"Unless you have more reason than I do to think it's dangerous I don't think you need to wait. You keep asking about things he knows anyway."

Alright. Thank you.

Valanda's shirt has the defense magic symbol on it when he gets back. He doesn't bring back any more money but he does bring some honey for Iri and a peach for Sheridan.

The next couple of days he leaves early and gets back late without coming home in the middle of the day. He brings Sheridan fruit and meat in the evenings and lets her work and study.

She works and studies (and distributes food as possible to make more meals and eats and such).

If there's a time that seems open for doing so, she'll ask him some more questions.

If he leaves her and Iri alone again she'll ask Iri about Iri's magic.

Valanda's not very available for a couple of days but Iri stays home once.

"I'm a knowledge mage. What would you like to know about that?"

Ah! She'd been wondering what enabled the translation. She is very interested in knowing more about knowledge magic. What is it like? How does it work?

"I ask the world what I want to know and then I know it. It's hard because the world doesn't know how I think so I have to ask in ways that it can understand. And I have to know what I want to know. If I ask whether the room I'm in is shielded from other knowledge mages and whether there are any spells the shield let in, the world doesn't know I want to know about the force mage hiding behind some boxes listening in."

...That sounds incredibly powerful. Are there other limits? What ways of asking does the world understand? 

Ah, that makes sense. Well-definedness seems a common feature of the magic here?

"Any illusion mage can block me, it's not that powerful. Most places have some kind of illusion on them. There's one here, if I went out of the room I couldn't use magic to find out anything about you unless you went with me."

Block xer? There's an illusion on here?

"There's an illusion on this room so I can't see in from the outside. There's a different illusion on the building so I can't see in the building from the outside either. I think most places have them. People don't like it if other people can just start watching them at any moment."

Seems reasonable. How does an illusion do that? Could xie find out things that don't depend on vision?

('Spells the shield let in'?)

"You could do an illusion that was just visual but this one isn't. I don't know how it works, I'm not that kind of mage. I know you can let someone put a spell on a room so they can see what's going on inside but then keep anyone else from doing the same thing."

Wow.

Can xie get knowledge that doesn't depend on knowing about the person right now, like 'what did Valanda buy at market yesterday'? Can xie get scientific knowledge? Can defense magic protect against knowledge magic, or is it specifically illusion magic that does that?

Iri does some magic before answering. "I can see a lot of the market. I could spend a whole day watching Valanda at the market yesterday if you want to know what he bought. You want another knowledge mage that's studied science more to get you scientific knowledge, I could try but I don't know enough to know what to ask. Defense magic doesn't do anything about knowledge magic."

So xie has to watch, xie doesn't get the information directly?

Would someone else telling xer about the science questions help?

"Someone could get it directly but I don't know how to tell the world what 'bought' means. If they knew how to ask questions the right way that might help."

Understood. 

What is the right way to ask questions like? How does xie do the translation? Why does it only work in one direction?

"I know how to tell what you mean but I can't make you know things. I'm not sure how to describe the right way to ask questions. It's... really precise and doesn't make assumptions. I don't know, you can try a question and see if I can figure out how to get the answer."

Ah (that explains why it seems xie can explain things that don't actually have straightforward expressions for them in Hari). Is 'how to say such-and-such in Capital' not a question xie can ask?

And - she considers good questions for this, as distinct from questions about things she might want to know, or science she is interested in. 

How far is this planet from its sun? Right now, maybe, if that's easier than 'on average'. 

Squeak! Shiver. "...It's really far. Um, I had to make some changes to the question, you have to define whether you're measuring from the close side or the far side or in the middle... anyway it's about ninety-four million three hundred thousand one hundred twelve miles away right now. Using the middles. ...And it's getting farther away."

...is this alarming? She's sorry to alarm Iri.

That makes sense about the question, she sees.

"If you could see how far away it was you'd be alarmed too! It's really far!"

She doesn't think she would be - it is true she has not literally seen it, only numbers and models, but she doesn't think that would make the difference. But it would likely be much more alarming if you weren't used to it, and it might make the difference for someone else.

Shrug. "Maybe. Let me know if you have more questions."