And here is someone who's not pleased to see her. He yells in a tonal language she won't have ever heard before.

"Damn!" She reaches for the bundle of glowing thread, brushes it - it disappears - "Shit!"

Suspicious question in a different foreign language. This one's not tonal.

"Oh, what the hell." She looks around frantically. She's in someone's apartment. Also, language barrier. Lovely.

She looks at him and says, "...Hello. Sorry. This language? This one? This other one?" None of hers are tonal.

"Nope. ...I'm Valanda." Point. "You are?" Point.

"Waltana. Walta. I'm Walta? You are Valanda?"

She looks around the apartment, holding herself non-threateningly. Or trying to. She's kind of on edge.

She tries the door.

Locked, but not hard to unlock from this side. It doesn't need a key.

"Yes, I'm Valanda, you're Walta. That's a door. I'd pay to know who sent you here if only you could understand the question."

"Door?"

Good! She can get out of this person's tiny apartment!

She opens the door and steps through to the hall, then bows and smiles and says a string of words including "sorry" three times.

There's a hallway. There are other doors.

The average height of a door handle is a little lower than she might be used to.

Huh. Odd.

She tries to find an exit or a stairwell or an elevator.

There are stairs right over there. They're even a usable height for humans!

No elevators? Huh. It's not like elevator constructs are difficult. 

Anyway, then she will go downstairs. She needs to figure out where she is and is totally not running away in embarrassment at having somehow teleported into some foreigner's apartment what the hell.

Next floor down is painted in charming autumnal colors and has what might be a jaguar walking down the hall. Wearing a necklace and something that is arguably some kind of messenger bag.

Big cat! She startles, stares, starts tracing a square in the air, then stops when she notices the... Clothes?

You know what. Let's go back upstairs. She has to avert her gaze to not stumble on the way back up and, shaking, goes back to the human she knows about. "-H-Hello again."

Deliberately welcoming expression. "You want something?"

She makes a snarl and holds up her hands like claws and hisses, then shakes her head violently and shivers all over. "I'm lost, Valanda." She makes sure to use the local word 'I'm'. "Of course you don't understand me but... Can I come back in?"

Might be trying to mime how little she's interested in fighting.

"I'm not sure what you're asking but come in and let's try to talk." He holds the door for her.

She goes in and takes deep breaths. "Thank you."

"...I will sit down." She sits on the floor, crosslegged. "I sat down."

"So, what did you want from me?" Valanda mimes giving and taking.

"I want?" Give motion. "Or, I want?" Take motion.

"I want." Taking. "You want." Giving. He thinks for a second. "From me. To me. From you. To you." He mimes. If this gets beyond what they can mime to each other he'll just go run and get a copy of that show for her but for now this way's faster.

"I want- blah blah blah," she flaps her hand like a mouth motion, "Talking, I want you talk to me. I want not-" claws and hiss, and headshake.

She sketches lines in the air with two fingers, little straight threads of silvery light, and arranges them. Looks like some kind of writing?

"Who attacked you? The person that did the..." claws and hissing. "Show me a picture." He points to her illusion.

"Not attacked? I from scared," she makes herself shiver and look dramatically terrified. 

And she attempts an extremely crude polygonal-light sketch of a cat.

"Agerah," he says, pointing to the cat. "Human," to her. "Human," to him. "An agerah teleported you to my apartment? What was the agerah's name? Uh, names, my name is Valanda, your name is Walta, what was the agerah's name?"

Shrug. "Agerah not name. Agerah not want? Want from Agreah not- Aagh, this is frustrating."

He points at her illusion. "Illusion. Illusion of an agerah. You are an illusion mage. You didn't teleport by yourself. Who sent you here to me?"

"...I touch illusion-" she touches hers, "poof," she moves it sharply and mimes confusion, "I teleport. I touch again, poof, illusion teleport." Shrug.

What a weird coincidence. "Where are you from?"

"Where? From?" Shrug, confusion. She snaps her fingers, sighs. "It's hot in here."

She sketches a sort of chair out of her light, makes it absorb a low-to-medium amount of heat, and stands up long enough to sit on it. "I don't know. I can leave if you want..."

He pokes the illusion.

Oh.

"You stay here a while. I have some offers to make when we can talk more."

He gestures for her to stay where she is and mimes barter again. He puts on his necklaces and motions again for her to stay. "I'll be back with things!"

She'd much rather take construct-notes on everything she's seen so far in the safety of a stranger's apartment than wander where there might be big cats(!) walking around and she doesn't know the language at all.

He comes back wearing less jewelry than he left with. He has presents for her! A pair of gold bracelets and a metal rectangle with sight and sound illusions that shows one of those big cats giving a language lesson.

Huh. That can't be a construct. She takes the metal rectangle and touches it. Nope, not a construct. So they have some other kind of magic. Weird. Well - if there's two kinds of magic, constructs and teleporting tangles, a third isn't that surprising.

...And the cats can talk. Weirder. And slightly scary. But actually, talking cats is less scary than loose wild cats. And this is presumably some sort of educational material.

She takes the bracelets, which are presumably magic in addition to shiny, and clicks them on and pays attention to the language lesson.

They sure are magic, not that she'll have any reason to notice yet.

Valanda chatters a little. There's no way she'll understand him yet and he's not making any effort to mime, just talking in a pleasant nonthreatening voice. "Don't try to convince anyone to help you get those off, don't leave this room without my permission, don't try to communicate anything to anyone besides me without permission..."

The bracelets come with some instructions enforced by default, but not enough, in his experience.

The video shows some people bracelets that look like the ones he just gave her but no attention is drawn to them.

Look at her, so studious! Taking notes in not-illusion!

There's plenty to take notes on and plenty of need to take notes on it because it isn't designed to be memorable. There's conveniently an episode about different kinds of magic known here.

"...I'm Mahan and I will be teaching you Hari," says the show's host. "Today we'll talk about magic. This is Ariu. Ariu is an illusion mage. Ariu will show us illusion magic now." There's a good view of a bare patch of ground between them. And then projected on that patch of ground are twelve symbols. "This is an illusion of magic. We call it that because there are twelve kinds." ("Magic" and "twelve" are the same word in Hari.) "You are watching Hari is the Language of the Empire on an enchanted object. It is enchanted with illusion magic. This is the symbol for illusion magic." He points to it with his tail. "I am a void mage. Using void magic is against the law. Do not use void magic. This is the symbol for void magic."

A snake slithers into view. "This is Agi. Agi is a force mage. This is the symbol for force magic. Agi will do some force magic." Agi levitates. "Agi is levitating by using force magic."

Agi slithers off, to be replaced by another furry creature who does sun magic. The furry creature transmutes elements. The symbol for sun magic looks like a sun.

Other kinds of magic are explained, but not clearly enough for someone with no experience with local magic and no knowledge of Hari to understand.

The next episode probably goes mostly over her head. It includes the word for blood! And war! It's some kind of history lesson.

They cover common materials. (This is coal, coal is the sixth element, this is wood, wood's not an element, this is a candle, the candle is on fire, the fire is using vital air, vital air is the eighth element. This is steel, steel can't be made by a sun mage but can be made by a structure mage. This is silver, silver is the forty-seventh element, it can be made by sun mages...) They cover common activities like eating, sleeping, going to work, going to buy things. They demonstrate questions and answers. They name foods. (Apple, peach, pecan, mutton, snapper...) They demonstrate the local currency, which is what Valanda's necklaces are for.

In one episode Mahan has a large box and narrates where he is in relation to it. "I am getting into the box. I am in the box. I am sitting in the box. I am getting out of the box. I am beside the box. I am outside the box. I am in front of the box. I am still outside the box. I am beside the box again. I am on the opposite side of the box now. I am turning the box upside-down. I am on top on the box..."

Twelve kinds of magic. Fourteen, really. Interesting. And no clear clues what the bracelets do, but that can wait. Her notes get kind of big, but she can stack them.

...After a while she asks, "Stop the illusion? Where is... Toilet?"

"It doesn't stop but it loops, if you miss some it'll come around again. I'll show you to the bathroom, it's down the hall."

He opens the door.

Out she goes. "Thank you for showing me words illusion."

"The words illusion's name is Hari is the Language of the Empire. 'Language' is all of the words, 'Empire' is the biggest government."

The facilities down the hall are functional for humans but not really designed specifically for humans. They have soap and water to wash with afterward.

"This water is also safe to drink." Valanda demonstrates that.

She nods. "Good." She looks expectantly and waits for Valanda to leave the room.

He draws her attention to the curtains and demonstrates how to use them to hide herself. And then he goes to wait in the hall just to be doubly polite about it.

Good.

Well, that's over with. "What next? After learn Hari language? I want to- Look at places illusion?"

"You want to see illusions of places in the Hari Empire? Is that what you're asking?"

"...Not enough words yet." Shrug.

"You're learning fast already. You can just keep watching that for a while."

And back to Valanda's room. The video's still playing.

Before too long she finds the words. Or something closer at least.

"...I want to go back to my government. But maybe I can't. Maybe this is a different... Place."

"Yeah, I think you're not from this continent. When you have more Hari I want to ask you about your magic, it's different than what we have here."

"Yes! Constructs. Can do many things. Force and illusion and some other things."

"Can you do things we can't?"

"Maybe. Did not understand all the kinds of magic."

"I can answer questions later. I have to go to work but tomorrow you'll know more Hari. You can ask things then."

"Yeah. Thank you. Maybe bad if I just went outside. Oh, is there-" She gestures at her stomach.

He uncovers a bag of nuts that was hiding under the quilt.

"I'll get more tomorrow. Didn't know I'd have someone else to feed. You probably don't know enough yet to keep people from taking advantage of you somehow. And you don't know what the laws are yet."

"In my government - don't attack people, don't destroy things, don't take things, is good to walk around." Shrug. "I need more words. I stay."

"Those are laws here too, and there are places you can't go without permission and other things. I'll get you a copy of the imperial laws when I get food. I'll be back tonight but too late to do any of that. Anything else before I go?"

"I listen and do magic and wait! Goodbye!"

While he's gone there's an episode about the water cycle with an aerial view of the northern coast. There's an episode about formal logic. There's an episode about game theory. Did she know that the major function of government is to keep people from eating their neighbors? Sure, you might think you'd be better off if you could eat your neighbor, but really your neighbor could eat you instead! This is why the rule of law is good.

She gets bored somewhere in the middle of formal logic and starts assembling some household constructs - hotbox and coldbox, calculator, clock - from memory with most of her attention, glowing softly and appropriately color-coded.

(It's probably good that this takes a lot of focus; It helps her not freak out about being very lost.)

That's kind of... Pragmatic of the government, but with tigers and who knows what else, maybe they need it this way.

The next episode is about slavery. Some people can't just participate freely in society because they keep breaking laws or don't understand the law! Sucks to be the wrong kind of disabled here. Or a criminal. Or a child.

Slavery can be enforced by using command magic. Since not everyone is a command mage there are enchanted items you can use to enslave someone! Look at all these examples of enchanted gold bracelets on slaves.

"...That bitch."

It's a punch to the gut. She - she trusted a stranger, and look what happened. Valanda was acting nice. She was a friend in the middle of a hostile and confusing and incredibly fucked-up day.

And now Waltana is a slave. Because she accepted a damn pair of bracelets without thinking. It's a punch to the gut, a hot cinder of shame/anger/betrayal/despair. She wants to cry. She wants to break something. She wants to hurt Valanda.

She tries to leave the room. She can't. She can open the door, but then just - stops. She tries to pry off the bracelets. She can't. Obvious. She tries to open the window - she can open it, but it's too narrow even before she finds she can't even attempt to push herself through.

She throws the language-lesson illusion against the far wall and screams in frustration and tries to destroy her fucking owner's stuff, but it's all invulnerable or something. The best she can do is throw whatever's accessible into the hallway. She can't even shout or rave, unless she shuts the door and convinces herself very hard that she's only yelling to herself.

She calms down after a few minutes. She can send a construct to scoop up the stuff she threw, put it back in its place. Concealing the sheer rage she's feeling right now is probably going to be the hardest she's ever acted in her life. But if it keeps Valanda complacent until she can think of something - it'll be worth it.

It's a while before he comes back. Mahan blithely names objects the whole time.

But eventually Valanda shows up.

She smiles blithely. She doesn't trust herself to do anything else quite yet.

"I lock the door with magic at night. Do you need to go to the bathroom again before I do that?"

"That's! Probably a good idea! Thanks!"

"You remember everything? Or do you need me to show you again?"

"Yes, I remember things."

(Gaaaah she is a terrible actress.)

Yeah he'd be annoyed too in her shoes. He'll wait for her.

Okay, plan 'hide your resentment' has apparently failed, she can see it in her (HATE) owner's face.

...Unless she thinks that her annoyance is about the door? Could be a second chance.

She goes and returns silently.

When she's back he locks the door with magic and curls up on the floor to sleep.

She double-checks that she's made all her utility constructs unusable but trivially repairable and then tries to also sleep.

He wakes up early and makes sure she does too! "I have work soon. You should use the bathroom now if you're going to need it any time in the next few hours."

"Y-Yeah. I probably should."

Calm. Unsuspecting. She can do that. Right?

He is going to make such use of her. He's going to get so rich from her magic and maybe rule someplace.

(She's going to get out. Maybe if she builds an unstable destructive construct, but paused on a sufficiently long timer, intending very hard to defuse it? ...She'll try that later.)

She goes, and returns, and doesn't shout or rage at all.

Off he goes, thinking of what he wants to use her magic for if he can.

She pays very close attention to the 'how magic works' section of the video if it loops back there.

No loops yet. There's a lot of content on this thing.

Then she waffles between watching it and taking notes and reviewing vocabulary she noted earlier and adding controls for her little chair and hate/frustration/fear/despair and working on a real calculator, not the glorified abacus she threw together already, which is going to take a while.

Valanda comes back after a while with nuts and dried fruit and all the imperial laws of the Hari Empire. He offers Walta all of it.

"Can you tell me what your magic can do?"

"Bathroom first?" She can use the time to compose herself and invent a plausible lie... She needs to test this. "I-" don't need to go very badly. "-Really need to use it."

Okay, so a plausible way to make herself seem incompetent maybe??? Aaah.

"Yeah, go ahead." She's probably noticed by now. Might not have but probably has.

"Okay..." Deep breath. "Constructs are made of light. They take a long time. I tell them instructions very carefully while touching them. They can move, they can change shape, they can be hot or cold, they can change into illusions and back to being solid, they can tell if something is touching them, they can tell things to other constructs."

She does a passable job of sounding excited to explain this instead of resentful.

(They can get squeeze air down and then suddenly fail, exploding, accidentally. Or deliberately. They can sometimes explode all by themselves in messy tangles of twisting force. They can suffocate or crush someone. They can slice someone in half even if the edges act like they're blunt, with enough force...)

"Are constructs the only kind of magic you can use?"

"Yes."

"If you're trying to keep a construct solid and someone presses against it or hits it how much force does it take to break it?"

Shrug. "Iiii don't know exactly." To exact precision - yes, that worked. Sort of. "You can test them I guess?"

"Have you ever tested them? Do you know of an amount of force that's definitely enough? Do you know of an amount that's not enough?"

Shrug. "It depends? They break sometimes. You can stand on one, usually."

"Can they tell things to other constructs that are far away?"

She doesn't even have to dodge this one, "No. They have to touch."

"How big can a construct be? How small can a construct be?"

She waves confusedly to the ones she already made. "I have to reach it? And too small, they break?" ('not very bright' is surprisingly hard to pull off when you already learned a language pretty darn quickly and can't lie.)

"You probably don't know enough words yet... I need to know about immortality. If you get older and older then your hair turns white and then you die, if you're human. That's called aging. Can your magic prevent aging?"

Sigh. "No. Can do-" Don't mention helping doctors, don't give anything away you don't have to, "Not enough words. Not aging."

"Illness? Illness is the thing where..." Valanda imitates a sneeze and a cough. "Can you heal illness?"

"No." Not with constructs. "Almost no life things."

"Almost? What life things can you do?"

Whoops. "-Cold things, hot things, cook life, freeze life. Cage, keep animal in. Like that. Not - not do thing to life, do thing that do thing to life."

"Do you make things out of nothing? Do you need materials to make constructs out of?"

"...Construct is not materials?" She might be getting better at this 'acting dim' thing.

"Do constructs stay around after their maker dies?"

She's gonna kill me unless I do something first.

She shrugs.

Yeah that's not an honest answer.

"How fast can constructs move?"

"I don't know words for how fast things are."

"As fast as running? As fast as light?"

"Yes and no. Depends. Faster tales longer."

"How long to make one that goes six times as fast as running?"

"It depends. What else does it do? How big? I don't know."

"Let's say it has to fly and carry a person. How long then?"

"Maybe... Six days?" If she makes it super robust and includes tons of safety features and keeps making mistakes on it.

"Takes longer to make it not break much. Fifteen days?"

"To make it not break much? How often would it break if you made it the longer way?"

Every piece breaks about once every 90 days or so on average. If it has one hundred pieces and only one bit breaking breaks it, that happens fast. If she makes it with two hundred pieces, but sixty pieces have to break to break it irreparably, it happens less fast.

"...If I spend 15 days on a flying chair it will last for maybe 200 days. I can fix it faster than I made it."

"That could be useful. There might be better uses for you than that... What would it take to get you to cooperate with me?"

Does she know I know? ...Let's keep pretending.

Shrug. "Money? Help going home?"

"I can pay you. I don't know how to get you home. There are some kinds of mages that could figure out how but if the Hari Empire meets your world there could be war. So I don't want to let many people know about you." Shrug. "I'd ask how much you want to be paid but I guess you probably don't know much about our currency yet. Tell me a price in how much of something you could buy with it and I can figure out how many rings that is?"

She has a mental image of herself standing over Valanda, the betrayer inside a box of light, chirping 'people die if they can't breathe vital air!'

...She notices that she is rather vicious when she's this angry.

"It was about ten or twenty apples per hour at home, making simple constructs. More for complicated ones. But you get paid for finishing constructs, not for time."

"I think that's about twelve rings, depending on how big the apples you're thinking of are. That would make... a thousand four hundred forty rings per flying thing. That's... maybe worth it, I'm not sure yet..." He gets a one-ring coin off one of his necklaces and offers it to her. "For our conversation so far, more to come if you're helpful. That's the smallest denomination, just one ring."

"Not much use if I can't go spend it, is it? Because you lock the door," she hastily adds.

"It'd be dangerous if you went out and someone noticed you were foreign and figured out where you're from and started a war. It'd be dangerous if someone kidnapped you. It'd be dangerous if you were accidentally rude or broke a law. When those things stop being likely you won't be in danger if you go out."

...Sigh.

"I'll read the law then. Once you tell me how to read." She sticks the coin in a pocket.

"I can show you how to read now. That work for you?"

"Now is good, yes."

(Why was she so vicious a few moments ago - that shouldn't be her. Waltana Luxiim doesn't fantasize about suffocating people. Even backstabbing slavers.)

He opens his notebook to a fresh page and shows her how he writes it. It's a simple alphabet. Each letter has a sound and each sound has a letter.

It looks a little different written species with other sorts of hands but it's recognizably the same alphabet regardless.

She takes construct-notes, trying not to let her emotions rise up. "Simpler than mine. No weird sounds. I can learn to read with this."

"Good. You still need a lot more words to understand the law but that's what that show is for. When you know more you can tell me more about constructs and what you can do."

"Yes. You- I-"

No, you do NOT cry. You can't afford to cry. You have to be strong and get out of this.

She screws her face up. "You-"

...She starts crying. Low sobs that she tries, and fails, to turn into deep breaths.

"...Do you want a hug?"

She doesn't seem to respond or acknowledge the question.

No hugs then. Valanda looks out the window. Mahan continues to try to teach Hari.

Eventually she goes from 'quiet sobs' to 'deep breaths' and shakily grabs the Imperial Laws plate.

It's a bit advanced for her level. There seem to be laws against murder and trespassing and theft, among others. Punishments are different depending on how many times you've committed the same crime and what species you are.

She knows three languages already, she's picking up more than one might expect.

What are the laws about slaves? She puts extra effort into picking those apart.

There are no legal protections for slaves. It is illegal to free someone who can't follow the law, which is a category that includes people who've broken the law enough times and children too young to be responsible for their own actions, among others.

Everything is terrible.

She takes as much of a first-pass as she can, then says, "People think better when they're well fed. Thinking is very important for making constructs."

"What kind of food do you need?"

"Fruit, nuts, meat? Coffee. I don't know the Hari word for it. If I don't get any coffee soon I'll get headaches and be very tired and not think as clearly for a few days because my body is used to having it, but that will go away eventually."

Come to think of it, coffee withdrawal isn't the cause of her riotous emotions, but it can't be helping.

"Show me an illusion of coffee?"

"You might not have it. It's a - a thing that's nice to have and not that I need, even at home. I will feel very bad, but not die."

But, hey, something to distract her from the present situation! It's a bean that looks like this, grows on plants that look like that, you dry it and steam it and grind it and pass hot water through it and it's delicious and invigorating.

"I don't recognize that plant. What kind of weather does it like? Cold or hot?"

"Hot. Humans might like it if you can grow some. A lot of people like it in my home."

"I lived in the south for seventeen years. There are a lot of northern plants I don't recognize but not a lot of southern ones. We might not have coffee."

Well, caffeine withdrawal is not any worse than slavery. "Okay, you don't have coffee. Fruit and meat? Do you have bread?" She illusions grain, flour, bread.

"No bread, but the thing you make it from, they have that down south. But not here. We have fruit and meat and nuts and blood and honey. And we can get other plants from the forest if you want any."

"Not blood. Some - hmm. About twice as much fruit or honey as meat and nuts?" That should be about right, if what she remembers of nutrition is correct.

"How much do you eat in a day?"

She figures out how much "about 2000 calories" weighs in local units and says that they should both be eating that much, or it's unhealthy long-term.

"Oh. Thank you, I don't know much about humans. How did you find this out?"

"At home we have a - learning things thing - called 'nutrition'. It's about what humans need to eat. There are books about it."

"Learning things thing? A magic?"

"No. It's... Science." Surely they have science. Lack of vocabulary is so inconvenient. "You say 'I think it works like this. Therefore, if I do this, I think that will happen.' Then you do this and see if that actually happens. If it does, you're right. If it doesn't, you're wrong and you think 'I think it works like that instead' and try again until you're right."

"Oh! Experiment. That's the word you want. How many humans did you test it on?"

"People other than me did the experiment. They wrote books. Thousands and thousands of humans, a long time ago, I think. I don't remember all of it. Eating right is important. You think better, you feel better, you don't die of being old as easily if you eat right."

"Did it take a long time to find thousands and thousands of humans? Here that would be hard."

"...Humans are the only people in my home. I think it's very strange the Hari Empire has more than one kind of people."

"Learn more Hari as fast as you can. I want to know all about a whole society of humans when you know more words. I'll leave you to your studies and go bring back more food. Oh, and..." Valanda hands over another ring.

Slavery is illegal and extremely evil in my society of humans, she doesn't say.

She doesn't even know the words for 'good' or 'evil'. If they even have words for that.

"Okay. Want to take the cold-box I made and put food in it? Cold food stays safe longer."

"People would wonder where I got it if I took a construct with me. I can put food in it when I come back."

"Okay. Goodbye."

Her thoughts are going very dark again. She almost forgot that this person who trapped her in a tiny room is a slaveowner, of her for a minute there.

He doesn't say goodbye, just walks out.

Mahan continues to not teach any words for good or evil.

She can't actually focus on learning very effectively. She tries to learn for a little while, then pokes at the calculator a bit.

When Valanda told her to do something, she felt nothing. These fucking bracelets cannot, apparently, compel action. Even so, Valanda is playing nice for now. Complacent? Surely she can't believe I still don't realize I'm a slave.

She starts designing... Something to threaten Valanda with. She's only thinking, not doing, so she can do that. Various objects are invulnerable, she has to assume Valanda herself is, too. Defense magic. Even if she can set something up that Valanda walks into and has, say, a timer of ten minutes before it shrinks down to nothing, that might not be a credible threat. And she'll only get one try, probably, before getting a lot more restrictions.

(Suffocation might work when blunt force doesn't but that's very gruesome - except, she won't actually do it. Valanda will free her rather than die. Right?) 

Valanda can't read her notes, not the ones that aren't in Hapi. She writes them down in an obscured sort of way anyway.

Valanda brings back food. Lots of food. Several handfuls of berries, a bag of apples, a pound of almonds, a couple of bird livers, three tiny jars of honey. He makes less effort to keep the fruit away from the raw meat than she might be used to.

"I brought food! Tell me about human societies!"

"Need the bathroom first... Wait a sec, can you use magic to not get sick from food? You aren't supposed to put, uh, raw, meat next to not-meat."

"Yes, you can use magic to make food... I don't know if you know all the right words. Sickness is small animals you can't see that eat your insides. You can kill the small animals with magic. You can kill them in the food. You can also kill them inside you. They killed the sickness in the food before they sold it. If something bad grows in it again and makes us sick magic can fix that too. Go ahead and use the bathroom."

She goes.

"We get rid of small animals in food by... Burning food but only a little bit. I want to do that to this meat. And by keeping it cold so they don't grow fast."

"Sure, go ahead. Heat also works, redundancy's good."

(She brought back some water in a little construct cylinder.)

She nibbles a few almonds (picking ones without meatjuice), and takes five minutes to make a simple stove thing and lays the livers on them. They sizzle.

He notices what she's doing and eats the ones she doesn't want.

"Tell me more about your society."

"I don't know where to start... There's more than one government. There are... At least twenty, probably more."

"Do you have a government that tells the other governments what they can do? Like here, we have states and the imperial government."

"...Not all of them? Some governments work together like that, some don't."

"Your world must be dangerous. Do you have to fight often?"

Oh, not really. I didn't get randomly enslaved at all.

"Never. The last war my country was in was sixty-five years ago. There's a war between two countries on the other side of the world and nowhere else right now, I think."

"You have living humans who remember war. We don't. We don't even have living humans who remember talking to someone who saw a war. ...But sixty-five years is longer than I thought you could go without a war. How have you had that much peace that long?"

"Peace... Treaties...? Mostly people don't want war, it destroys things and kills people?"

"I guess that makes sense. How much of your country's resources do you have to spend on being strong enough to prevent war?"

"I'm not in the army. I don't know. I was just a construct-making student."

"What laws do you have?"

She thinks for a long moment.

There is absolutely no way Valanda doesn't know she knows what's up by now. She can't keep avoiding it so assiduously. And as long as the conversation is not about constructs she's probably not hurting her chances to... Do something hostile later.

"One of the most important laws is 'no slavery'. I am so very angry - it didn't - it is not even-."

Deep breath.

"'No slavery' is almost as important to us as 'no murder'. Some of our laws are not 'people can not do this thing', they are, 'the government cannot do this thing'. The government cannot make people not talk. The government cannot punish people without proving that they broke the law. The government cannot punish crimes with things that are deliberately painful. The government must say there will be new laws one year before the new law is made. The government cannot make a law if most people say they do not want the law."

Deep breath.

"The government should give everyone liberty - that means, 'not slavery'... Not just not-slavery. I don't have enough words to say what else it means. But I tell you, I am lost, I am afraid, Hari is - people of my home would think Hari is the worst government. I think that too."

And one more deep breath. She does not cry this time. She got the words out in a tone of cold determination. It feels almost... Good. Defiant.

She watches Valanda's reaction.

...Oh, because they don't have command magic, their slaves could revolt and kill people. Of course. That makes complete sense.

"If I appeared in your world and didn't know your laws, would I be allowed to go wherever I wanted and do whatever I wanted and no one would try to stop me?"

Valanda's not angry. Good? Good.

"...No. People would stop you from breaking the law, but... Gently. We also have some people who can't understand the law. We don't enslave them. We try to make them able to obey the law without taking away their liberty. If you broke the law and could not speak my language, the people who enforce the law would try to talk to you before they try to capture you unless they think you are very dangerous. When they know that you did not know the law, they will not punish you. They will teach you the language and the law."

"What if teaching me the language and law took a long time and I broke the law more times before I knew how to follow it?"

"It depends... Liberty is very important. Even if it's expensive, liberty is important. If you break the law three, four, five times... They warn you every time and watch you closer and try to warn you before you do it. If that doesn't work, or if you break bigger laws like 'no murder', they make you stay in a place until you can understand the law. They work hard to make the place comfortable and help you learn. If you can't learn for a very long time... Half a year... They put you in a place where you can have as much liberty and happiness as you can have without hurting people. It sounds like slavery but it's not the same as slavery. And it's the government that does this... Not owners."

"I don't have a comfortable place to put you. The government would auction you if I gave you to them. 'Auction' means they would ask a lot of people how much they want to pay and give you to whoever will pay most. If I let you go and you commit a crime I could be in trouble. If I hadn't caught you... someone else would have. Or they would have realized no one here would know if they killed you and ate you."

 "Maybe you are less bad than if someone else found me. Less bad is still bad. I want to kill slavery. Being a slave is worse than being sick or hurt or hungry. It might be worse than dying. I don't- You can't know how scary command magic is. And how you smiled when you gave me these-" She thrusts her arms towards Valanda, grimacing in anger.

Pause. Deep breath. Mouth shut.

"I can't know? Why can't I know that?"

"I can't... I can't explain. It feels like being eaten. Command magic is okay here. You always knew about it. It's a law. It's not okay to me."

"When I decide to free you, would you like a ward that will keep anyone else from ever using command magic on you again? If you do have a ward like that, if you commit crimes that would get you enslaved, you will be executed instead."

"Yes."

Pause.

"You will decide to free me?"

She's probably lying. A slaveowner has every reason to lie to keep her complacent. Then again, she does seem... Understanding.

"Probably. When I've gotten what I want and you understand the law."

"Probably."

Sigh.

"I want to understand the law. I am not happy. That makes it hard. But I will understand soon."

...The meat is starting to burn. She touches her little stove and turns it off.

"Keep learning Hari and you'll be able to understand. There are also state laws, I can bring you those, but they're longer and harder to understand and you're less likely to break one by accident. It will be safe for you to go and get your own copy of Ehima's laws if you understand all the imperial laws."

She wants to stretch her legs properly and get some fresh air and have a break from long periods alone in anxiety with occasional hope/anger/frustration.

Asking for that is not worth it.

"I will do that. When you don't have more questions about my home."

"I have a lot of questions about your home, you should study when I take a break from asking you things, not wait till I'm done. Speaking of your home, tell me more about it."

"...I don't know where to start." Wow, mood swings are great aren't they, look at that depression making her want to just curl up and do nothing.

"What do you know about human health? How long do humans there live?"

"I'm not a doctor. I know some nutrition. I know some things that are bad for you like eightieth element and eighty second element and... Too much exposure to the sun because of special light... And the special light that big number elements make when they change what element they are. I knew about the small things you can't see... Eighty to one hundred years. Most humans die of being old when the heart breaks or part of the body does not stop growing when it should or the... Tube that carries blood to the head is full."

"Humans here usually live to be sixty and usually don't live to be ninety. Humans might be healthier where you're from. I knew to avoid the eighty-second element, we call it lead, but not the eightieth."

Valanda takes notes: for human life expectancy 80 - 100, avoid element 80; sun dangerous like unstable element.

"How much sun is too much? Do you know anything else about nutrition, besides what you told me?"

She can run down sun exposure rules of thumb. Sun exposure increases the risk of death by the body growing wrong later in life, especially if you ever get sunburned (red burny irritated skin after being in the sun). So do unstable elements. So do some other things.

The body needs carbohydrates and fats and proteins and vitamins and enough different amino acids, in thus-and-such amounts. Scurvy and other nutritional diseases: Not fun. Some people are allergic to some kinds of food. They don't seem to have dairy here. Alcohol is bad for you in excess. So are most other drugs, including the one in coffee.

Doctors sometimes do surgery - cutting into the body and doing things inside and then sewing the body back together. People that would die can be saved this way, sometimes. She doesn't know much more about it.

He takes notes.

"You told me before about the laws that say your government can't do things. What laws do you have that say you can't do things?"

No murder, recklessly endangering people, theft, fraud, rape, slavery, treating children wrong, not sending your children to school, destroying things that aren't yours, avoiding paying taxes, being places you aren't allowed to (many layers of law on that one), harassing people, making the environment dangerous for other people, watching people when they are not in public without permission, reading others' private documents without permission, telling other governments things about the military, lying to the government (you can refuse to talk to them but you get punished more if you talk and lie), and a bunch of smaller more specific things like fishing regulations or building codes.

"Some things are similar here. We don't have those laws about children. Is that because they'll grow up to be free? If your children aren't going to be able to learn, are you supposed to kill them?"

"No! You can't kill children. You aren't supposed to kill anyone, but especially children!"

"Why especially children?"

"Children are... Everyone I know would agree children getting hurt is worse than adults getting hurt... I think... Children are kind of weak and stupid but we want all children to turn into strong and smart and happy adults?"

"Why?"

"...Not enough words. It's a- Children... Need to have a chance at life? Every person deserves liberty. Children can't get liberty unless they don't get hurt and go to school? Words - fair. How do I explain fairness..."

"Why do you want every person to have liberty?"

"Why do you want every person to know the law? Same reason. I think."

"So they don't hurt other people?"

"We think having liberty makes people happy. If everybody wants everybody to obey the law, most people obey the law. If everybody wants everybody to have liberty, most people are happy."

"Maybe children are just more powerful where you're from. Anyway. What do you teach in school?"

"Children aren't very powerful."

"They can make constructs and you can't use command magic to stop them, right?"

"Yes, but children... Aren't really smart enough to make constructs? Not complicated and strong ones. Also schools teach children about why constructs can be dangerous if you're not careful. Schools also teach reading, writing, math, the law, history, and other things."

"Yeah, we teach a similar set of things. If your children aren't powerful then I don't understand why you need to make them happy."

"Because it's right to do that."

"Right how?"

"...Fair. I don't know the right words. Even if I did it wouldn't be all correct. Like with liberty. And I have a headache now and I can't really think straight anymore."

"Have your liver. I'll ask more questions later." Valanda takes one of them off the stove. They should be cool enough to eat by now, right?

They are.

Valanda's slave makes a sad, frustrated sound and eats and digs up the language show again. Grumpily.

"I can answer questions about the language or this place if you have any."

"I think I will learn the language faster if I go outside and listen to people talk. I can be quiet and do nothing and follow you. Unless that's a bad idea." It burns a bit, asking a favor of her (!) owner, but fresh air and sun...

"Sure, let's go for a walk. Don't use any constructs in public that look like more than just illusions yet."

Inviting more restrictions this was a mistake-

"I understand."

He'll lead the way!

There's a snake and some furry creatures that aren't cats in the hallways right now but none of them want a conversation with a random slave right now.

She gets to stretch her legs, that's most of the point. She won't talk to anyone unless spoken to. Just listen. She's figured out the eye contact thing too but might be a bit inconsistent about it. Tired caffeine-withdrawing anxious stir-crazy people are not the most focused.

The hallways on different floors have different aesthetics. One's bright in white and yellow and cream.

The outsides of the buildings are painted in vague streaky non-patterns. There are unusually few windows. Several people have balconies with plants growing on them. A snake flies by, levitating some coins with it. A lot of fluffy-tailed people walk by on all fours.

Well at least it's sort of pretty out here. She mentally practices vocabulary. Thinking the language, using it, is important to actually learn.

That's an agerah, the snake is an essi, the wall is green and brown, the essi is above me, and so on.

And that agerah is inexplicably purple.

Valanda heads toward a government building.

"That's where you can get copies of laws, if you lose the one you have or if you're ready to read the state laws," he says.

"Does it cost money to just go in and read the laws? I think it costs money to get a copy of the laws."

"Nope! It's important for people to know the law. You want to try and read Ehima state laws now?"

"I should maybe read the imperial laws again first. I know only about half of them right now."

"You can do that here or go back and read your copy. Your choice."

How kind. She thinks that Valanda thinks she is being excruciatingly nice. 

It doesn't really help, unless turning her anger more - aimless and regretful - counts as helping.

"I'll do it later. I want to keep walking for now if that's okay. Thank you."

He makes sure she knows where to find a market and a forest and a library. (It is not a free public library.) He points out the direction she'd have to go to find the airport.

And then he turns homeward.

The sunlight feels nice. Spending any time at all outside of that hideously cramped room is nice.

(She still has a headache and still feels awful. But less urgently so, perhaps.)

She follows. She does ask questions about the language here and there, the whole way.

He answers them.

He seems relieved when they get back home.

"I have work in a while, you can study undisturbed once I leave. It'll be good when you know enough to work. ...Not that you have any reason to trust me about this but when you know the laws and you've paid me back for the food and the room and the bracelets I will let you go."

Huh...

"You're right. I don't have any reason to trust you on that. If you keep your word and free me and ward me... After I - get used to things, cheer up some - I'll probably want to come back and work with you. I'm still not happy. But you're right that it probably would have been worse if I landed on anyone else. How much have I costed you so far? I might have ideas for making money if - now that I feel like being - actually helpful."

...She has to decide whether to wait a week or two and see if she keeps her promise before trying anything hostile, then. She'll think about it later.

"Four hundred eight rings so far... but I'll take some off because you told me how to live longer, let's call it three hundred ninety-six. Want to tell me your ideas now or think about it for a while and tell me your ideas tomorrow?"

"Can you sell the bracelets again when you take them off me? I don't need slavery bracelets." It'll be helping enslave someone else, but not much she can do about that. "I can tell you one idea now - math construct."

She pulls down her glorified abacus. It has foreign numbers and symbols and an empty space at the top.

"This can add or multiply or subtract in five seconds. Tell me two numbers and I'll show you?"

"A hundred fifty-nine and seven hundred forty-five."

taptaptap, tap, taptaptap, tap. A foreign number appears at the top. She does it again, and a longer foreign number appears.

"Those two added are nine hundred and four, and multiplied, are... One hundred eighteen thousand, four hundred and forty five."

"A lot of people will want one of those. I can find out who and sell them. How long do those take to make? How long do they last?"

"Depends what-all they have to do. If it only needs to do small numbers, faster. If it only needs to add and subtract, faster. I was working on one that can divide and do - triangle math? - and remember numbers. This one took three hours but will break soon. I can make one of these that lasts a hundred days in maybe six hours. And I can fix it in ten minutes when it breaks probably. Oh, we do numbers differently. I'd need to spend a few days designing to make one that can do numbers the way you use them here."

"I wish I knew more about the people you'll be selling them to but I think if they last a hundred days they should be worth, hm... somewhere in the low thousands of rings, probably, to be just as good as the alternative. A few days to design plus six hours each, that means you'll... make more money than you've cost me with the first one you sell, I think, if it sells fast. But study Hari and learn the law, too, or I won't let you go because you could hurt someone."

...Well that brings her out of the intellectual tinkery mood pretty well.

"Yeah, I understand. I don't know how to make it easy to use for essi or agerah or other kinds of people. I can make it bigger or move the things you have to touch around pretty easily though. And I can make it so people who can't affect constructs can move it around. So if someone wants to buy it you can bring me and I'll do that right there, or whatever is a good idea instead. Also," she hands the two rings Valanda gave her earlier back. "Three hundred and ninety four."

"It'll be best if the buttons are big and it's easy to push just one without pushing the ones next to it. It'll be best if I can carry one to show people. They'll be suspicious and want to see that it really exists before they spend any money on it. And they'll want to be able to move them around once they have them."

"Hmm... I can make one that can be made bigger and smaller by anyone and goes where it's pushed and you can put it in a bag?"

"That'll work. Tomorrow I'll try to figure out who'd be in the market for one of these. ...Hm, I have time to start on that today, if I go now, but then I won't be back here before night. D'you need anything else?"

"You could tell me not to go anywhere that's not here or the bathroom instead of to not leave the room? ...That would mean you can't lock the door though. Eh, I'll survive."

"Command magic doesn't work that way, I couldn't enforce that. ...How about I don't bother to. Go ahead."

She even smiles a bit. A tiny bit. Yay. "Thank you. I won't go anywhere else. Good luck finding a buyer!"

She uses the restroom and comes back and starts studying. The lack of coffee makes it harder to focus - the clear goal ahead of her makes it much easier.

Mahan has so many words to teach.

The imperial laws would be a quick read if Walta were fluent in Hari. That's partly because they refer to other documents that expand on things but mostly because there just aren't that many laws and they aren't that complicated.

She puts a lot of effort into it. She's pretty sure she has them down, a few hours later. She has a few questions about words she can't quite guess from context, but otherwise can probably recite them all except maybe the detailed penalties for non-human species. She goes over them in her head. She imagines hypotheticals and runs down the list of laws to see if they break any. She practices vocabulary and grammar and pronunciation and takes notes from Mahan.

When Mahan starts on one of the episodes she paid a lot of attention to the first time, she decides to take a break. Bathroom. Pacing the hallway for a couple of minutes. Snack... Thinking about home. The school will have noticed her missing by now. Her friends, too. They're probably worried she's kidnapped or dead in a ditch somewhere. Heh. Her parents are probably worried sick. Screw 'em.

Sigh.

Breaks are important to keep focused and productive. That walk earlier cheered her up and cleared her head and let her work for a long time, but she can't go outside again. So she'll do... Something else to relieve tension. (In the bathroom, quietly, so the lack of any tissues is less of an issue and she can wash up.) She's not really comfortable at all, but is a couple days' worth of pent up and after some touching and some fantasizing she can get back to work slightly less tense and make progress on a calculator design that can process Hari-style numerals.

Eventually Valanda comes back.

"How's the calculator design coming?"

"I can't really say 'I'm one quarter done,' I can't tell exactly how long it will take, but I made progress. I think I know all the imperial laws now. I spent a lot of time on that. If you ask me questions I can answer without looking. Prove it to you."

"Sure. Without looking at the laws or your notes, tell me in your own words what you have to do to obey imperial law."

"For me, don't hurt people, don't lie to anyone in the government, don't break stuff, don't steal stuff, don't break any contracts or agreements, don't own any slaves or have any kids because I am not getting involved in any of that if I can help it, pay my taxes, don't trespass or try to get rid of people who're somewhere public."

Valanda laughs. "I didn't plan on having any slaves either! You're right. Keep working on your construct and I'll bring you a copy of the state laws tomorrow."

She salutes and says, "Aye, aye, captain," in her own language. Then goes, "Ah, that was a- I don't know the word. A joke. I mean, will do. It's actually a fascinating problem. I could talk about it if you want, or just be quiet if you want quiet."

"You can talk if you want to. For a little while."

"I'll talk about other ideas for constructs. One that watches and lights up if someone comes to your shop. One that can move people up and down buildings so they don't have to climb stairs. One that compresses air. Compressed air can do neat stuff. One that carries water out of a well and pours it by itself. One that can cut things precisely, like cutting up apples into little slices or cutting wood - I'd need you to buy a knife for that one."

"The thing that moves people up and down without stairs is an elevator. Buildings either have elevators or don't have room to put them. They're hard to put in after the building is done. What can compressed air do?"

Shrug. "...Actually maybe not that much. You can make weapons with it, you can send packages around in sealed tubes with compressed air, some people at home made tools that used compressed air but those aren't here. I could probably make one that sorts things, like, sorts big apples from little ones? Oh, constructs can move a lot of air around and make a warm or cool breeze."

"I think none of those are as useful as the one you're working on. Magic can move things around and make things warm or cool."

"You have to pay someone to move things or do it yourself though. A construct will move things until it breaks without needing rest or food... Well, okay. I'll keep working on the calculator."

She un-minimizes her notes and gets to it.

Valanda curls up tight and rests.

Walta sleeps too, eventually.

The next day Valanda stays out a while after his first shift and comes back with a much larger document explaining Ehima state law.

Walta has come up with a decent idea for how entering Hari numerals might work! It's not a calculator yet, it just displays the number she enters, and only goes up to 39. But it's a proof of concept. Perhaps Valanda should try it and see whether it is understandable or not.

He pokes at it for a while.

"Yeah, I understand how to enter numbers on this. You're going to make it so it can do bigger numbers before we sell it, right?"

"Yes. Probably to thousands but not millions. For putting in. For showing, I can do millions. I was going to turn Hari numbers into the way my home does numbers - I think my home's numbers make more sense - and then turn that into the way the calculator sees numbers, but that would make it break sooner, too complicated. I have to find ways to turn Hari numbers into calculator numbers directly. And also how to turn calculator numbers back into Hari numbers. It will take more than another day. Maybe two maybe three days. It's hard to estimate how long designing constructs will take."

"I can see why that would take time. Keep working on it and studying. I think you can do it, you seem smart."

"Sure. 'S not like I'm going to get free by crossing my arms and pouting. I'll read the state laws too."

"Good. You do that. ...When it's time to sell it I'm not sure if you should meet our buyer. Do you care if you meet them?"

Just keep telling me things to do, it's not like you don't know I hate hate hate this by now. If you don't keep your promise...

"Not really."

"Okay. I have more market research to do. Need anything before I go?"

"We'll be out of food soon. Nothing else." Leave already, Valanda would hear if he could read minds.

Off he goes!

Mahan is still talking.

The state laws are longer and have a lot more references to other documents. There was less of an attempt to make them the bare minimum and understandable by all.

She's not a law student. And her mood swings have evaporated the fervor of studying she had earlier to nothing. But she can probably make a bullet-pointed list of what to avoid doing and what she needs look up more laws about if she decides to do.

She should avoid doing void magic. She should not make any false statements while advertising any product. She should use the toilet or the woods but never a city street. She should look up more laws if she wants to build any buildings. She should learn more words and look up more laws and obey the relevant authorities if she wants to use a forest.

Well. Studying and designing in a cramped drab room, on caffeine withdrawal, depressed and hungry, she still makes nonzero progress.

Another day and night passes, and when Valanda gets back on the next day, she has a calculator.

It can parse and return Hari numerals, add, subtract, multiply, divide (producing wholes-and-remainders), and exponentiate. It has a memory feature for up to 5 different numbers. It can't parse or return decimals or fractions. It can't accept numbers bigger than a few thousand, or return numbers bigger than a few million. (It will say 'TOO BIG' if you ask it 999 to the power of 999 or something). It can be pushed around and resized, though these features are a bit finicky.

"Maybe there's people who do math for fun. There's a prize for finding new numbers that only have one and themselves as factors at home. I can find new ones of those with a construct probably."

"This is really good! I think I know who to sell this one to. Do you understand the state laws yet?"

"I think I understand them enough to know when I need to look up more details. I should read some of the other documents they reference soon. I don't have them memorized."

"You can find all of those in the same place as you can find the laws. You can go down there now if you want, while I take your calculator to our buyer. It'll be convenient if I can meet you back here eventually. Or you can come with me or stay here."

"You said you were going to free me when you made your money back. I'll go read for a little while and then come back here. I don't want to wait any longer than that."

Off he goes with the calculator!

The government building is right where it was last time they were there.

She would like to - she still has the bracelets. She was told to read the addendum documents to imperial and state law, where can she do that?

Take-home copies are in those big bins over there. Or as long as it doesn't get too crowded in here she can stand around reading the copies projected on the walls.

(So weird seeing a tiger-thing as a receptionist.) She reads the big projected copies.

A pair of pointy-eared almost-but-not-quite-human people interrupt her to offer her a ring if she'll settle their bet. They'd like to know if she finds their species attractive.

Caralendri, huh. (Mahan talked about the kinds of people in the world.)

"-Sure, if you're offering." She looks them over. "...Hm, yes, mostly. You're a little thin and some people like thin more or less, but yes."

They pay her a ring and one of them pays the other several rings. They walk away without another word.

Real friendly types. Well, a ring's a ring and she'll need some soon, hopefully. She pockets it and goes back to reading. She goes back to Valanda's place before she manages to read all the ancillary documents, and grabs takeaway copies on the way out for reference.

Valanda comes home without the calculator, draped in lots of rings. "Do you understand the state laws yet? Do you understand what taxes you'll have to pay? Can you follow the law?"

"Mostly, mostly, and yes." She raises her arms forward, trembling slightly.

"If you go off and immediately get the government angry with me I will hunt you down and hurt you." He takes her bracelets off. "Don't leave just yet, I have something for you."

She rubs her wrists, and sort of... Hugs herself. She lets out a deep breath. She smiles.

He casts the command ward he promised her, then carefully counts out exactly one thousand three hundred thirty-four rings and offers them to her.

"The extra from what you've spent on me, I'm guessing?"

"I split the price evenly between us and then subtracted what I've spent on you from your share. It's a little late for you to find somewhere else tonight, you can rent my floor again for... let's say a hundred forty-four rings?"

"You know what? No. Thank you for freeing me, you were actually pretty nice about it all things considered - but you still tricked me with these stupid bracelets in the first place and I - need to calm down before I do much of anything involving you. I'm gonna buy food and run off to the woods. I know the laws about the woods. So, no."

"Come find me again if you want to do business with me."

"...Yeah. We'll see. Goodbye for now."

And out she goes. To the market, un-enslaved this time. Anyone want to buy these bracelets she doesn't need anymore?

An agerah offers a ring for them.

She's not stupid. They're worth more than one ring even if you have to redo the magic, surely. Someone had to spend time making them. At least fifty.

Unless she can get the command mage who first enchanted them to vouch for their reusability they're scrap metal. ...He can go up to two rings?

...Sigh. "Fine, two rings for scrap metal."

And at least this gets them out of her life hopefully forever.

She hunts around for a cheap bag to carry things, for cheap food that'll keep cold for a few days, and then walks towards the woods.

A belul is standing by the nearest entrance to the preserve that almost encircles the city and can let her in for twenty-eight rings, exit fees may apply if she harvests or damages anything, no permanent illusions or illusions larger than a five-foot radius allowed.

Yeah, she gets it, here's your rings.

(She just wants to be away. She's probably going to cry for a while once she magics up her shelter.)

Nobody else bothers her once she's in the forest.

It's a nice forest, open and airy, lots of chestnut and oak trees.

It's nice. And it's a nice day. She doesn't go too far from the city, so she can find her way back later.

She finds a place to sit and just... Think.

She's not a slave anymore, so the burning anxiety telling her to do something is largely gone. But this - other world - is still aggressively depressing. She has no idea how she got here, no idea how to get home. If 'home' even applies. The government allowing, mandating slavery is a totalitarian nightmare, but it seems to be... Competent. From what she's seen so far. Trying to eliminate slavery would be the biggest spanner in the works in history since the "endless war" from before it took over everything, and quite possibly cause another one of those. Though basing her political opinion entirely on a propagandized children's language-slash-history lesson is an incredibly bad idea.

With a little over a thousand rings, she can just exist for a little while. And Valanda...

...She'll think about Valanda tomorrow. She builds herself a construct-shelter and sleeps. (She should have gotten a bedroll or something. She needs a bath. She misses coffee. All of these are physical unpleasantness, and therefore fairly ignorable compared to the lingering pit of dread in her stomach from the last few days.)

She sleeps in soft glow of her own construct, feeling the afternoon breeze. She wanders, the next day - finding water is a little annoying, she almost goes back into the city but then finds a clean-looking stream. She doesn't want to go back yet. She filters it through sand and pebbles and a construct with tiny tiny holes and it and boils it, and this is a wildlife preserve so it probably isn't super polluted and if it has something infectious in it she'll just go see a death mage when she starts feeling bad.

She wanders, remembering to keep track of where she's going and leave herself signs.

She goes back, eventually. Presents herself at the gate and says she didn't harvest anything except river water.

"A ring if you'll tell us what you were using as a water filter," says one of the three hummingbirds on guard duty.

-Well Valanda sold a calculator, so it's not like she's a dire secret. And if she's going to make any money at all people need to know what she can do.

"It's called a construct. It's the kind of magic I can do."

Here's her ring.

"Another ring to know why we've never heard of your kind of magic?"

She laughs despite herself. "That one's worth more than a ring. Actually, I think I don't want to tell it at all."

The disappointed hummingbirds let her back into the city.

She's tempted to try and sell them something but it seems unlikely to work and nobody knowing what the hell constructs can do will get old fast, and overall it's better to go try and find Valanda again. She'll wander the market until... About the time when she thinks he'll be getting back from work. Maybe she can spot whoever bought her calculator.

He's out in the market doing some sort of magic to things people bring him. Doesn't look like it pays very well and he doesn't seem very busy.

Deep breaths. Valanda is not actually terrible, and might actually be not terrible. Don't let gut feelings overrule that.

"Hi, Valanda."

"Hi, Walta. Want to talk here or go to my apartment where there's no one listening in?"

"Listening in? Oh, knowledge mages. Probably a good idea actually, yes."

He has absolutely no objections to giving up on the market and heading in right now. He leads the way.

"I want to talk to you about politics and laws that kind of thing some more, it's actually interesting when I don't have to. And also an idea I had."

"Sure. I also know more about your market than I told you, I can help you with your next project."

"You finding buyers and us splitting the profits isn't necessarily a 'no', but I don't think fifty-fifty is quite fair, by the way."

"I can do more than find a buyer. I've talked to people about what they want from a calculator. I've figured out how much the alternative costs and I can help you avoid undervaluing your work."

"I already have a list of calculator features to build up and I can go out and talk to people myself. I figure you made yourself about two thousand rings last time, and doin' those things for me is valuable, I don't have to navigate the market - but maybe not two thousand rings of valuable, is all."

"Yeah, of course. What sort of split were you considering?"

"I was thinking twenty five-seventy five on new things, thirty five-sixty five on repairs once people start needing repairs."

(She has no idea how business works but acting weak gets you taken advantage of here, so...)

"That works. Want to figure out your next project now or talk about laws and politics first?"

"Laws and politics. And my other idea... I'll need to hire a structure mage but I want to ask you if it sounds like it'd work." She hesitates, "Maybe I pay you a few rings to point me to a good structure mage." Because everything runs on money here, apparently.

They should be near Valanda's apartment now?

Yeah, they're already well within the outer illusion, not that she has any way to know what's covered or how well. He lives conveniently close to the market.

"Which structure mage you want depends on what you need done. I might know who you want, I might not."

"My idea is to have a structure mage make the substance in coffee that wakes you up. I really want some, and maybe I could sell it to other humans. Don't know if it works the same on other species. I know what elements it has and what the structure they're arranged in is."

"Unless it turns out another species likes it too you'll have trouble selling it. The hardest part will be finding humans. You really want to start by figuring out if it's safe for other species, I'm not sure how to do that..."

"Well, I want some for myself even if I can't sell it. Caffeine withdrawal was... Definitely at least a part of why I was so miserable a few days ago."

"That's weird, I thought it was being in a new world and suddenly enslaved. If you know the elements and the structure you can get it from any structure mage at all, it'd honestly be taking advantage of you to sell you a recommendation. If you hire Gema the agerah who lives across the hall from me and tell her you chose her on my recommendation it'd be useful to me but she won't be better than anyone else, just closer."

"I mean, the slavery was definitely most of it, but you can't ignore physiology. Would Gema be here now?"

"I'm not sure. I can wait while you check. Oh, don't try to open her door yourself, just call out that you're there and want to hire her."

"I was going to, uh, hit the door - I guess what's polite is different here?"

"Sure, hit the door, also tell her why you're there so she knows whether to answer."

She knocks. "Hello! I want to hire Gema the structure mage!"

There's a short pause and then the door opens a crack. Gema sticks her head out.

"What's the job and how much'll you pay for it?"

"Making a pound or two of a chemical I want. I can describe the structure in detail and it should only need air for materials. Uh," she does some quick mental math - she'd pay a lot more but she can downbid and move up if necessary - "Forty rings?"

Gema considers for a few seconds. "Maybe fifty rings?"

"Alright, deal." She starts counting rings out. "How should I explain the structure to you? I have, uh, reason to think that I think of structures differently, probably."

"Depends. At worst, if you know how atoms bond you can describe each bond. If you happen to be an illusion mage you can try a diagram in case I can figure out what you mean from it."

"I'm not an illusion mage but I can do something similar."

And she lays out a diagram, first element and sixth and seventh and eighth in such and such a configuration, with single and double covalent bonds.

Gema asks a couple of questions but mostly understands.

"Do you expect this to be toxic? Will I need a bowl for it, is it going to be liquid?"

"It should be a powder, I think." She quickly makes an angular bowl out of light. "It can go in here. Yes, it's quite possibly toxic to anyone but humans though I don't know for sure - and toxic to humans if you take too much."

"Will it be safe if I make it wet so it's less likely to blow into my face?"

"Ah, yes, it doesn't react with water."

There's a noticeable breeze as air is drawn to the bowl but Gema works slowly enough that it's only a gentle breeze.

"If you want to wait for it to dry before you weigh it you can do that. If you're in a hurry you can trust me about how much of the weight is water. I have a scale inside but we can take it down to the market and use someone else's scale if you'd rather."

Half a pound or two pounds she'll have her fix of caffeinated soon, "I'll just trust you. Oh, Valanda told me to mention she sent me to you. I would've gone down to the market otherwise." And here's fifty rings.

She encloses the bowl. And, right, she needs precise scales to measure out a safe amount of caffeine. But that can wait. She goes back to Valanda.

"So, you wanted to talk politics and law?"

"Yeah. Mostly about how I think that baking slavery into law probably makes for really terrible suffering for quite a lot of people and the world suffers for it."

"That's probably true but I'm not sure what you want from me besides a ward."

"You said if people realize my world exists it might cause a war?"

"Yeah. Having more than one independent country causes wars. I guess it's lucky for us if you can't get back."

"I think having more than one independent country might be worth the occasional war as long as it's not a nasty, horrible, drawn-out war. If there's just one country, it's incredibly difficult for any of the rules to ever change again. And it's possible for states to coexist without war. There are countries that haven't had a single war, ever. They seceded peacefully and everything."

"How old is the oldest state that hasn't had a single war?"

"That's probably... Harrinila. They're pretty small, maybe two million people, but have been around peacefully for at least 600 years."

"Are they in some very defensible and not very useful mountains somewhere? Does anyone want their territory?"

"I'm pretty sure people want the territory? It's coastal and flat. They have an army, I'm sure. They're kind of allied with a bunch of other small states in the same area? They formed when a bigger country in the area lost a war badly enough that it stopped existing at all and - fragmented."

"Allied? What exactly does that mean for them?"

"All the small countries promise to back each other up if anyone declares war on any of them, but not if any of the small countries declare war on someone else. Plus, like, tax and trade and law enforcement agreements I think?"

"So they're as strong as a large country defensively and only as strong as a small country offensively. But aren't there any large countries that want to attack all of them? Can't someone, I don't know... you don't have knowledge magic, so couldn't someone trick most of the countries in the alliance into thinking Harrinila attacked some other country so that other country could 'retaliate' and conquer Harrinila without the other countries in the alliance helping Harrinila fight back? Why hasn't that happened?"