Write write write. What useful words. That doesn't sound better than what the Empire has. It sounds worse. Locks, sensors. Valanda's walls are unbreakable, the window is unopenable if he doesn't want it to open, the door can be held shut the same as the window if he feels like expending the power and doesn't trust the latch. Whatever glass break detectors are, they don't have them but they probably don't need them. It's possible the other continent just prefers to let would-be thieves in to give them more rope to hang themselves, make sure no one trusts what looks like an opportunity.

"Do you write security systems?" he asks. If he's very lucky, she'll grasp that with his limited vocabulary he's trying to describe spell-design. "And you gather what information? You have what chemistry and biology? What is a computer?" He has a translation for that but the translation was "automated arithmetic system" and he wants the details on her magic abacus design. Maybe he can sell the plans for it to a team of whatever sort of mages it needs. He can give her half the proceeds if he does and recoup some of today's losses.

Obviously she does not grasp this at all; understands it as planning/design/programming/setup. 

"No, though I likely could if I needed to. Where I come from, generally information about people, locations, events. I am not sure what descriptions of my level of chemistry and biology you want. I don't have a formal degree."

A very potentially informative question. It's not likely that they simply call them something else; the bird had translated everything else without causing questions. 'Do you not have computers' is obviously not an informative question. 'What technology level are you at' is not likely to be. 

The room does not have a light visible anywhere, nor a lightswitch. Not something she'd found necessarily odd at first, since it looks like a closet (if with a window). But he'd not taken her to a larger room. 

"Do you have electricity?"

Good of her to finally say "needed" and "want" and "if" and the like, Valanda's been waiting to hear "if" for a while now. The bird stumbles on "electricity" but eventually "useful lightning" is the tentative translation. From context it sounds like the magic abacus is made of lightning. Valanda draws a picture of a dark cloud and lightning striking from an implied ground up to the cloud. "Electricity?" he asks, pointing to it.

Another strange thing is the lack of elaboration on which parts of security system design she could do if she needed to. If she can design combined spells for several mages on her own, that's a very useful talent. Maybe she's a knowledge mage who used magic to understand how the other types of magic feel to have and use. Or maybe she thinks it's obvious that she's the knowledge mage and handles sensors. If she is, she's very unspecialized. People and places, not, say, translation or noncontagious disease diagnosis. Makes it sound like she's not very good at finding out any particular thing.

"Lighting is a form of electricity." And that is probably a no. "Where I am from, a different form of electricity is used to power a lot of technology."

He hasn't answered the chemistry and biology question, so she can't elaborate on that yet. 

Meanwhile, "I'm going to start listing some words that might be useful after things I say. City. Country. Empire. Room. Important. Laws. A little."

Where she comes from she is good at finding out quite a variety of particular things, but she doesn't expect to be anywhere near as much so here, certainly at first. Deduction needs knowledge.

It sounds like what her home continent has is not better magic but better nonmagical technology. Which means instead of a one in twelve chance (one in six if he counts the bird) that he can do whatever she can teach, it's certain he can do it. Materials will probably be more expensive than if it were magic, but as long as he turns a profit...

"Thank you! The words are useful! This room is in Thelm Ret. Thelm Ret is a city in Ehima. Ehima is in the Empire." He flips back to the map of the continent. "This is the Empire. This is Thelm Ret. This is Mar Geru. Mar Geru is a city in Har. 'Mar Geru' is Hari, 'Thelm Ret' is a different language. This" on the southeast coast, he points to it "is Anavel Sani City in Anavel Sani. Anavel Sani speaks Ilan, Har speaks Hari. All of the" he hesitates, not completely sure if the word is right "countries speak Hari. Hari is the language in the Empire." He smirks. The bird makes a sound that Sheridan might not recognize as laughter. It's only a little funny even if you get the joke, which Sheridan won't. "...Oh," he says. "I will... not-arrive here, I do not have but I will have" he decides not to bother translating "Hari Ar Sarag Marsaehu, I will arrive here, you will have Sarag Marsaehu. You will not borrow, you will own. If you own, you speak Hari. When you speak Hari, I ask you, electricity, technology, you ask me laws. You here. When you're sure what laws, you may not-arrive here, you may the city, the Empire. If you're not sure what laws, you may here, this room, or... I will say, when I arrive here. You want something?" He mimes food again, in case she's changed her mind about that.

He is excited again. 

He is asking about what she can do; he'd said 'borrowing' her (as opposed to asking about her world, or the whirlpool phenomenon, like a scholar-type might, or more about her, or a variety of other topics); he wants to use her for work. He wasn't asking her if she can do specific things; he is less likely to have a project in mind; he wants to make use of her work in general. He gets excited when it seems she might know something new to him, but is not a scholar-type; he likely wants to make use of it too.

Also the distinction between borrowing and owning is important here.

It seems she chose words well.

She does not get the joke, though she notices the smirk. 

She's heard those words. Has to check her paper for 'language' but 'Empire' she just heard. 'Hari is the language of the Empire'. 

"Leave. Province? Food. Thank you very much, I would be glad to learn more of your language, and your laws. "'Hari is the language of the Empire' is an object? How long do you expect to be gone?"

Well that question would be easier to answer if he spoke more Capital. He finds the edge of the rectangle of sunlight from the window. He puts his finger on it. He moves his finger. "This leaves, when this arrives here, if not food, I arrive." Shorter than his last errand by a lot. "If food, I arrive here." Still well under an hour. "Yes and no, is and is not an object, when you have you will be sure what I mean. You want food, when I leave?" He's not sure if she was just giving him the word or actually requesting it.

"I ate recently, no thank you."

Valanda asks the bird whether it'd rather stay or go. It stays perched on his head. They leave.

She memorized the indicated sunlight location; keeps track of time.

He does not have reason to know she's a slave, and if he'd cared very strongly about her not touching his things he could have expressed as such. She is thoroughly practiced in returning things exactly how she'd found them. This is not sufficient when she might be being monitored by Imperial guards, or with someone who had set up unknown security or would be checking for fingerprints and the like. At this point she will accept the remaining risk.

What is under the blanket? Will the metal rectangle hold anything interesting if she picks it up and looks at it? Did he leave his notebook?

The quilt is folded double to fit in the small space. Between the folds there's a change of clean clothes that have been mended several times and might be a little small for Valanda but at one point they were nicer than the ones he's wearing now. There's a wool blanket, or maybe that's a cloak. There's a small half-empty bag of nuts. There's a lump like there might be another notebook and some harder-to-guess things against the floor but for some reason without any visible nails or anything like that the quilt just refuses to be lifted off the floor. He did leave his notebook but it's written in at least two languages that share an alphabet without any warning when he changes between them and the diagrams are not anything familiar except one thing that could be a braid or a DNA helix with the ends circled and labeled for some reason.

The metal rectangle was face-down. The other side is blank except for a carving in the same alphabet as the notebook. It says "The Law Will Find You" if Sheridan could read it. Wait, no, it's not blank, suddenly it starts displaying a silent movie of a big cat levitating. The cat does not look happy about it. A caption scrolls across the screen. The cat seems to be pulled in different directions by unseen hands. It looks even less happy about this. It's ripped apart and dies. The movie is abruptly over and the metal rectangle is just a metal rectangle again.

What kind of bag? How is the cloak made?

She does not try harder to pry up the quilt. She explores the way it's stuck on. Smooth seam, or intermittent like if it was nails? Can she see anything at the seam? Is the outline an exactly shape or more freehand?

He was transliterating things she said into the notebook. If it's written with an alphabet, she should be able to figure out a lot of letters from that. If that's enough she will decipher the elements she knows of the carving (the, law, will, you, but not find). The caption probably goes by too fast for her. Based on the 'law' part and the lack of anything else happening, a top conjecture would be 'execution', though other options are very possible. Which would then also mean that in this world it is possible to levitate and manipulate things without contact. (Conversely, if it is a trailer for a movie or similar, it does not necessarily tell her anything about what they can do in reality).

What is the rectangle like? Does it seem to have internal components somewhere? What changes when the displaying starts?

Burlap bag. Looks like it's made from a couple scraps that may have been part of ill-fated larger bags at some point. The cloak is a wool square with fasteners on two adjacent corners.

The quilt is stuck as if it were superglued. There's no visible seam. It's not intermittent like nails. It's freehand, in some places it's stuck to the bottom of the wall, in some places it can be peeled up to reveal half an inch of wood floor.

She'll have some difficulty figuring out how to read Hari vowels from Hari-alphabet transliterations of words in a non-tonal language, the way tone is written is unobvious and for that matter Valanda's inconsistent about how to write non-tonal words. And if Capital uses more than five vowels and ten consonants Valanda will have had to improvise spellings.

The rectangle is a metal rectangle. Might be steel. There are small holes in the corners as if it's meant to be easy to tack it up somewhere. It seems to be a sheet of steel. The corners are rounded and it's polished and smooth and unlikely to accidentally cut someone. When it starts displaying things, it starts displaying things. That's about it. The display also isn't obscured by reflections even though in a pinch the metal is polished enough to serve as a mirror.

By the time she's done figuring out as much as she can about the Hari alphabet there won't be very long left before Valanda's expecting to return.

Usefully, she also heard him or the bird saying the Hari words, and isn't new to tonal languages.

There are 'theories' one does not usually entertain, but being transported to other worlds by surprise phenomena rather adjusts protocols.

She remembers what he sounded approaching last time and has been listening for that as well as watching the sun, but a buffer is preferred. She returns the last of what she looked at to how she found it; sits and reviews her notes externally (and what she has of the alphabet additionally, internally).

She has even more warning this time than last. A voice speaks in Hari. It's not Valanda's voice but there's not another set of footsteps. When he opens the door he hands her another rectangle. This one has sound as well as pictures. There's another big cat, but this one isn't being killed, he's just talking.

"...and that's the end of this episode," he says in Hari, then it goes blank for a second and when it reappears he has a different set of props with him. "Welcome to a new episode of Hari Is The Language Of The Empire. I'm Mahan and I'll be teaching you Hari. I am an agerah. This is a tree. This is a rock..."

And on it goes. Valanda smiles at her but assumes she'll want to listen without him talking over the teacher, so he says nothing to her and is very quiet when he speaks to the bird.

She smiles back, because that is social. "Thank you." She watches the rectangle. She pays enough side attention to see if she can catch anything he and the bird say.

Valanda wants to know if the bird wants to stay with Sheridan or go with Valanda when he has to go to work later; the bird wants to stay with Valanda.

"Do you want a name?" Valanda asks the bird. Hari conveniently doesn't distinguish "name" from "word" so she'll have heard the word before.

"I have one. I'm Iri," says the bird, which surprises Valanda.

"Huh. Iri. Sure. I need you off my hair while I fix it, you mind?"

The bird perches on his shoulder instead while Valanda finger-combs and re-ties his hair.

The show teaches a lot of forest-related vocabulary, starts a new episode in an orchard, teaches farming-related vocabulary. The farmer is another of the kind of talking cat called an agerah, this one named Riha, whose explanation of how he farms is a little beyond the intended audience's comprehension level and makes reference to magic. Episodes are pretty short. If the show was designed to hold interest or make memory easier, it sure wasn't designed to do that for humans. There aren't really signs it was designed to do that at all. Valanda isn't using the pencil at the moment, though, if she has more space left on the three pages he gave her.

That is not an ideal design for language acquisition, but it is not an uncommon one. (Perhaps she should tell her host that she can design a better language curriculum). Getting as much as she can out of information provision she does not have convenient access to is a skill she is very practiced at. She is good at conserving writing space. She focuses more on core words, functional words, structure, how expressions are put together, important words, words with broader applications. Takes notes with prioritization of important but not-commonly occurring words. Pays attention to pronunciation. Imagines how she might write words in what she gathered of the alphabet.

It would be more effective to have more space to practice, even internally. If her host is not busy, she will look somewhat up (there's a sequence of mostly specific vocabulary going on) and see if this draws his attention.

(What are the references to magic like?)

He's looking out the window. Looking at people isn't inherently rude but it's a little intrusive and she doesn't have anywhere private to go by herself. Iri doesn't care much about rudeness but also doesn't bother to tell Valanda where their guest happens to be looking.

The references to magic will be very unclear at this point. "I'm a green mage," says Riha. "I make plants grow faster and more efficiently and produce bigger fruits. I can roughly triple, sometimes quadruple the yield and ripen fruit earlier in the season than anyone else around here. I'm working on getting a crop in fast enough to have two a year but it might take a different spell to start the trees flowering again in summer. That field over there is owned by a death mage and we trade magic. He kills pests when I get an infestation and I make his strawberries grow bigger and faster. We barter rather than use currency because we're not very liquid out here in the country." The interview ends that episode and the next is set on a different sort of farm, naming things. These are sheep, these are goats. This is wool, this is a fence.

Valanda will just keep politely looking out the window for a while unless she says something.

She does not know enough words yet to understand this thoroughly enough to pick up on it.

He does not appear busy and 'how they respond to her interrupting them' is useful information to obtain.

"Excuse me?"

Valanda turns away from the window and if Sheridan is seated he'll squat down to keep level with her.

"What do you want?" he asks in Capital, in a tone of voice that suggests it's a lack of familiarity with Sheridan's language and a lack of knowledge about what she might consider rude, rather than any actual resentment, that determined his choice of words.

Meanwhile Mahan tells her that this is a rope and this is a bag and...

"I'm sorry to bother you. Is there a way to pause this?"

"No pause and I need the pencil, I want to write how you say that."

She passes him the pencil.

"How long is it?"

"Um. No, not how long." He's not sure how to explain in Capital and he doesn't think she can understand if he says it straight out but he switches to Hari anyway: "it repeats. Episode one, episode two, episode three, four, five, six, seven, eight... episode one again, then episode two, episode three, four... and it repeats and repeats. Does that make sense?"