For a merchant family, contacts and relationships are potentially more valuable than a treasure (and there might be legal issues to consider about acquiring treasure, especially for a major merchant family). Perhaps helping Mina would get them in someone’s good books, or even just get them acquainted? Or perhaps the valuable thing on the Wind IS someone who they’d love to have a good relationship with?
I’m still working on Sam the Previously Lizard - painfully slowly. Sam is currently concluding that humans come in a range of elemental affinities, like mephits (paramedics and Morrisons employees are plant-type humans, Virgin staff are fire-type, security are mostly water-type).