The temple of Abadar is larger than most of the other ones, and has a busy currency exchange at the entrance, where a group of chattering cat-people are exchanging lumps of jade for Absalom printed money. The woman behind them in line is yelling at them to hurry up. There's a thin teenage boy at the entrance, who greets Fennelosa. "How can I help you?"

"I'm attending by scry, in a complicated situation, and looking to talk to whoever present has the most knowledge of theology and the workings of money, if they have a reasonable fixed price for that."

- intends to use the priest's knowledge about economics as a test against their real identity as a priest of the commerce god, interwoven with theology questions, and telling them to shut up if they get suspicious that his questions have become desynchronized from their answers, to prevent - person-in-the-middle attacks - where we're giving his questions to a real priest of Abadar at the same time - he's not sure he can do it in a way the Conspiracy can't beat, but he intends to try -

" - most knowledge of theology would be the seventh circle priest Temos Sevandivasen," says the real attendant at the real temple of Abadar, which gets passed through with the name slightly changed so that the person isn't targetable by Sending. "An hour of his time is 400gp on short notice, 200gp if you book for later in the week, minimum of a quarter-hour."

Hm.  That's... expensive.  Sanity check, if fifth-circle is 500gp/week, and it goes up by a factor of 4 at each circle, and Temos works 4 hours a day 4 days a week... that would make sense, but Golarion people are supposed to have longer working hours than that.  Maybe Keltham will circle back to the Irorian priest after this, after all.

"Second-most knowledge of theology?"

"Sixth circle priest Allandra Kemi. I'll have to look up her rates for you." He has a book to hand for this. "80gp for an hour, 500gp for same-day."

    "Five hundred? That's more than the seventh-circle priest!" Fennelosa's impersonator objects.

The clerk looks at him strangely. "There's ....not a rule that your appointment prices have to correspond to your circle."

Why are the prices so high, she assumes they're quoting them straight-across. 

"Yes, but it's a surprising pricing anomaly given that you'd expect the supply of seventh-circles to be lower and the demand for their time to be higher."

"Yes," says Fennelosa's impersonator, "but it's a surprising pricing anomaly given that you'd expect the supply of seventh-circles to be lower and the demand for their time to be higher."

         Shrug. "Kemi's mostly a researcher and hates having meetings in the middle of the day, or unexpectedly."

On the scry, the person at the door of the temple visibly startles. "Sorry - did you just -"

      "I have a mysterious patron who likes Messaging people through a scry. Please answer him, whatever he said."

"Uh, I think I missed the window to reply to the Message."

       "He can hear you."

"Oh. Well. Kemi's mostly a researcher and hates having meetings in the middle of the day, or unexpectedly."
 

Hm.  Not much of a detailed theoretical response, but then it didn't really need one and the person apparently understood the question... may not be fair anyways to expect that much of the initial-sales-direction-person in Golarion, Keltham isn't sure what Intelligence 10 or Intelligence 12 lets a person do.

"Alright, one quarter-hour of the seventh-circle's time, 100gp."  Keltham does have higher hopes for this test than for some others he's run; and with his emotional alarm level where it is, and Keltham's own ability to request a higher monetary salary obviously way above what it was a few months ago, he needs to just start spending money like seriously.

"All right. Wait here, please, and I'll go and set that up for you."

Does Cheliax think it has anyone better than Carissa-with-the-Crown personally at answering tricky economics questions on the spot.

Possibly Abrogail-with-the-Crown but maybe not even then.  This is Carissa's to win or lose.

(Carissa Sevar and Asmodia have been given access to only-slightly-censored books of Abadaran theology by this point, with all of the economics in there unchanged.)

All right, then, let's do this. 

While eating the lunch that was just delivered and absentmindedly but visibly to Keltham tweaking one of her headband-assistant designs. Keltham's not expecting her to be enhanced as aggressively as she is, and should hopefully conclude she can't possibly do all that at once. 

Temos Sevandivasen is a Vudrani man in his late thirties or early forties who earned his cleric levels trying to set up functional financial institutions in Kumura, a Vudrani kingdom that'd just thrown off Kelish rule. He fled to Absalom when the neighboring kingdoms got threatened and banded together to conquer Kumura. 

He has been read in on the potential threat to the Inner Sea region from Cheliax, though not on any of the details that'd bind him to Abadar's obligation not to direct causal interventions at Ostenso. When a Chelish man walks into his office, his eyes narrow. 

"Osirion is offering up to 80,000gp, the personal protection of the Church and Pharaohate, and Axis or petrification to defectors," he says immediately to Fennelosa's impersonator. "I can leave with you now."

This priest is not the first person to make that offer.  The impersonator is soul-sold, apparently loyal, and is under a complicated useful curse from a certain ninth-circle priestess of Asmodeus who once specialized in curses.  Nefreti Clepati could possibly break it, but she'd charge more than 80,000gp to try.

Fantastic. 

"I just have some economics questions," the man says. 

"I regretfully decline. We'll refund you."

Offer him...more money?

"I hear Abadarans always have a price. Name it."

      "Sure thing. A hundred souls of our choice, one of them yours."

"Hi.  I'm attending by scry and am in something of a complicated situation.  Roughly speaking, I need theological knowledge, I need to know that theological knowledge is coming from an actual high-level priest of a god, I'm concerned about this scry being intercepted, and so I'm going to be asking you theological questions and then asking you to give money-commerce-pricing takes on the answers or rephrase the answers in strange commercial terms.  You can assume that my own knowledge of that field is extremely complete in underlying mathematical principle, but not that I'm familiar with any standard examples or technical terms of art being used here."

"If you're with me so far, talk about how that would have affected your pricing if you'd been pricing by detailed effort instead of by simplified flat rate, by way of helping me know that an Abadaran priest heard this question and responded to it.  I can hear you if you reply by voice, you don't need to use Message."

Keltham is of course talking to Temas Sedavasen, in a room well away from the Ascendant Court. And this actor is just blindly but with high Bluff and a Glibness repeating what he's told by -

Carissa Sevar, who is becoming pretty convinced tropes are real. Why don't they send someone to ask economics questions of a different priest of Abadar somewhere else, and offer this man dath ilani economic knowledge, someone else will have to handle both those arrangements as she's being Temas Sedavasen right now. 

Temas answers immediately. 

"I would not have charged a particularly elevated price to reflect the additional effort from phrasing my responses in economic terms, unless my comprehension of what you're asking for is substantially incorrect, which does seem plausible to me. I would have charged an elevated price to reflect risks to my person, my church, and surrounding parties if there is some kind of ongoing effort to deceive you or deceive me about something of importance. I would have charged an elevated price for receiving questions by Message, which I find viscerally unpleasant, and which make some sounds difficult to distinguish for me -- this isn't my first language. I'm going to cast Comprehend Languages in case that helps, which might reduce how much I'd be tempted to charge you for the Message-conveyance. The overall result is, I think, about a hundred forty percent of the price I did charge, which I'm actually regarding as something of a success of the case for flat-rate pricing given how unusual this case is."

"I'd considered that price relatively high so I'm not bumping my own offer immediately, pending how this actually plays out.  Bit surprised you don't have piecewise effort-cost estimates, but I guess that's something you only have when you're trained to maintain a certain kind of coherence between all your prices... Go ahead and cast Comprehend Languages."

Keltham casts Detect Magic, just in case the Conspiracy was about to be really silly there and try to fake that.  Cantrips are nearly free.