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 they aren't simply wearing their magic items hidden, to manipulate you; 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."