This time he doesn't have to wait quite as long before being waved into the secretary's office.

And there he is!

The secretary gruffly informs him there's a position open, as a low-level calculator for the astronomers. He'll have to show them he knows his arithmetic, of course. The directions to get there are as so; he's to introduce himself to Koltherna. 

He thanks the secretary and starts following the directions.

The castle's pretty easy to get lost in. The passages are the servants', and they're windy and often narrow. Luckily people are pretty generous about directions if he does get lost.

The destination is a long hall, dominated in the middle by a massive mechanical contraption, which looks as if an orrery had been repurposed to show arcane concepts rather than planets. Various maps dominate the walls. A decent number of desks are lined up in the wings of the hall, and a woman sits at a larger desk near the entrance - probably the person he was told to talk to.

He waits until she doesn't look busy then walks up to her. "Excuse me?"

She looks over at him. "You the new hire?"

"Yes. My name's Sadde."

She smiles back. "I'll give you work, and you can return it to me as it's completed, how's that sound. Let me know if it's too hard or too easy. That desk over there hasn't been claimed by anyone in particular."

She hands him a small packet of papers with equations to solve, a stack of blank papers, and a writing set. "The desks should also be stocked with more paper and writing supplies, and you can come ask me for more if you run out."

"Sounds good!"

And he's very curious about what this department actually does.

It's not entirely obvious from the equations, which are stripped of context, though he'll quickly get up to this realm's version of celestial mechanics and downright weird physics equations if he's good at advanced math. Non-Euclidean geometry seems to be the standard. He's not close enough to the group of researchers at the center to overhear their conversations, though from what they're writing on a handful of large boards, the central problem of the day seems related to the ley-lines. Possibly. 

Oooh.

But how does celestial mechanics even exist, it's not like this place has, like, space...

The equations don't have enough context for that to be obvious, but it seems to have something to do with the movements of stars, the ley-lines themselves, and the islands. 

Huh. Cool. And yes, "Sadde" is very good at advanced maths, he's going through these fairly quickly.

Eventually it'll be the end of the day. Koltherna smiles at him, lets him know he's been working long enough - "We've found there's a point where people tend to start making more mistakes." It seems to be the end of her work day, too, as she's packing up her things.

"You've done very well today, it's a lucky break when we actually get sent someone who knows what they're doing. Of course we'll have someone else check your work for a little bit, but that's standard. Do you have any questions about the work?"

"So many! What's it all about—" and all the other things he's been burning to ask about all of this.

"We're calculating the movements of the ley-lines. Affects some types of magic. It's good that you're interested in all this - most science types end up going to the universities, though I guess that's harder to swing if you're first generation. We mostly have to rely on apprentices - we have the best apprenticeship system for mathematics, if I do say so myself. None of that standardized classroom stuff that Bajilda is pushing... Anyways, I can write you an introduction to the librarian, so you can find something on the physics of the ley? That'd probably answer your questions better than I can just chatting."

She packs up a few more things, scribbles a letter that she hands to him, then turns to go. "Here, I can walk you to the library, I'm heading that way anyways."

"Thank you!"

He follows.

The library is big, taking up a space larger than most buildings. Koltherna points out one of the assistant librarians, then takes her leave. There's a good number of people among the stacks, most of them in the tunic uniform but several clearly from the town; apparently this doubles as the public library.

Ooh, awesome.

Hi librarian!

The librarian is rather brusk, but directs him to a section that has several books on physics and recommends one. The books aren't to be taken from the building, but there's plenty of desks and tables.

Books! Physics!

The realm's gotten far in terms of physics, mostly because navigating, let alone understanding, the ley requires it. It'll be late before he's made even a small dent in all there is to read; this library's mostly books on math, physics, and engineering. 

Heh.

Well. Tomorrow he can come back and start Asking Questions, then.

He can!

(He might notice as he's walking back that there's several distinct uniforms, and the cleaners are treated as if they're invisible. The uniforms are simple tunics and leggings, with only color differences between them.)