"What limits does it have, sir? In terms of range, or anything else that can block it, please."

“Range, er, depends a lot on the person. Mine is over a hundred miles if I push it. But personal shields block it very effectively. Enough stone in the way does too. Oh, and anyone with mage-gift trained in the technique can put temporary or permanent shields against Thoughtsensing on a room.”

”...Do you want me to shield her room?”

"Yes please."

“Um, all right. I’ll only do a temporary one because we aren’t staying here long, and permanent would take half a day. But, er, once we get to Haven I can do a permanent one wherever you end up staying. I mean, if you want me to.”

He crosses his legs and closes his eyes, the expression leaving his face. “This will take a few minutes,” he says, tonelessly, and then goes completely still and silent.

She doesn't interrupt him.

About ten minutes later he stirs, stretches, opens his eyes. “There. As long as the door is shut, no Thoughtsenser can get through.” Well, he could if he wanted, since they’re his wards and he’s automatically keyed to them, but he won’t do it by accident and he’s certainly not about to do it on purpose. 

There are really a lot of things he should go do - talk to Herald Jores about the prisoners, for example - but he’s still drained and going outside sounds awful. Not to mention, he’s burning with curiosity. 

Maybe his Heraldic duties can wait another candle mark... Yfandes doesn’t object, so he turns his gaze back to DZ and smiles again. 

”Can you tell me more about droids?” he says. “How you work, how you’re made... It sounds so fascinating.” They eat...trapped lightning? And aren’t even magical. How?

"Can you be more specific about what you'd like to know, sir?"

There are so many things he doesn't understand that it's hard to narrow it down. "Um, did someone make droids? How do new droids, er, get born?" 

"Droids are mass produced - it's a way of making many identical objects very quickly by having machines do each part."

Aaand that opens even more questions. "Where did the machines come from?" 

"Deskyl's world has had mass production for a long time; almost everything there is mass produced, including the machines themselves. Unique things and things people are designing are still made by hand, usually from mass-produced parts."

"That's incredible!" Now he has a growing cascade of questions, many of them to do with 'how' and 'who invented it' and 'would it work here'. He can't manage to put that pile in a sensible order yet, though. 

"Deskyl says there are different kinds of droid," he says. "What, er, kind are you?" 

"I'm a servant droid. There are five classes of droid: the first class does theoretical science including medicine; the second class does applied science, for example repairing machines; the third class works directly with biological people, usually as servants of various types; the fourth class is combat and security droids; and the fifth class does simple manual labor."

Oh gods there's so much and he wants to know everything and he should be taking notes and aaaa. 

"Can all droids talk like you?" he goes with, it's not the part he's most pressingly curious about but it's the question he can find coherent words for. 

"No; only some class three droids have the ability to independently learn languages, and only class three and four droids can commonly speak the languages of biological people. There's a different language that other droids speak."

"Wow! What's that language like – can humans learn it?" He can't see how they could communicate with the droids otherwise. "Um, and how does it work that some droids can talk but can't independently learn a language?" 

"It sounds like this:" she produces a few seconds of whistles and beeps. "Humans rarely learn to speak even a few words of it, but almost all droids can understand at least one biological language. And the usual way for a droid to learn any new skill is by having a machine of the same kind as our brain added to us with the knowledge."

"What?" He stares at her, amazed. "You can, just, put knowledge into your brain? Just like that?" He is so jealous right now. 

"Yes, if we have the right kind of machine for it."

"...And there aren't any here, are there?" He frowns. "What are, um, the skills that you already have? And can you learn things the nor– um, the way humans usually do?" On reflection it's sort of rude to give that the status of 'normal'. 

"I can, yes. I don't have many skills; my kind of droid is meant to act as go-betweens between Sith and the worker droids, not to do much work ourselves. But I can do simple tasks -" she lists out some things that might be reasonably expected of an unskilled domestic servant; cleaning and organizing and delivering messages and so on. "And I can translate between languages I know, and all droids are very good at math, and at remembering things and maintaining focus."

"Neat!" Vanyel smiles at her. "I think you'll get along with my Companion, Yfandes likes math a lot. Although, um, she can't actually talk out loud. Since she has a horse body. Can, er, does Mindspeech work on you? If you're not sure I can try to test it. The thing is, my Gift can sense your mind - that you're a person - but I can't read it at all." 

"I don't know, sir. Force senses can't detect droid minds at all."

"Huh, that's weird. I'll try." :Hello?: It's very odd, with a human mind he'd have at least a vague sense of 'where' to put his probe but here he has no idea. "Did you feel that?" he asks. "Or understand it?" 

"I felt something, sir, but I didn't understand it at all, it didn't seem like a message."