Yes, she's fooled

The priestess waved a hand dismissively. "Your form is terrible, novice. Return to your chamber and recite the Sevenfold Oath. Don't let me see you about again until tenth bell." Without waiting for a response, she turned on her heel and strode away.

Aliara grinned sheepishly as the priestess disappeared around the corner. "Sorry, Tey. I guess I didn't learn as well as I thought I did."

Teysa let out a bark of laughter and hurriedly covered her mouth. She punched Aliara playfully on the arm. "Sorry? Sorry?! Li, you're incredible! You just saved our lives, you know that?"

Aliara's smile was modest. "Well, I guess I was paying more attention than you were in class." She turned in the opposite direction from where the priestess had departed. "Come on, let's go. I don't want to run into her again."

Pulling their hoods up the two of them headed off down the corridor. Aliara led them along a dizzying series of turns, twists, switchbacks and staircases. There seemed to be no rhyme or reason to how the Basilica was laid out. All of the tunnels were identical constructions of dressed black stone, broken at irregular intervals by glowing braziers or steel doors. Some of them hung open, revealing bedchambers, armories, chapels, and rooms whose purpose Teysa didn't want to guess at. Occasionally they passed guards patrolling in pairs, none of whom gave them a second thought.

When they were alone in the corridor, Teysa turned to Aliara. "Li, where exactly are we going? Do you know the layout of this place?" she whispered.

Casting furtive glances ahead and behind, Aliara leaned in and whispered back. "No, but we're heading deeper into the center. There's no way that Siri'ka came in the front door, so I figure we need to get underground. If she came here, it was for something so important that she couldn't send a proxy, so it must be deep inside."

Turning a corner they almost ran directly into the rear of a procession. Teysa's heart leapt into her throat, but none of the group ahead seemed to have noticed them. After a moment, she realized why: they were all wearing the identical hooded robes of novices. Teysa and Aliara fell in with them and matched their step. The group was moving quietly but purposefully, in a loose knot. Teysa risked glances left and right, but none of the others were paying them the slightest bit of attention-- their lips were moving, as though they were murmuring something under their breath, but the only sound was the echoing of many sets of footsteps off the flagstones. To her surprise, Teysa noted that almost none of the novices were drow; there were humans, a few bulky half-orcs, and willowy sylvan elves from the surface. A novice up ahead was too short to be anything but a dwarf or gnome. She quickly cast her eyes downward before anyone noticed her prying and began to mutter soundlessly. She could not read lips but hoped that simply moving her mouth would be sufficient.

They continued on with the group for a while. Teysa made sure Aliara stayed at her right elbow, so that she could follow the half-elf's lead if she determined that it was time to separate from the group. So intent was she on maintaining this pacing that she did not notice when the procession came to a sudden halt, and nearly walked into the novice ahead of her. Pulling up short she tried to see what was happening ahead, but the press of the crowd was too thick. Aliara tugged at her sleeve, but too late-- as Teysa turned to see what she wanted, the rest of the novices dropped to the floor and prostrated themselves.

Leaving only Teysa and Aliara standing.

She finally saw what had caused the stop. Ahead of the group, four drow guards in baroquely ornamented armor stood in a square formation. Each of them wore a maroon half-cloak over their oily black steel and carried a massive halberd with a spiderweb pattern etched into the blade. At the center of their formation was a cluster of finely dressed drow: courtiers, sycophants, priestesses, all dripping with jewelry and the obvious trappings of wealth and power. And in the middle of them...

A single drow, a woman younger than Teysa, wearing an elaborate black and silver gown. Open panels in the gown provocatively showed her navel, which was bedecked with a massive emerald, and the swell of her bosom. Her pure-white hair was done up in elaborate braids that were piled atop her head and surrounded by a confection of silver: an ornate crown bearing a spiderweb motif, studded with rubies and diamonds. In one hand she held a short silver rod topped with a cabochon spider, which she used now to gesture at Teysa and Aliara. She was rouged and powdered with silvery specks and her heavy-lidded eyes were kohled, but beneath the makeup, her face twisted in a frightening grimace.

"Will you not kneel? Do you not know who I am?" she screeched, her voice sounding even younger than she looked. Teysa remembered Don's warning: "New Empress. She's got a real mean streak."

Oh, shit.

Without waiting for the two women to respond, the Empress howled with rage. "Guards! Take them!" The kneeling novices scattered like birds as the two foremost guards bulled their way forward towards Teysa and Aliara.