"Do you make things out of nothing? Do you need materials to make constructs out of?"

"...Construct is not materials?" She might be getting better at this 'acting dim' thing.

"Do constructs stay around after their maker dies?"

She's gonna kill me unless I do something first.

She shrugs.

Yeah that's not an honest answer.

"How fast can constructs move?"

"I don't know words for how fast things are."

"As fast as running? As fast as light?"

"Yes and no. Depends. Faster tales longer."

"How long to make one that goes six times as fast as running?"

"It depends. What else does it do? How big? I don't know."

"Let's say it has to fly and carry a person. How long then?"

"Maybe... Six days?" If she makes it super robust and includes tons of safety features and keeps making mistakes on it.

"Takes longer to make it not break much. Fifteen days?"

"To make it not break much? How often would it break if you made it the longer way?"

Every piece breaks about once every 90 days or so on average. If it has one hundred pieces and only one bit breaking breaks it, that happens fast. If she makes it with two hundred pieces, but sixty pieces have to break to break it irreparably, it happens less fast.

"...If I spend 15 days on a flying chair it will last for maybe 200 days. I can fix it faster than I made it."

"That could be useful. There might be better uses for you than that... What would it take to get you to cooperate with me?"

Does she know I know? ...Let's keep pretending.

Shrug. "Money? Help going home?"

"I can pay you. I don't know how to get you home. There are some kinds of mages that could figure out how but if the Hari Empire meets your world there could be war. So I don't want to let many people know about you." Shrug. "I'd ask how much you want to be paid but I guess you probably don't know much about our currency yet. Tell me a price in how much of something you could buy with it and I can figure out how many rings that is?"

She has a mental image of herself standing over Valanda, the betrayer inside a box of light, chirping 'people die if they can't breathe vital air!'

...She notices that she is rather vicious when she's this angry.

"It was about ten or twenty apples per hour at home, making simple constructs. More for complicated ones. But you get paid for finishing constructs, not for time."

"I think that's about twelve rings, depending on how big the apples you're thinking of are. That would make... a thousand four hundred forty rings per flying thing. That's... maybe worth it, I'm not sure yet..." He gets a one-ring coin off one of his necklaces and offers it to her. "For our conversation so far, more to come if you're helpful. That's the smallest denomination, just one ring."

"Not much use if I can't go spend it, is it? Because you lock the door," she hastily adds.

"It'd be dangerous if you went out and someone noticed you were foreign and figured out where you're from and started a war. It'd be dangerous if someone kidnapped you. It'd be dangerous if you were accidentally rude or broke a law. When those things stop being likely you won't be in danger if you go out."

...Sigh.

"I'll read the law then. Once you tell me how to read." She sticks the coin in a pocket.

"I can show you how to read now. That work for you?"

"Now is good, yes."

(Why was she so vicious a few moments ago - that shouldn't be her. Waltana Luxiim doesn't fantasize about suffocating people. Even backstabbing slavers.)