"Then I certainly should not rely on being able to detect it. ...if there's an opportunity to observe this 'charm', like the experiments you mentioned earlier, I would appreciate that. For now I'll have to trust that no-one will try to assault me in broad daylight, and come back at six."

"It'd be a moderate pain to arrange. I'll inquire. See you at six."

To the door with them both?

This is a nicer neighborhood. More green spaces, more space in general. Seems like a fairly quiet street but there are still a few dozen people visible going about daily life.

Tanya walks (not flies) at a civilian pace and tries to relax in this perfectly pleasant neighborhood where a mind-controlling kitsune is only lurking behind every hundredth tree!

She wants to:

1. Find a clock, ideally one with a second hand or other fine-time-division she can time her orb's clock against, and figure out what the local time is and when it will be six. And whether the 'bells' are literal like churches on Earth.

2. Find a map of the city with public landmarks, and identify libraries and other places where she might be able to ask for guidance. Sinnah mentioned 'travelers' houses' do this (they might also be lodging houses?) 

3. Observe how people react to her when she doesn't fly in but still looks foreign. Observe the patterns of magic on display in her detector range (or just close to her, if that's too many).

There are few clocks around; They're more the Theme of another Walled City and thus somewhat unfashionable, but they're too useful to entirely neglect. They tend to be made out of very artful glass facing ranging from clean and simple to baroque and gaudy. The seconds are very slightly (~1%) longer, but they use a 24-hour day and 60-second minute and 60-minute hour!

Travellers' houses turn out to be a messy combination of general information services, odd job listings, bureaucratic engine handling notaries and verifications of various sorts as well as immigration services. They all have a big city map with a big 'you are here'. Landmarks include the various districts (Noble, market, university, sunrise, terrace, glass, avian, and dumps), the museum of glass, the gōng's palace (which is also the central bureaucracy), the great greenhouses, the military district, Red Tower, the Eye of Erius (a temple of some sort), and the Way of Balance monastery.

People seem perfectly at ease with a foreigner, in most of the districts, especially the most well-off ones. Lots and lots of spells are going off all the time. The most common ones seem to be a bunch of useful wizard cantrip-equivalents; Disturb Dust, Weld Metal, Ignite, Apprentice's Oil, Condense Water, Chill/Heat, etc. There are also a few consistent signatures varying in magnitude for people manipulating rocks, air, water, fire, and lightning by what seems to be intuition or instinct. There are also a lot of wildly variable spell signatures that correspond to people doing domestic magic, mostly cleaning.

Those are quite encouraging sights! Decorated clocks and museums indicate a government (or private benefactors) both rich enough to afford them and civically inclined enough to build them (instead of, say, giant statues of themselves). Standardized bureaucracy with enough uptake to require multiple bureaus in a small city means city services have good reach and uptake. There is sensibly a military district (she should maybe ask Sinnah about the local military, are they currently fighting anyone or likely to do so?) Even the slightly longer days are close enough to be comfortable.

Magic being widely available for civilian purposes is obviously excellent, but Tanya's hindbrain believes deep down that so many signatures must mean she is on the battlefield and she can't stop being slightly on edge. At least none of them are moving quickly. She doesn't know what they all do yet but there is a clear majority of standardized ones that she'll record and label later. Eventually she'll be able to learn they're not dangerous and relax. ...no, she probably won't be able to relax as long as mind-control magic exists, but being on civilization's side against means she can navigate a dangerous environment with perfect aplomb and an appearance of calm.

(Sinnah said she'd be within her rights to respond with lethal force to any use of nonconsensual mind-control magic and Tanya trusts her implicitly because that is such an obviously rational coordination point for everyone to agree on. She can't recognize mind-control magic yet, but she has a clear goal now.)

Tanya would like to sample some local food, Sinnah warned her that her lab doesn't have a kitchen so she presumably shouldn't bring in food and Tanya ought to learn what local cuisine she likes or at least tolerates. And then to talk to Information Services (do they provide paid guides?) about, hmm, the major industries - food, transportation, materials and manufacture, communications, defense, construction - and social services and contract law and rights of the worker and such. Pretend to be from very far away but on this planet, try to politely demur saying where from exactly, clarify that she is definitely only interested in a high-level overview based on entirely public information and isn't any kind of spy. This is very likely an implausible story, since a planet with widespread (even if slow) flight and also powerful individual supersonic mages ought to have little variation in regionally available technology and information, but it's cheap enough to try. Although if they ask to see her registration up front she'll have to show them the plaque that says she's an otherworlder.

In terms of food, the first six food-having places she encounters are:

A road stall selling baozi and flatbread dishes.

A restaurant advertising traditional roasted meat and rice - 'Ten Plates'.

A general store that has a bunch of groceries in it.

A bakery-cafe selling lots of bread, in whole loves or smaller pieces, some of it fancy or pastry-like. The coffee is kind of a sideline or afterthought.

A road stall selling fried vegetable dishes and soups (expensive, but partial refund if you return the bowl and utensil).

A restaurant decorated in a much more - Francois? Not quite, but it's reminiscent - style, advertising Western-style dishes like pasta, fried potatoes, and meatballs.

A very pleasant selection! She'll try the dishes of the road stalls, and sample some fruit. 'Ten plates' might not be literally that but probably wouldn't leave room to try other food, and she's had enough of Francois (and more importantly Germanian) food for a lifetime.

...they have coffee?!

Tanya wants that coffee!!! It doesn't matter if it's badly made, as long as they have the bean and the method there are sure to be other shops doing a better job! As long as it's real coffee it's bound to be better than the ersatz stuff they got on the Eastern front last year! Can she have a look at their beans (whole or pre-ground) and coffee-making apparatus? She'll even buy one of their pastries!

(The stir fry and baozi are good as far as street food goes. The fruit is unfamiliar in exact variety but it's hard to go too wrong with fruit. It's a bit less sweet, overall. Notably, meat is fairly pricey anywhere she looks.)

(Oh, the coffee? They don't make it here. They buy it already brewed in this big steel can, from this place a few blocks away, in exchange for some fancy pastries to sell at the coffee place. A win-win deal. They'll give her directions to the place!)

Tanya will thank them (by buying a pastry, as is polite, even if she doesn't particularly like its look) and proceed to the indicated coordinates address! 

This place has NO WAR and YES COFFEE. So far it looks like a great place to be.

The coffee place is just a teensy bit protective of the details of their methods but show her the beans, and the grinder. It's definitely coffee. They have sugars and creams and so on, too.

A big cup is 5 large copper; That's pretty expensive, about the same as a meal in the nice restaurant. But not absurdly, massively expensive, at least.

Excellent! Tanya will take a cup with cream and two sugar and compliment them and ask if the beans are grown nearby or have to be imported from another continent. She reassures them she is not at all trying to steal their business secrets (obviously they don't need to tell her anything like that), she is simply a traveler from distant lands who is delighted to finally find a new barista.

Nondecimal denominations are a Commonwealth abomination and Tanya has to mentally convert everything to a 120-base silver standard. Gold coins are 2400s, a 'large copper' is a 10 and a 'small copper' is a 1. This monetary unit doesn't even have a name! This would normally be annoying but right now it doesn't matter because she has COFFEE and, much more importantly, she has a COFFEE SUPPLY. And motivation to become a high earner to be able to afford it daily! Well, there are certainly worse goals in life and this one will do for a start while she readjusts to civilian life. Maybe she can help facilitate coffee bean shipping, if the problem is that they have to import them like Germania does.

(Sure, it has a name. 120 of it is an ecu, which means that a small copper is 1/120 of an ecu.)

They import it from around a thousand miles south, near the southernmost inhabited parts of the Scar Sea, from a few different suppliers. Crops that don't grow locally are always expensive, because none of the big agricultural magic groups like sending skilled staff to monster-infested lands without crazy high danger pay so it's mostly natural growth.

(That's not a name, that's a description. Having more than one unit of currency is in Tanya's opinion an unforced error.)

This is bad news, because she can't help with harvesting like she can with transport and prices are presumably high everywhere around the world. But it's also good news that workers can demand (and get) appropriately high hazard pay despite international competition! (Tanya didn't know harvesting coffee requires highly skilled workers but she didn't specifically know it doesn't.) A real change can only come from cultivated coffee grown on safe farms, and she's not exactly in a position to drive that industry, so she'll settle for being a high earner and paying the market price for! her! morning COFFEE!

Tanya will thank the staff again and express her hope to return and then proceed happily to the nearest information services point. While being on the lookout for sudden mind control but, like, happily so!

...she checks if her new mood is a result of mind control and concludes that according to Sinnah's description is isn't because it's not focused on a person. She will ask Sinnah later if there are charm spells that make you attracted to a product being sold but antagonizing a (powerful mage) customer just to sell them one (1) expensive coffee really doesn't seem worth anyone's time.

So: information services!

There are travellers' houses at major intersections, if she's going for one of those. Merchant offices and the like are fairly common too.

Tanya heads to the nearest one she can find, and after taking in the city map she has questions and can pay for someone's time in answering them or directing her to the appropriate books.

The Travellers' House does indeed offer information services standard. You can read the Travel Almanac for three small copper, or hire one of the clerks to answer questions for eight small copper an hour.

She'll skim the almanac overview first, sure, and then presumably pay for an hour and maybe more than one if the first one is productive.

To begin with: what are the major industries, locally and nationally, and their related products and imports and exports? Largest in terms of workers employed, average pay, and general proportion of the economy.

In particular, how many people work in agriculture, or would need to work in it if large amounts of food weren't imported (Tanya doesn't know if they are)? This is often a good proxy to start with, or it would be if she were back on Earth.

Locally, the biggest industries are farming (using a variety of magic by expensive enchanted objects and specialists to very efficiently grow crops and lumber on small land areas), artisanry of various types (especially glass working), the recycling industry to remediate waste into usable materials (they still import a lot of things, but raw material is not that much less expensive than finished products, so the pressure to recycle is strong), and magical synthesis of useful materials, most especially cooking oil, the spell for which became popularly known around 20 years ago. (He makes a joke about how you get sick of the taste of fried things if you're eating cheaply.) Also, if she's interested in high pay, creating magic scrolls and enchanted objects is definitely the highest-paying general industrial category. Many artisans and industries use enchanted tools for their work, and scrolls or wands are very handy for things like emergency response...

...Uh, for some reason most of the local universities of magic have a culture of working for money being 'beneath them', he recommends saying you want to learn about the high art of magic if you apply, not that you want to make money. There was rioting and a big brawl between the students of several sunrise district trade schools and the Great Peak Magic Academy that had to be broken up by the city guard, a couple years ago.

The food situation is a bit strange - fried bread is the cheapest thing one could possibly survive on, since grains grow well under intensive farming and Apprentice Oil is something reasonably bright people can and do learn to do reliably in six months at a trade school. But obviously people want variety, and all their vitamins and minerals, so there's still economic pressure to grow other things. Most of the food that gets imported is exotics and luxuries, like mangoes, oranges, coffee, tea, or spices. Her info guy doesn't have extensive reference material handy but figures maybe half of all people in the region work in agriculture or food processing at some remove? That's for everyone directly under the purview of the City of Glass, who live within fifty miles or so, not counting any allied provinces or colonies.

A sophisticated and (at least somewhat?) industrialized economy, based on magic developed farther than on Earth. People can reliably learn to use magic without being born mages! Food staples are cheap, local and secure! Tanya likes this place more and more, but she doesn't know yet how she fits into it once the lessons with Sinnah run out. She might be able to work security in a colony, but the point is not to keep risking her life for money! Also, her orb will break down sooner or later without proper maintenance. 

How does transportation work, for bulk goods as well as for people who can't fly? Do they have efficient land or air transport? Are their ships powered and not at the mercy of the winds?

The options in ascending order of cost for a person to travel are walking alone, joining a caravan or other passenger coach service, a slow boat, a sorcerer-powered boat, a flying carriage. Cargo options are similar except bulk slow boat trade is cheapest and overland carriage or courier service is fairly pricey.

So they do have powered ships. (And powered land travel?) Are these sorcerers the kind anyone can learn to become, enabling traffic to scale to match demand? Also, do they have communications faster than the speed of travel?

Scholarship does not agree on if anyone can become a sorcerer. Strong intuitive sorcery runs in families, sometimes people who seriously try end up training it up to a useful level even if they has no detectable original talent. Maybe one in twenty? That's a guess, she could inquire at a monastery - that being the local institution of sorcery training. There are many anecdotes and little reliable data on who succeeds and who fails. Land travel power is generally powered by animals, sometimes by magic directly applying torque to things. The Steelmaking Otherworlder tried to introduce steam engines but they were too ruinously expensive at the time and still aren't really competitive with magic propulsion.

There are a few semaphore networks in places where that makes sense (mostly up and down the Scar Sea coast). There is a clever arrangement of scheduled remote scrying that can get messages thousands of miles away once a day, but it's expensive to sign up to. There are communication spells, which generally require the caster to be familiar with a specific targeted individual and fail silently. He has heard a rumor of an instantaneous communication system using from old Tirran Empire artifacts run by certain merchant houses, and a different one shared among most major lords of Atsos intended to send out alerts and calls to action about especially dangerous monsters, but is not familiar with the details.

Wonderful, another religion-bound magic that's crucial to the economy. Well, if the local sorcerers are unable or unwilling to start teaching others outside the approved monasteries, there's nothing Tanya can do about it.

It's unfortunate for Tanya's prospects that steam engines have been tried and found wanting. The interesting question is whether that's because they're worse than on Earth, or because the local magic is that much better. That's not a question Tanya can ask directly, so instead she'll ask - how many sorcerers does it take to power a ship? How big and fast are these ships? Are the sorcerer salaries a significant part of the cost of maintaining a shipping fleet? This isn't important, because if the locals have tried and failed to improve the steam engine Tanya is very unlikely to know the exact engineering details that made them work better on Earth, but it's still useful in building a general picture.

Radio, though, she definitely knows how to build a simple radio and even a simple one is better than a semaphore. (And telegraphs, but those require much more capital investment and are easy to disrupt.) It sounds like there are enough different technologies and magical traditions in use locally to solve the electricity problem one way or another; radio doesn't require that much power. There might not be much interest at first from the big investors, because they already have (expensive) instant communications across the globe on top of supersonic travel, and radio relays are cheaper than semaphores to set up but the semaphores are already in place. Ships are better served by sending magic messages to the right person than by line-of-sight radio. That leaves the mass market: people who can't afford to send messages using any of the current systems, or not enough of them, and one-to-many broadcasts. She'll need a local business partner to capture some of the gains of being the first to market with radio sets...

Question for the clerk: does this jurisdiction issue patents on technologies and are they respected internationally?

It takes one strong sorcerer to power a ship, and they can move at around 30-40 knots if they're couriers or 15-18 or so if they're big cargo haulers. Sorcerer salaries are about ten times an ordinary crewman salary, or around that order of magnitude. A ship typically hires 2-4 of them and they work in shifts.

Atsos does not have very strong copyright or patent protections. Many organizations keep trade secrets and espionage can in fact get you into trouble. He thinks the Kingdom of Noten is much more pro-patent and copyright.