"Do you ever plan to leave here and stop working for Valanda?"

She doesn't consider herself to be working for Valanda per se, but that's not particularly the point. She doesn't have certain plans right now, nor does she feel she can make particularly long term plans. Lots of dependencies. If Valanda turns out to be the kind of person she can work with, she is more likely to keep working with him. If Valanda turns out to have strongly unfavorable qualities, she is more likely to leave. And so on.

"If you leave Valanda while we could still be useful to each other..." Iri doesn't quite know how to finish the question.

Iri is definitely another important factor. She would not want to leave Iri unless Iri prefers her to, and if Valanda turns out to have strongly unfavorable qualities she wouldn't just abandon Iri to him.

"What kind of unfavorable qualities?"

Wanting to hurt people for fun or for his own gain, that sort of thing. She can work with some amount of that but it's a cost. It's also much harder to work with people if they'd be trying to work against her. Likewise with respect to amount. Sometimes it's worth it, sometimes it's not. Again, she wouldn't abandon Iri though.

"You mean any people? What's the problem if he wants to hurt some people?"

Sometimes hurting people comes up as part of a plan to do something else that needs doing, like rescuing someone they kidnapped or stopping them from doing something else that's a problem or dealing with something they did first or were involved in. But that wouldn't be 'for fun or his own gain'. If he gets a job as an executioner or something like that, that's also different, it's not like someone else wouldn't do it if he didn't. Otherwise generally yes. Why, does Iri think there's an exception Sheridan hasn't thought of?

Well, people usually don't want to be hurt, so when they feel that way she doesn't like it happening to them either. Unless it's a punishment for a crime where she agrees that should be the punishment for the crime, or something like that.

Iri doesn't have many more questions.

Eventually Valanda has time to talk if she wants.

Good, because she certainly does.

She thinks she needs to practice going out more, that being an important thing to be able to do.

Also, could she ask him some more questions about the world that the not-video is leaving her unclear on?

"What're your questions?"

She's still interesting to understand more about command magic. What kinds of commands do people usually put on bracelets? Are there default ones and do people usually add more? Can they also be removed? For instance, what kind of commands are/has he put on Iri's?

"It's longer and more complicated than this but usually it's don't break any laws, don't try to take the bracelets off, don't hurt your owner. People add more if they want to. You can remove a command on its own or the bracelets. You should ask Iri that." He notices Iri's reaction. "Uh, no, never mind, you shouldn't ask Iri."

Will 'don't break any laws' work even if the person doesn't understand the laws? Do you have to remember all the commands yourself to remove them, or can you find out from bracelets what commands are on them? Does it have to be bracelets or is that just a social convention?

(She notices the deflection. (If there was something he didn't want her to know, 'ask Iri' could seem unsuspicious and even desirable if he thought she wouldn't think of 'he might have told Iri not to say'). She notices Iri's reaction (can she notice anything more detailed about it?). ...the last part, given the two together, is odd. She is not sure what to make of it.

Of course if he hadn't done anything, 'ask Iri' might be a genuine 'Iri should decide if to tell you', and the last part might also be genuine, and Iri's reaction to these questions of course she's seen before, though she's still unsure of the reason...

So if he has done something, why that last reaction - perhaps he thinks she is not a very suspicious person, and thus that she will be more well inclined toward 'if Iri is distressed, I will show I am concerned' than she will be suspicious at a complete denial of the information.

And if he has not done anything to disapprove of, why is Iri afraid of the questions.))

"That's a summary, not the actual commands, it can't figure out what's against the law on its own. It does work even if you don't understand the orders you're under. It's a little tricky to remove orders you've forgotten you gave. There are other shapes that could work but bracelets are the most convenient."

Tricky but it can be done?

Wearing the bracelets is why the command magic works on the specific person? Is it the surrounding a part of them specifically, or the skin contact, or something else? Could it be done in another way, like putting command magic on walls to affect everyone in a room?

"...I'm not a command mage, I don't know if you could do that. It, um. It would be illegal, probably."

(She really does not approve of this world's apparent 'I'm not an X mage so I don't know how that works' social convention. And by probable extension, educational system.)

That is good to know.

She doesn't suppose there's some sort of 'magic 101' material she could read, to get such information in a more targeted form than the not-video supplies? Would also allow her to practice reading.

"You could hire the people who teach magic and tell them you're a different kind of mage and just curious but even if they try their best I'm not sure you'll learn anything."

She thinks she would - she's learned things from him about defense magic, for instance. She'll keep that in mind for if she gets some money, thank you.

Speaking of learning things - practice going out?

"Yeah, okay. Are you making progress on the tide table?"

She is. She can report on said progress if he wants.

Also can try to suggest some more ideas for more short-term money-acquisition, if that is needed or desirable.

"What are your ideas?"

A few ideas: If anyone is interested in some other interesting numbers aside from 2pi she knows some other ones. Given a place value system, she knows much faster ways to do multiplication and division of longer numbers, and some tools that can speed it up. Depending on what tools they already have, possibly some tools for other math. She's not sure about the state of their medicine aside from the usefulness of death magic, but may be able to make some suggestions. She's not clear on how exactly structure mages work but there are some materials she might be able to tell them about.

"What are the materials useful for?"