Somewhere where a human teenager in a room with obvious illusions is now demanding to know what she's doing in his apartment. He's not used to telepaths. He's terrified and trying to seem angry instead, and doing magic that is silent and still and very fast.

I'm sorry! This was a botched exile and I don't mean to be here and will leave! She gets to her feet, anticipatorily wobbly, but her boots are still working and she stabilizes after a moment.

That's approximately the most reassuring tack she could possibly have taken but also he didn't know telepathy was a thing, or teleportation, or that there were places she could have been exiled from, and absolutely all of those things are alarming.

"I won't call it trespassing if you want to stay long enough to buy some information before you leave."

Buy - information - uh - I have jewelry? She starts working a ring off her pinky.

Art has value! (It does not particularly occur to him that the material the ring is made of might be valuable.) Also, figuring out what's up with this extremely bizarre person also has value and he's less afraid of her now because she seems like a very weird illusion mage who isn't spoiling for a fight.

"You're in the city of Thelm Ret, in Ehima - in the Hari Empire. Is that magic jewelry or does it just look nice?" (The ring, he means. Obviously if she's wearing that much jewelry some of it is enchanted. He's trying to figure out how much more information she'll want for it.)

Oh, uh, this one isn't enchanted, I don't know how long I'm going to have to live off pawning jewelry so I was hoping to hold on to the magic ones...

"Huh. No job skills?" He would kind of like this random person to be safe and is prepared to problem-solve about that.

Uh, I have some skills but don't know how long it takes to match them up to - clientele - here - since I don't know anything about here -

"This is... a temperate area... where a lot of beluli live? But this is a city so it's pretty diverse. Uh, should I be... telling you about our species? Our technology?"

You seem like a human. I would like to know about what other ones live here, though, and - anything about how I can get a place to stay and find work, my principal marketable skill is subtle arts for therapeutic purposes but I don't know where I'd need to begin with explaining or marketing that.

"We have beluli - they’re kind of anxious - and ereli - they drink the blood of beluli and only talk by changing color because they don’t have voices - and essi - they don’t have hands - neither do ereli and anemones, actually - and agerah, who are big and eat meat and remember to pay back favors - and caralendri, who are like humans but taller and they all start out male. And there are thwilit, who make honey and fly without magic. I don’t know what subtle arts are but it sounds like you’re some kind of medical mage."

Not for physical injuries. For - nightmares or flashbacks or compulsive behaviors or things like that.

On the one hand, he’s warded against command magic. On the other hand, how is she also doing ?illusion magic? if she’s a command mage? Oh wait that’s dumb. "So - you’re a command designer?"

No, I am a subtle artist. A telepath.

aaaaaaaa - wait that’s actually completely fine. He might want to tweak his wards later if he’s bothered after this conversation. "Okay. You’ll want to do command jobs - like keeping people from acting on addictions - and one organization that hires command mages is the imperial government."

Any other ideas?

"Nope. I’m not a command mage or well-educated. You don’t want to work for the government?"

I don't know anything about the government and would ideally want to be able to figure out what I think of it while not working for it. Also, I'm not the same thing as a command mage, and it would be weird if the best way to make a living was to do whatever it is they can do.

"They’re the people who fix addictions." Shrug. "I know where to find the imperial laws, if you want." He’s considering whether he can leverage this whole situation into owning her, actually, but probably not because it seems like she might be able to read his mind.

Seems like something I should cover at some point.

"It's okay with me if you want to wait here, I'll just bring stuff back here." Also if she is reading his mind she could save them both some bother by letting him know he can't actually trick her into putting on slave bracelets and he'll drop the whole idea. 

Thank you. She's not reading his mind on account of that would be fucked up.

He leaves.

It'll be a while. While he's out a metal rectangle briefly displays a video of a torturous execution before going back to being an inert metal rectangle.

When he comes back she is facing away from the rectangle hugging her knees.

He has a metal plaque that displays the imperial laws, a scroll with the laws of Ehima, and a couple of bracelets that he offers her without explanation.