She walks a little more and then goes home and reads up on Radchaai religion over lunch.

Radchaai religion is really complicated mostly because of the thing where it tries to gobble up local religion whatever it is. The most-universal precepts of the Radchaai faith are that apparent chance is the mechanism by which the creator god Amaat exerts her will in the world these days - for this reason people read omens and take coincidences very seriously - and that ritual purity is important to pursue. (Lots of people gloss this as 'important to pursue for good fortune' or 'important to pursue for personal flourishing' but the official precepts take no stance there). There are fasting holidays and celebration holidays and rituals for big life events and a whole pantheon of other gods plus a theology in which Amaat has aspects. It seems like the local faith held that there were two equally powerful deities, the forces of self-valuing and other-valuing, and that means that the local practice of Amaat worship works off these two aspects of Amaat, and works in half a dozen local holidays.

What's the whole ritual purity thing about?

The most popular local gloss is that purity is the state in which self-valuing and other-valuing are balanced, and therefore the state from which all right action needs to begin. 

You have to undergo elaborate rituals if you touch dead bodies, or things that have been ritually defiled, and while this isn't technically mandatory for things that are generally disgusting, it's popular. Human bodies with cybernetic implants cannot achieve the ideal state of purity. Only the inside of the Dyson Sphere Anaander mentioned is truly pure, but purity is important to everyone else anyway.

Do people supposedly not die in the Dyson sphere? What ritually defiles something? What counts as a cybernetic implant, do they not have pacemakers?

There are a lot of rumors about the inside of the Dyson sphere. No two of them agree. Contact with corpses, or various disgusting things, ritually defile something. 

Pacemakers qualify. So do the implants all soldiers get, for combat communications. They're not that taboo, they're just agreed not to be ideal. 

Do soldiers get the implants taken out when they retire?

Some of them choose to but certainly not all. You can also get them as a civilian and some people do.

What are they for?

Critics say that it's just having a TV remote and radio in your head and you can instead have them on your phone and be no worse for the wear. Fans love the overlays that give you extra information about your environment, and say that having your TV remote in your head is actually startlingly more efficient than having it on your phone.

She isn't rushing to get one under all the many circumstances that there are but it does sound convenient.

Are any religious observations obligatory?

If you touch a corpse you'll be asked to do the washing thing, partially for everyone's ritual comfort but also partially just to reduce disease transmission.

Well, that's not too bad. How obnoxious is the washing thing and does the tablet have a guess about whether ceasing to have a relevant extremity for a second and then putting it back would suffice?

Theologically novel, but would count. The washing thing is not that elaborate, it's like an extra perfumed shower.

That's okay then.

She studies more Radchaai. The tablet is a very good teacher and even Xander is retaining some of it, though he mixes up any things that could reasonably be called "deceptively similar" and his pronunciation's atrocious.

And she shows up for her appointment with Anaander alone, having decided that honestly if you are Anaander Maitimo you can probably kidnap Xander Swan whenever you want whether his sister is there or not. She's dropped enough information that a sufficiently dedicated antagonist could probably discern that her secret weakness is spraypaint.

Anaander Maitimo does not greet her with spraypaint. "Isabella. How are you finding everything?"

"Pretty okay. Did you find my essay useful, I could write more like it but actually you are several thousand years old and have lots of other civilizations to crib ideas from if it strikes your fancy so I'm not sure."

"You know, surprisingly few people send me essays on how to do fewer war crimes. You'd think it'd be more common."

"You could investigate alternative war crime prevention strategies on your own recognizance were you so inclined, was my thought. How do you manage to be so little reviled in the media, it doesn't seem to be outright illegal."

"Well, it's not a very good career move. And there's - well, it's famous now but I suppose it might not have been invented - there's a saying that people don't hate trains, even though trains will kill anyone who stands on the tracks and even though that in fact amounts to a substantial number of people."

"...but you are a person, or possibly several thousand people jointly constituting an equally hateable organization if someone preferred to conceptualize you that way, and not everyone can reasonably be particularly career-minded, can they -? Also, like, trains don't decide they're gonna hunt you down in your house."

"That's not quite what I want to gesture at, it's that people get angry about their leaders in democracies because this might plausibly change something, or at least the idea that it might is encouraged. If no one seriously entertains the idea that getting angry will change things then getting angry looks and feels silly."

"I did grow up in a democracy but was given to understand that there were also some situations where people bothered to get angry about monarchs."

"Historically being angry about monarchs also did things about them, sometimes."

"Yes. Hm. You let people emigrate, do you let people colonize new planets not under your auspices?"