Araari is going to just.... let everyone else have opinions on how much money they should spend on a hotel, given that she doesn’t exactly have much.

Okay but they don't just let anyone off the street get a look at their supply, do they. How about the Kingsway Inn, it's more of a walk but feels less likely to get them mugged going home at night and isn't actually outside of the city.

Siiiigh the Kingsway Inn is fine. Given that the nice one is inconveniently located. Or at least might be. She supposes they have absolutely no reason to believe that the cult is located in Valetta.

The first thing Mordred finds out in the city records is that Montgomery Donovan is a woman.

There's lots of property and paperwork in Montgomery’s name – specifically a harbor-view townhouse in western Valetta near the Great Siege Road, the yacht Elegance (previously registered to one Peter Lukas), and a warehouse owned by her in the western end of the southern harbor. But there’s nothing particularly revealing about any of the information. The records paint a picture of a very wealthy woman with almost no legal footprint.

Peter Lukas is a former ship captain who currently owns four freighters: the Thyrsus, the Odysseus, the Fatima, and the Sea Empress. He primarily specializes in shipping textiles.

Montgomery's warehouse also has textiles. Obviously. Very wealthy textile-shipping businesswoman here.

Of course.

...Well, that makes Peter Lukas seem a bit more suspicious, if textiles might be a euphemism. Anyone else who works with her in the textile business?

Not according to these records.

Okay. Well, the warehouse may or may not be anything, but Araari will make a note of the address anyway.

Mordred is pretty sure the warehouse is something. To the newspaper.

...They cannot find anything in the newspaper.

“What do you want to do now?”

"I doubt we'd find anything in the police records, it doesn't look like she's doing anything recognizably illegal."

"Or she has enough money that the police will not look at her. Same result.” Nod.

Meanwhile--

Anita can take point on clubbing assuming that they speak English here? Apparently lots of people speak ""Maltese"", but maybe all of the cool people also speak English.

Now to find a club where they can try to buy Nectar. Anita can do the talking and Oswald can be largely silent and glower at appropriate times and maybe use his new lying skills if it ever seems like a good idea and Zoe can bodyguard to her heart's content.

Where should MAGNIFICENCE go.

Magnificence is STILL KIND OF CONFUSED ABOUT WHY THEY ARE HERE but probably the humans have a reason. in his experience humans move around a LOT.

In Zoe's experience, if you know the name of the drug and look friendly enough while saying it, eventually someone lets you have some of the drug.

He should. Uh. He should... add to... their eccentric foreigner appearance... and... cause distractions if necessary... or possibly he should study anthropology with Lev. These seem like equally good ideas.

He can imagine about the same number of ways for either plan to go horribly wrong.

Well if nobody tells him to go anywhere then he can stay with Zoe because zoe is the only one of these people he even SLIGHTLY knows.

He can take PICTURES.

Anita probably has a better sense than Zoe about how skittish drug dealers are about people bringing photo taking monkeys to drug deals.

Are we sure we can't get Lev to monkeysit.

Zoe is quite happy to bring Magnificence with her.

Eh people are weird sometimes?? Is it a tame monkey.

"Pretty tame? I'm not as good at handling him as ... my friend was. But he behaves."

Where behaves means "sometimes runs off to break into cult territory and take pictures of important cult artifacts."

Which Zoe thinks totally counts as behaving.

"I guess we can probably just explain him away however you usually explain him? ...why do we have a monkey with us for this, though."

"We inherited him from Anemone."

"I promised to look after him. No one else was gonna and we can't just leave him on his own."