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Goodman Nasturtium leads you out of his office by a side door, down a short hallway and then outside to his yard. On the threshold, you awkwardly hike your dress up a bit - only a bit, as you don't want him to see that you are wearing men's boots - then you follow after him. For a moment, you wonder if you are liable to give offense with this conduct, as it might be taken that you see the establishment as unclean - which of course, has implications on his Thread and Soul - but at the moment, he has eyes only for his fleet of carriages and coaches. After looking them over, he turns to you.
"Now then, you father wanted a coach, correct?"
"Yes."
As an afterthought, to affirm your deception, you swallow to clear your throat, then add -
"He was quite firm on that point, actually - though I know there are different sorts of coaches."
"Yes, madame, there certainly are."
He quickly explains the difference between Omnibuses, Stagecoaches and Roundabouts, then shows you the available coaches. After considering all of them, you narrow your things down to the largest of the Stagecoaches and the smallest of the Omnibuses. The 'bus has a set of grandfathered, non-expiring entry permits for any Port Authority administered city, for the 'free traffic' period. You could see that coming in useful at some point... but the the Port Authority only administers Imperial cities and towns in coastal and coast adjacent provinces, while your current plan - such that it is - calls for an escape into the Frontier, well away from the coast. On the other hand, the stage has a front mounted winch, a large cousin to the one that father rigged up in the Belfry. And you can <span class="mu-i">definitively</span> see that coming in handy on the 'rougher' roads that Nasturtium mentioned. Ultimately, that is what settles you on the stage - assuming that it can stand up to a closer inspection. Of course, you cannot properly look the thing over like you might have done with a Hearse, setting aside that you would risk ruining your dress if you got down low enough to look underneath at the struts and dancers or checking the grease on the axle, you would be undermining the perception of a proper daughter doing her best in an awkward situation thrust upon her. You are even hesitant to ask pointed questions about the condition and history of the stage, for fear that you may come off as 'knowing too much', so in the end, you have to satisfy yourself by looking it over until your eyes actually start to sting a bit from the strain. At least, you hope it is from the strain of staring, and not the strain of Hide-Eyes. You cannot feel the Glyph as you could earlier, but you weren't wearing a corset at the time, either ... well, there is nothing much you can do at the moment, is there?
