She stops and looks up. "Yes sir."

"Wow. ...Er, I'm sorry to interrupt, keep going." He tries to focus on his own reading again. 

"It's fine, sir." She goes back to her reading.

Companionable silent reading for a while. 

"Hey," Tran says eventually, "um, sorry to interrupt, but - if you have questions about anything you're reading, ask ahead. Our books probably assume that the readers have a bunch of context already." 

"Thank you, sir." She does have questions! Nothing very deep, but she wants to know how they do various things that are relevant to the histories, and how they define their legal terms, and some details of how they study magic - is it quantifiable? how if at all can they measure it? do they keep statistics at all?

Tran can answer her questions about the history and legal terms!

Valdemar's legal system is kind of complicated; it seems normal to Tran but he can see that not being the case for an outsider. At a rough approximately, Valdemar as a whole has a written criminal law code, but civil law, such as it is, isn't at all centralized. Crimes that will get a person tried by the book in a court are: murder, violent assault or rape, highway robbery or armed burglary, kidnapping, attempted ransom or blackmail, the killing of livestock belonging to someone else, impersonating a Healer, Bard, or Herald, or a poorly defined category of 'treason against the Crown'. Any trial in this category can be deferred, at request of anyone involved, until the next Herald on circuit arrives in town. 

There are plenty of other acts that will get a person in trouble, including non-violent theft, but jurisdiction for punishing these is divided up between various trade guilds, the relevant Collegium for Healers or Bards, or particular mayors of towns or nobles with landholdings. The code of conduct for Bardic and Healers' is written down and in the library, and many of the trade guilds have written rules as well, but not all. 

And, magic! Tran isn't an expert on this, and gets a baffled look when she asks about quantifying it. Statistics like census-data? No, he doesn't think they have that, aside from 'number of Herald-mages in the country'. They do categorize the strength of Gifts; for mage-gift, Adept-potential is anyone strong enough to use node-magic, a Master-potential mage can touch ley-lines, and hedge-wizard is for anyone weaker than that. Gifts like Farsight or Mindspeech are recorded by maximum range; Tran's own native Mindspeech range is a couple hundred miles, Van isn't quite as strong but can boost with node-energy to reach a lot further. 

That's useful to know! She offers to answer any questions Tran has about how Sith do things.

Tran has little enough context on how Sith do things that his question is kind of 'all of it'. 

There are a few ways of measuring Siths' Force powers, none of which are perfect but all of which are at least vaguely useful. A Sith's overall potential is related to the amount of a tiny but ubiquitous kind of organ in their bodies, called midichlorians, which can be measured in the blood; this isn't often done, since Sith can also sense each others' power levels at quite a bit of range. It also doesn't measure training, which is a major factor in Siths' power; Sith can learn and invent Force techniques like any other skill, rather than being limited to a specific set of abilities like local mages, and while there are some basic skills that all Sith learn, their training past that is up to the Sith in question and their master. Most techniques can be measured in some way - range and acuity for Force senses, for example, or speed, fine control (tested via obstacle course), and ability to manipulate more than one object in different ways for telekinesis - and these subskills also improve separately. Some aspects of them are somewhat subjective - there's an important difference between being able to control two objects telekinetically easily or only with difficulty - but a subjective report of those things is still useful (and often marked on a one-to-five scale), or it can be tested objectively by things like checking whether they can do the technique under various distracting conditions. They also test themselves holistically via combat and other real situations; strong skills that don't support a coherent problem-solving strategy aren't actually useful.

That's all very complicated and impressive! Tran bets that Savil would find the teaching-related aspects fascinating. He's more curious about how Sith work with each other. Is there a government? Are they themselves the government? (This is arguably true in Valdemar; nearly all Heralds are at least weakly Gifted.) Do they have laws against abuse of their powers? 

The world Deskyl is from has a lot more space than this one; most places in the Sith Empire have local governments controlling areas much bigger than Valdemar, but Sith aren't subject to their laws. They do have their own government-like institution called the Dark Council, and also the Emperor, who is the most powerful Sith; the Dark Councilors are the twelve most powerful Sith after him. They don't have laws; they do have a hierarchy of who answers to whom, but Sith rarely impose across-the-board limitations on their subordinates in the way that laws do, and don't as a rule discourage them from tactics that other kinds of people consider abusive. (Deskyl in particular is rather unusual for a Sith, though, and prefers to avoid them.)

Well, that’s...uncomfortable. Tran is tactful about it, though, and does his best to keep any reaction off his face.

“You must find it pretty different here,” he says. “Curious what you’ve found the most surprising, or hardest to adjust to.”

"The different magic has been strange for Xaari Deskyl."

"...Sorry, who?" The name is unfamiliar, though Tran realizes a few seconds after the words slip out that, from context, it's likely to be the other new arrival, who else could it be. 

"My owner, sir."

All right that was not the answer he was expecting and it takes considerable self-control not to let his immediate reaction of "gaaack" emerge out loud.

"Mmm," Tran says, neutrally. Don't offend the foreign guests, he tells himself firmly. "Er, what does she find strangest about it?" He chuckles, hopes it doesn't sound as strained to her as it does to his own ears. "I'm used to it, obviously, so it all seems normal to me." 

"It interacts strangely with her Force techniques, and Force users can't make persistent effects like shields that stay where they're made. She's a little unusual for being able to hold persistent effects that move with her as well as she does, most Sith just use techniques when they're needed."

"Huh, interesting. I'm not an expert but I gather it's not very hard for our mages to make spells that persist. I think they do need some sort of physical focus, like a crystal or something, if it's to be permanent on the scale of years." 

"Yes sir." She nods.

"...Um, anyway, you can keep reading if you want." 

"Would you rather I leave you alone, sir?"

"No! Not at all. I'm happy to answer questions, I just don't want to distract you if you've asked them all." 

"Yes sir." She goes back to reading.

And a couple minutes later, Deskyl comes in. She glances at Tran, but doesn't Mindspeak to him, instead signing to DZ, who signs a few words back when she's done.

Tran shoots a curious sideways look at Deskyl, but politely keeps reading rather than interrupt, he has a guess at who this is and presumably DZ will introduce her 'owner' (ugh) if she feels like it.