The party spent their first days in Khasim's Crown under Milo's firm instruction to keep their heads down at The Open Door. He returned with forged guild papers and a hard look, told them their accents alone marked them as foreign, then went out again on Sirocco Warden business. Before he left, Mama asked the party to find out where Zef had gone.
Shopping rounds turned into bar rounds. Momeline, Lirielle, and Milo worked the same tavern multiple nights, and on one of those nights Lirielle overheard a stranger pressing a parcel into another man's hand and saying it was for Tassir, "for the Trial." Momeline slipped after him and tracked him to a sewer entrance in the Lowwater.
Milo argued against the obvious next move and lost. He had to leave the city on Warden business, and the party had a goal. The Lowwater was a city beneath the city: a produce vendor pushing dreamvale from a stall, an old diviner who asked to read Lirielle's palm, a suprisingly friendly bartender, and commoners whose welcome was somewhere between distrust and contempt for upcity tourists.
They found Tassir in outside a tent at the heart of it. Momeline tried to slip past his guards invisible. He sensed her at once, though, and after some banter had her escorted out without raising his voice. On the way out, a guard muttered something about Tassir's tolerance of upcity scum, and "that half-elf boy" beside him. Momeline turned around. In the next tent over she found Jesse sitting beside Mira, and tried to reach him with the words Tessa had told her to remember: about the day he met Kaelen.
Jesse hesitated, eyes wet. Mira did not. She lashed out, and her scream brought the rest of the party at a run. Dravencoles charged in with the Hammer of Elandria raised, and one of Tassir's guards saw the symbol of Elandria on it and froze. They drove Mira down piece by piece until Tassir himself stepped between them, declared them all under his protection, and told them to leave. Momeline asked for the boy. Tassir, to his credit, gave him the choice. Zef took it.
Back at the Open Door, Mama wept over him. Zef told the party the rest. Silas had abandoned him weeks earlier. He had reached Khasim's Crown about six weeks back. When Mira walked through the gate three days before the party did, Zef thought she was Ferinthria and bolted, then doubled back to follow her, watched her shed and wear faces, and confronted her. She had promised him that Silas would forgive him if he helped her with her work.
Whatever that work is, they have now made themselves its enemy.