend interfering unless they've got a way to Teleport her well out of here immediately.

The headband feels incredible. She studies some of the other magic items, too, until she thinks she might have an idea how to train into wondrous items if it comes up. Or do some kind of hybrid thing, no one does that but it's not obvious you couldn't...