"Perhaps you should go make your own ship, then, for all your Powers, for I'm not wasting my time in the doing of favors for beings that cannot regard mortals as worth bargaining with, and if I have agreements, they are for people whose company I might desire."

"I am here and bargaining with you, am I not?  And my husband has never held himself too good to bargain with mortals, and has treated with courtesy all those who sought him with that intention, whether they were weaker than himself or mightier.  Nor have I asked you for any favor I haven't offered to pay for, and my husband shares that spirit."

"Then I might write you a contract of passage, and you can see what you make of it."

"Perhaps.  I'd worry that as you stand now, it might not be a contract I could swallow.  I'd think that perhaps you'd value my possible contributions more dearly, once you failed to find any great ship for sale here that could sail even the lesser Maelstrom, or after you'd verified how the Maelstrom grows more corrosive as you steer towards the edges of Creation."

"But there is one cautionary omen that must be given you immediately, if you mean to undertake this quest and be its hero."

"Buy only twenty-five Wishes this day, not thirty.  Do not augment your Wisdom."

"Hard no," Ione says out loud.  She's increasingly worried about where exactly this thing is trying to steer Fe-Anar, and though she has nothing terribly clever to say, she wants to check what happens if its attention is directed more toward herself.  "Nefreti Clepati specifically warned me to make sure he didn't somehow end up with augmented Intelligence but no Wisdom, no matter what kind of tricks fate seemed to be throwing about that.  Nefreti Clepati is a ninth-circle of Nethys, and she knows things that gods don't."

"Nefreti Clepati has only one trick and she uses it for everything.  If something is happening that's unparalleled in her visions, she's as blind as an ordinary god after prophecy's been shattered.  You should aspire to better, young oracle, and not rely so heavily on your master's guidance."

"I think I have enough Wisdom to be getting on with," Fe Anar says, cheerfully enough.

Oh HELL no, Ione says into their Telepathic Bond, still taking pleasure every time she uses the word as the curse that it should be. Fe-Anar, don't you think it's alarming that the incredibly suspicious entity is requesting you not to augment the one stat Nefreti said to make sure got augmented, and that stat is the Trickery Resistance and Awful Mistake Avoidance stat?

And Fe-Anar is weirdly willing to go along with that, Fe-Anar WHY, Ione doesn't even know why she should be panicking but she clearly should be!

It's absolutely suspicious, he says cheerfully back to her. Quite possibly we shouldn't do it. But it wouldn't surprise me very much to learn that this careful game you all are balancing in fact falls apart if I see through it, in which case I definitely want to do that but can believe that this minute isn't the most convenient possible time.

When these Telepathic transmissions have ceased, and only then, the old woman speaks again.  "Wisdom is also closeness to divinity, and distance from divinity can also be a resource.  You will need all you have of that resource, when the time comes to spend it."

"See," he says, "I really like that explanation, which is why I don't trust it at all."

And NOW Ione is trying to figure out the chance that the 'old woman' who's presumably a divinity or a herald or something is able to snoop on their Telepathic connection, maybe even their actual thoughts; or if she's just reading past Fe-Anar's not-so-great Bluff - Sevar did warn them that the Selectively Permeable Mind Blank might not ultimately be as solid as the original complete Mind Blank; it's mainly meant to resist standardized Discern Location from a distance, not divinities staring at it up close -

Fe-Anar isn't even considering whether she's able to snoop. Obviously she is. There are a lot of beings that can do this kind of thing (Ione's one of them) and it's always exactly this annoying; he appreciates that in this case Ione's getting a taste of her own medicine.

"Indeed.  But it is not in my interest to tell you all of my knowledge that you could benefit from, while you still seem little to esteem my aid.  I do have my pride as you have yours.  I don't say that you could never sail beyond Creation unassisted, given time enough to build your own vessel and somehow lay hands upon the energies of Creation.  But you are not conducting yourself like a person who has no time limit on his endeavor; you are here hoping to buy a planar ship already-made, instead of building one special to its purpose.  You mean to flee Creation and you need to do it soon.  That you cannot do without allies, any more than I myself could do it alone."

"If you want to deliver a lecture on how to flee Creation, I promise to act appropriately overawed at your genius so your pride can be assuaged; it must be difficult, being prideful and unable to assuage your pride merely by actually achieving things."

"I've no use for your or anyone else's fawning; I've heard far more than enough such, from those who mistakenly think I care to hear it.  But to have one's contribution undervalued is a troubling thing, for it implies a corresponding lack of repayment; and the same, if the payer seems too much to overesteem the coin in which I am being paid."

"Mouthing words of praise is easy.  I want something harder.  I want the respect you give your shoes."

"If you have something valuable to me, I'll pay you for it, and respect you for it; if you have something of great value to me, I'll pay you well for it. If you don't, then I won't."

"I am not something merely of great value; I am something that is necessary for your long journey.  I do not, realistically, think that you could find another pair of shoes like myself."

He shrugs. "So?"

"There are things you discard the first time they seem troublesome to you; a merchant with valuable goods but who does not seem to treat you respectfully enough for your taste, or who asks you for pay in an unfamiliar coin.  There are things you cannot discard, like your shoes upon a long journey.  If your shoes could speak, it would be well to make compact with them before you set out."

"Look," Fe-Anar says, "I spend a lot of time around mysterious powerful people who are omniscient or are uncannily perfect at guessing exactly what to say to you, or are arguably gods, or some combination of those. They're lovely people, sometimes. There are some of them I wouldn't strangle even if I could. But one picks up some habits, when there are all kinds of powerful things that know too much around speaking vague prophecy instead of handing you a contract they want you to sign, and the main thing you learn is that you can actually just not let them do that and spitefully die in a fire instead.

Maybe that's what you'd call the thing-you-spend-when-you-get-wiser, where you replace that simple and eminently workable rule with whatever gods do among each other. Maybe it's something you have no comprehension of. I don't know. I don't care. I have said I'll pay you; I meant it. If I give my word, I'll keep it. But I will happily die in a fire rather than acknowledge some vague unbounded obligation to excessively powerful things that want to push me around. If I can only have my trip conditional on knuckling under to such beings, that trip is of no value to me; there are no gains from trade to peaceably split.

I would, in fact, take off my shoes, walking across the Worldwound, if my shoes started telling me what to do, because I just don't care that much about dying and I do care a lot about not being easy to manipulate.

If you want to make a deal, offer one. If your deal sounds worse than dying in a fire -- and many, many, many things sound worse than dying in a fire, when they're offered by smug entities that know too much -- then I'll die in a fire instead. If your advice is to make a compact, tell me what you're offering and what you want to be paid for so that we can write the godsdamned contract."

The old woman nods.  "As you now speak more plainly to me, I'll speak more plainly to you.  I was a farrier's daughter before I was a mysterious powerful anything, and I'm afraid to simply appoint you captain of the voyage and obey you because you strike me as in some ways incautious.  You offered insult to the mysterious powerful thing, saying, 'It must be difficult being prideful and unable to assuage your pride merely by actually achieving things.'  That's the sort of rashness that a farrier's daughter watches men die for."

"I also know more than that, but it's knowledge that I received under contract and that I don't want to use because that imposes additional terms on me unless I could have succeeded otherwise.  I'm telling you that because it's something you disclose to somebody with whom you want to build a firm relationship; the sort where you aren't simply wearing your magic items hidden, to manipulate them; the sort where you worry they'd resent the hiding afterward, if they learned.  I am being more cautious around you than you are being cautious around myself, and on the proposed voyage we would have to be cautious around things from the Far Tapestry."

"The task we've set ourselves isn't one cautious people set themselves. But if you have advice on not being manipulated by beings from the Far Tapestry then that is among the advice I'd pay you for and follow, if it was any good."

"My husband is wealthy enough that mortal coin means nothing to me.  The pay I seek is a healthy working relationship, in which we either have terms of alliance, or I don't expect to die if I submit to all your orders."

"But I can give you two pieces of advice like that, to be repaid in the coin of real respect, or even a down payment toward compromise.  I won't set the price in advance, only ask you to be fair, once you've determined the goods' worth."

"I'm listening."