"Predicting things about people is terrible, you know that? I don't know what class of people to use for comparison. I don't know how much to weight what he says, or that he's an alien, or that Father seems to get along with him. And I haven't the slightest idea what he'll find when he asks the people of Sothis what should be done with Osirion. 

If you want to bet he'll be fine, though, I'll give you 4:1."

Next event:  Looking at Sothis.  Going really outside, in his new world, for the first time.

Have they got an Amulet of Proof Against Detection for him, yet?  Actually they should just have some very high-level caster throw Nondetection on him, if he's going outside the dome, but separately Keltham wants such an amulet loaned to him while he is inside Osirion teaching its people and holding up his end of Abadar's implicit bargain.

Yep! They have an amulet, they have a powerful Nondetection, they have had eight decoy Kelthams wander the streets of Sothis so far today and none of them have been kidnapped, and he'll be shadowed by enough guards to likely get him to safety or death if anything happens. 

"Do you want me to come along? I should be disguised, if so, as I'll throw off all your experimental results."

"If you're interested in being along even if I'm not speaking Baseline - then yes, although -"

"You'd throw off my experimental results, if you were not disguised, because people would be scared of you, and would expect you to report them to Governance which would then - carry out threats against them, punish them, if they said something critical of Governance?"

(It's a much longer sentence in Baseline than it would be in Taldane; words like 'punishment' are not just long but jarring and ugly in their internal rhythm.  Whoever designed this language evidently didn't want people thinking thoughts like this; or maybe just wanted people to notice when they did.)

"Well, they might be scared of that, but even if I were carrying a big sign that said 'there will be no retaliation for insulting me', they'd hesitate to speak critically of the pharaoh in front of me, because it'd seem rude. I think for most people the rudeness would loom much larger than the risk they'd get into some kind of formal trouble, really. It's not illegal to criticize the pharaoh, and we don't punish things that aren't against the law, but it's still generally not done, to speak ill of someone in front of their relatives."

"...I am still going to need some promises protecting the people talking to me.  That either their words are not being passed on by any route, or that they are not being identified and that no effort is being made to identify them after the fact.  Plus an explicit statement about nothing bad happening to anybody who talks to us, as a result of their talking to us, period.  If we're using disguises to make people feel like they're safe, by hiding facts they'd otherwise worry about, they need to be very very safe - if we're ripping that decision and calculation out of their hands, and putting it in ours."

Fe-Anar beams at him. "Yes, yes. You'll want that from the church, really, not from me, or I suppose I can say it too if you'd like but it's not like I'd be badgering them afterwards. Nothing bad will happen to people who talk to us. If somehow something does happen as a consequence of them talking to us we'll pay them back for it, assuming we reasonably can, like if Cheliax teleports in right that moment and blows up the whole square we won't be able to afford to resurrect everyone but we can give their family survivors' benefits. I won't identify them, or try to identify them afterwards."

"Funny, isn't it, how Cheliax presumably knows exactly how Abadaran theology works, or at least, they can read your books, and yet - didn't pose like this, to me.  I guess they must not have understood - or maybe just didn't think they could pull off that pose."

"All right, let's get some explicit assurances and then have a look Outside.  At what passes for reality."

"Oh, and is there - any sort of explicit subset of Osirian that I should be using for talking to Intelligence 10 people?  I really don't have any idea how that works."

Sothis in the middle of the daytime is miserably hot. Everyone who can avoid being outside has done so. This leaves rich adventurers and merchants who can afford Endure Elements, and people who are poor but don't have the affordance to make it to shade for the day. Almost everyone is in full-coverage fabric, except small children, who are generally naked. There are a lot of stray cats. 

Keltham will seem calmer, maybe even a little friendlier, while he's wandering around outside carefully not inflicting his emotions on other people.

Keltham will furthermore note to himself internally - especially now that he's got the higher-powered Nondetection layered over his amulet - that the real him seems to be calmer, now that he's trying to give the emotional impression of a calm person.  Being outwardly upset and wounded is hazardous to your insides, apparently, even when the upset and wounding are drawing on something real; there may be more wisdom than he understood at first, in dath ilan's usual practice of not showing off your injuries.

As for Sothis, yes, Keltham has grasped the difference between rich people who can afford Endure Elements and non-rich people who can't, since it's so visually distinct.  Keltham's not going to try a nonrich woman until he has experience talking to people that Osirion considers full human beings, though.

Any non-busy merchants selling something cheap enough that Keltham could trivially buy it, and the profit on the item would be enough to repay them for some idle chat while Keltham shopped?

Plenty of those! Does he want fish? Live animals? Crocodile leather? Bread? Sandals? Newspapers?

...newspaper, sure, let's try one of those.  If he ends up not wanting to cart it around, he can always throw it away and buy another one later.

What's this newspaper shop like?

It's got a teenage boy maybe Keltham's own age manning it, periodically dumping water from a barrel on the corner of the stand on his own head to keep cool.

The newspaper appears to mainly report on the chariot racing results and the adventures of a foreign correspondant in the Wild Mwangi Jungles Battling Savages. There's also a personal ads section. 

Keltham will buy the newspaper and then ask this male adult his own age what he thinks of the recent political mess.

(There's always a recent political mess.  This is true even in dath ilan; they just have different standards.)

"Hmmm? You mean, last week's serial on the Mwangi cannibal tribe? It was really popular, sold really well, I have a few leftover copies if you missed it."

"I was thinking of that whole business with the government, actually."

"Oh, with the conscription? Pa just told them he needed me in the shop, and that was that. We don't cover that kind of thing in the papers, Pa says people want to be entertained and it's no time to feed them their vegetables."

...Keltham will try reading the "personals section" of the newspaper rather than carrying on that conversation any further.

A carpenter is looking for a strong apprentice, seven year term, guild membership at the end of it, digression into how the guild is still strong as ever. 

A healthy man of twenty-eight, sailor, is looking for a wife, doesn't have to be pretty but shouldn't be disfigured, competent to run a household alone for months at a time, of good reputation. 

The church of the Dawnflower welcomes all, and will have the famous preacher Sati Srinivasen in town this week to speak on the redeeming power of Sarenrae. 

A man wants to place a letter with some religious pilgrims, to bring to his dead mother informing her of the birth of his child.

A healthy man of thirty-nine, a tanner, is looking for a wife urgently, as his last wife died in childbirth leaving him with two young children. He has a steady income and a four-room home.

It is possible to purchase insurance against workplace injury for only one silver a week. 

He'll check two of his inferences with Fe-anar:

1.  It's cheaper to send a letter along with somebody else's Plane Shift to Axis, plus pay for Axis's interplanar messaging system, than to pay for your own Sending to Axis.

2.  Marriages in Osirion are matchmade by men broadcasting what they want and what they have to offer, and women evaluating those broadcasts, never the other way around.

"- that's correct for the letter - a person can take hundreds and hundreds of letters in a bag, whereas for Sending you need to get a fourth-circle cleric just for you. Of course with Sending you know they got it, but Axis has very reliable mail as I understand it. 

I don't know whether women sometimes take out personal ads, I don't really read the newspaper. Women have to apply for the pharaoh's consideration and they do do that."

"Actually, that's kind of a stupid question now that I think about it.  If women don't have money, they can't pay for personal ads, soooo..."

Does Sothis have any kind of Exotic Snacks?  Keltham would like to buy something he can actually use, to pay for his next conversation; this so-called newspaper does not seem to be that.

There are fried-kabob vendors and stuffed dessert pastries and baked sweet potatoes with honey poured over them.