She has a good memory. (Parasitic worms?)

Any observations she can make about people in some jobs seeming more well off than others, having apprentices or children with them...?

She will attempt more active inquiries in the morning.

It's a little hard to tell who's how well-off in a society where different things are hard to get. There are sometimes children in crowd scenes. All of them have bracelets. Some are working. Whether they're the children of the people they're working for isn't always clear except in the case of one human child carrying things for a snake.

She might still expect things like more worn clothes to correspond with less wealth? What kind of differences in personal adornment and such do people display? In body language?

She might find that the number of coin necklaces someone is wearing is a more obvious clue, except that people clearly don't go out visibly wearing all of their money.

There's an agerah who seems to have dyed his fur dark blue and a belul who's dyed hers glossy black, but most people don't have dyed fur. Most bracelets are gold but some are other metals. Some people have necklaces that aren't coins and don't resemble the bracelets. An essi slave, awkwardly wearing a bracelet like a belt, has an intricate design painted on his head.

Or there could just be naturally blue fur and natural variation in essi patterns. It's hard to say.

Hard to say is to be expected, from having just arrived in a different world. She'll keep collecting. (She doesn't like the feeling of it, like missing a sense, almost. But that is hardly the important thing.)

(Citizen's cards appear to not be used here, meanwhile.)

She works on Hari and sleeps, again.

Valanda wakes up and wakes her up early again.

His stomach growls audibly. That could just mean he's going to get breakfast out. Maybe.

She wakes up when he does without needing to be woken.

If he has a moment of attention for her, she's wondering if there's maybe some kind of work she could do, to pay him back somewhat for his generosity, and possibly for more food? Some kind of piecework she could do from here maybe, if she still should not go out?

"Can you make anything? Can you repair anything?"

She can, but she isn't sure what kinds of things that she can do need doing in this world, since it's so different, and she images if she tries to guess she'll come up with things that do not and therefore sound silly. As two examples, she can sew and embroider by hand, and she thinks she would make a fairly good calculator.

"Can you make shirts and pants that humans can wear? Like these?"

Probably not near as quickly as someone who's done it for a while, but given a pattern and materials she'd expect so. (Of reasons she expected it to be useful to be able to impersonate different strata, this was not one, but that hardly means she can't use the skills.)

"I might be able to market that. Anything else you can do? Can you spin wool?"

Theoretically, but not very well, and it's been a while since she's practiced; her sewing and embroidery are much better. She can knit and crochet - worse than sewing, still much better than spinning. (Do they have crochet?) She can do a few other threadcrafts and expects she could pick up more if needed. She expects she can pick up many sorts of small labor-intensive handtasks. She can repair various things from her world, but expects things to be different here.

Do they have calculators? (The job, not the technology; she assumes they do not have that.)

"I can ask around and see if anyone needs a lot of computation done. If they do I can show you how to write numbers. Anyway, I'll let you know if I know more when I get back, I need to leave now."

"Thank you."

She goes back to Hari. She pays attention to various details. Does this world appear to have plastic? Synthetic fabrics? The printing press?

Probably none of those but it sure is hard to tell what materials things that might be under illusions are made of. The printing press seems to be an almost definite no. Things in general look handmade.

Then when Valanda returns she'll suggest copying writing as another task she might be able to do.

And eventually potentially see about selling formulas.

He's in a bad mood when he gets back but it doesn't seem to be directed at her. He's carrying some papers.

"Someone needs help calculating tides," he says. "Tides are when the ocean gets bigger and smaller. More information in here." He hands over the papers. They include one blank one but it won't be enough space. "Ready to learn how to write numbers?"

"Yes, thank you.

Are you alright?"

How about if he just completely ignores that question. Certain letters double as numbers, isn't that neat. Here's one, two, three, six, twelve, a hundred forty-four. If you want to write seven you write six and then one. Sixteen is twelve three one. Here's a plus sign, here's a minus sign, here's times and divided by.

"If there isn't anything then you leave a space. Some people put bars on either side of it like this or a circle around it like this to show you left it blank on purpose because there's nothing."

If she's still attentive he'll explain the calendar.

Do they seem to be using something like base-12, then? And not have place value?

She's attentive. She asks about other important symbols (parentheses? equals? variable conventions? decimal (possilbly not decimal, here) points/fractions? negative numbers? trigonometric functions?)

Well, Valanda doesn't seem to be familiar with place value or parentheses or functions. Whether that's because they haven't been invented yet is unclear.

"Those are good questions."

He takes his remaining savings and walks out.

Different math system and lack of conveniences will slow her down (she could convert to the system she's accustomed to, but they may want to see her calculations) but if he left her the pencil she'll get to work on the tide calculations.

(Does observing Iri get her any more possible information on what the problem might be?)

Iri is afraid but not shrinking away from Valanda.

After an hour they come back with an agerah. Valanda doesn't even try to invite him in. The agerah rests in the hall and sticks just his head in the door.

"I'm Saiu. I teach math. May I use the wall with the window for visual aids?"

"Yes, do that," says Valanda.

"How much do you know now?" Saiu asks Sheridan.

...It would have been convenient if he had told her about this plan first, so that she could prepare and ask relevant questions. But this is how it is.

With no direction, she goes for her Iota body language.

Considers the risks, but she needs to know, and it had been said the Empire is multilingual, and most people cannot recognize every language that exists on hearing it.

She will ask Valanda in Capital (and as few and simple words as possible) if she should lie or tell the truth.