"Do all the humans there speak the same language? And how many of them know how to write it? - do you?"

"I know how to write it. Most people don't, I think it's common among the nobility and very uncommon among everyone else? We do not all speak the same language, particularly not in lands that have been recently conquered."

"Do you happen to know anything about any of the other languages - also I have a list of words I'm not sure of and I want you to read them to me -"

"I speak two languages well and four or five others quite poorly. I can read words."

"Four or five!!!!! Which ones, which ones -"

"Arabic, Irish, Russian, and I can read Latin decently but I'm not sure I could carry on much of a conversation. Smattering of German and a language from somewhere far east of here, I'm not sure what it's called. And, uh, I speak English as a first language."

He squeals with joy like a little child. "I have lists I want you to read for those, too, wait a second, I just don't have them on hand, because I wasn't thinking - Tyelco, go get my notebook off my desk -"

For some reason he raises his eyebrows a lot at this but he does it.

"Say something in the language you're not sure of -"

(Well, now she knows two of his names.)

She says some phrases in the language she doesn't know the name of, and says what she understands them to mean.

She... seems to find answering language questions kind of soothing, actually? It helps that this person is - not exactly not acting like a noble but really way too preoccupied with the gloriousness of words to be paying anybody's status much obvious mind.

He gets his wordlists and gives them to her and takes notes frantically while she reads them.

What an unexpectedly delightful person! She is happy to help.

After about an hour of this he sneaks out to pack for their departure.

She does not even feel the need to panic about this.

Can they just rotate between all the languages she knows while he tries to fill in gaps in his knowledge - mostly his problem is that he only has access to written things, and that in snippets - but also there's all these confusing human idioms -

Yes. They can do that.

He comes back a few hours later. 

"I regret that I need to interrupt," he says, "but we're leaving, and we need a way to give a note to Cecilia's niece so we can rescue her other children. She can write it, but we need paper and ink and maybe imitation human coins, should we need to spend them -"

" - but you can't leave today!"

"Tomorrow morning. It's getting dark. It'd strain this court to feed her all winter and neither of us like it here and -"

"If it'd strain a court to feed her how're you going to do it?"

"I'll be fine. It was only a problem when we were trying to travel at the same time."

"Not tomorrow. I just need twenty days - ten -"

"It'll be dark by then."

- she does not, actually, want to stay here all night, but - 

"Milk's not back yet," she says, quietly.

"We can take lots of food with us."