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It's an ordinary, quiet night. The . . . patrons, or whatever they are, of the lab equipment shop downstairs, took off about forty-five minutes ago.
There's silence, mostly. You can only be out at night in Sothis if you have business. But there's some business. Every so often a party passes under Katie's window. Their conversation is mostly what Katie has become accustomed to thinking of as "focused", though occasionally some is just downright tense or revelrous.
Wind. Distant insects. Dogs.
Something shuffles downstairs.
And continues to shuffle.
"Are we good?" The voice is insistent, alto, and right underneath Katie. And it's female.
"Yes, fine". Higher. If Katie knows what female halflings sound like, it sounds like that.
The shuffling moves deeper into the shop. A glass clinks. Laughter starts, whispering at first, then merely hushed.
"Oh my god." A third voice.
"All this stuff is fake, you know. This and this and this used to be one bespoke fixture."
"Fuck."
Whoever it is is going through the merchandise.
Expensive, heavily regulated merchandise. Katie's parent have only been in Ulunat for two weeks, but she's picked up that the proprietors of this place have gone to a moderate effort to secure it against thieves.
Snuggle.
"If there is a cuddle pile, I will have to be in position and ready to fire on her half of it."
"Hi, Tiar."
She looks up from the stack of books she's carrying only briefly. Wasn't eavesdropping at all. Isn't at all sweating the question of whether the incursion is supposed to get eaten. Wasn't about to duck out to the message drop location and isn't agonizing over whether to continue.
"Hi."
???
She shuffles away, slowing down as much as possible to remain within earshot for another beat.
"What do you mean? Return her to mortal life . . . ?" She doesn't think Katie's got the rhythm of the Moth that deeply, that fast.
"I mean, maybe, if she wants to, it would be nice for her to have body heat and all, but like, just getting her to a state where she doesn't need to be constantly supervised so she doesn't murder people."
"...maybe we can move to Geb? Presumably blood is pretty cheap there. Come to think of it, why haven't you done that already? What's you guys's mission here again?"
"—moving to Geb itself costs money! And you lose out on opportunities to contact the rest of the world."
How vague can she be . . . The part about moving to Geb being expensive is true.
Okay, yeah, no, fuck this. If this is a test, passing clearly involves flagging her superior. She slips off as fast as she can without making any noise.
"How do you lose out on opportunities to contact the rest of the world, does Geb not let you send letters internationally, even if you're a cleric of Urgathoa?"
"You're unambitious.
By contact, I meant more like manipulate. Geb has . . . a particular aesthetic, and Paradise a different one."
"Osirion's run by the Khemet pharoahdom! They don't care what some Urgathoa rabble-rousers do. They just think we like random violence—towards unimportant people, mostly—and snacks.
We do like snacks."
"I mean, some of them? Also Nethys, Zon-Kuthon, Mahathallah . . ."
She stops at the top of a dark staircase and casually gestures for Katie to precede her.
"Point is, it's ruled by somebody who actually tracks what the undead do."
"And what is it we're trying to do, exactly?" She goes ahead obediently but hesitantly, worried about what's gonna be on the other side of the door.
Ohhhh, kobold.
She almost reassures Katie, then decides the less focused she is on the question she just asked, the better.
"End scarcity."
At the bottom of the stairs there's a dark room. She lights a lamp, then walks around lighting others.
Windowless basement. Mat on floor, weapons mounted all around stone wall. Shabby and obviously for use, not decoration; most are blunted practice imitations. There's an expensive-looking sewn dummy slouched against one wall.
???
Why is she so inconsistently cynicism?
"That lab we found you in. How much do you know about it? Do you really think the wearers of Ulunat's skin are trying their hardest and just can't make crops that feed everyone, or a plow a maiden can push? When a bunch of hoodlums overgrew those plants from their proud displays in a half an hour?"