"I thought your accent was suspiciously good. Okay, so I should go to the library and see if I can find that name. Want to come?"

"Sure! I like libraries."

Kaylo departs the room and leads her to the lift, which takes them to the library. It is not as big as the Peiza National, but it's quite nice.

"This is a good library. Oh, is this a school?"

"Yep. Binaaralav Academy of Wizardry." Kaylo casts a spell. He gets a slender little volume and flips to the table of contents. "Ha."

"Terali's in a book?" Matilda peers at the book. "And that's a coincidence, this is the same school that the hearer I met goes to. I was planning to see if I could teach ialdae here so she could learn it, because she caught it when I made her immortal."

"How nice for her. I don't think I've met her though. And yes, this journal contains a paper authored by one Terali Agiluta-meri. It's on interworld adjacency, the topic's not important although it's mildly interesting that it's about interworld stuff. It lists her institutional affiliation as the Lai Panmagical Research Group. Which is not Mystic Forces but is exactly the sort of place that would work with Mystic Forces if the empire offered them money."

"Oh dear," frowns Matilda. "Now I definitely want to see her research notes..."

"I suspect you are going to have a very hard time collecting them," says Kaylo.

"That might depend on whether or not I ask nicely first."

"I guess if you can teleport past wizard wards - on an Esmaarlan wizard school - you might be able to reach right past them to grab her notes, too," acknowledges Kaylo. "What I'm not sure I understand is - right now you're running around unsupervised. They thought they'd be able to summon and unsummon you at their convenience, and must have noticed that they can't. They are probably running some kind of cost/benefit calculation on whether they should try other methods to lock you down, and so far they haven't done it, have they. I'd be wary of tipping the balance if I were you - if I were you I'd try to use ialdae to copy the notes without ever touching 'em."

"That makes sense. I don't want to steal them, I just want to see them. And I haven't decided yet whether I want to ask nicely before I try anything."

"Asking alone would factor into the cost/benefit. I bet they find you intimidating, but probably not as intimidating as their empress who they think rules by divine right and their military liaisons, that and it'd kick their pride in the face to call off whatever their plans are because a seven-year-old became annoyed with them. So announcing that you have become annoyed with and suspicious of them while being both intimidating and seven is a risky strategy."

"I don't have to say I'm annoyed and suspicious," she says. "Yet. I can say 'Terali, you're always taking notes and I bet they're interesting. Can I see them?' And see what she says."

"She might have technical notes that are totally innocuous," Kaylo points out. "Especially if she's been taking them in front of you."

"Yes, but if she's afraid to lie to me and I become very interested in her interworld magic research project because I want to know what kinds of magic there are, I will probably notice if there are things she doesn't want to show me. And I think you're right about her being afraid to lie to me. Maybe I should really learn ialdic lie detection, too..."

"Not a bad plan. The wizard kind's handy, just makes small talk really awkward so you may want to be sure you can take it off. There's kinds and kinds, I can find you a book on it?"

"Sure!"

Kaylo finds her a book. It is entitled Lie Detection: Parameters and Practice.

Kaylo gets something else to read in the meantime.

Lie Detection: Parameters and Practice has many kinds of lie detection that are more or less strict about what counts as a "lie" and have different ways of displaying their results which may be more or less finely-grained and more or less informative about what part of an utterance is false.

"I am a cabbage," obliges Kaylo, turning a page.

Matilda giggles. "It works!"

"Where'd you fall on middling things? My name is Kalobes Ansal. Lialen is the true theory of conjured matter. Destandaar Palan is the right appointee for the empty Parliament slot. There are like a dozen people in my geography seminar."