Belmarniss looks at the bookshelves while she's doing that.

Economics. Military history. History of Zorvey. History of Miomir. History of Liru-a. History of the Federated Southern Islands. History of human-mermaid relations. Biographies of ancient emperors and kings. History of Sealing Day. Adventure novel. Romance novel. Collection of plays. Textbooks for two foreign languages. Travelogue. Botany. Geography and navigation. Political philosophy. Religious poetry. Secular poetry. Recent scientific publications. Magical theory. Spell collections. Dragons and phoenixes. Child psychology.

"There's room for more. What have you most often found yourself needing to talk about with strangers?"

"Uh, let's see, when have I needed to talk to strangers in a language I barely had any of... sometimes I make statements about alignments, I don't know if your magic can discern those at all, it can be reassuring in tense situations. Directions, north south east west. Proper nouns but those we don't need to have in the phrasebook. Haggling but I don't expect that to come up before I have another Tongues."

She writes directions. "Maybe you should explain alignments while you can."

"Lawful and Chaotic, Evil and Good, Neutral on either axis, nine results, these correspond to the afterlife planes, they can be detected on sufficiently powerful people with magic I do not have but even low-power people get sorted into afterlives. They are similar but not reliably identical to the commonsense concepts of the same names. I'm Chaotic Good last time somebody checked me but I get along fine with plenty of Lawfuls and some Evils depending on the details."

"I have questions about that but I'm not sure if it's the most urgent thing to have more questions about." She writes four words and doesn't at this time construct an entire grid. "Why has that been useful to discuss with strangers, though?"

"If somebody's scared of me they'll often be reassured if I say I'm Good, if somebody's doing... petty crime or something, they will be relieved if I say I'm Chaotic, if someone Lawful is concerned about how I'm Chaotic it will often be mollifying that I am also Good. Like, uh, if I went someplace and decided to buy a slave to go manumit later then this would be the thing to tell them so they'd believe me about that."

"I'm not sure you should expect that to work here."

"Good to know, if I have time to say three words I will try to pick ones more locally useful than 'I'm Chaotic Good'."

"If I knew what you should say instead I would tell you. Hmm, what else - maybe an explanation of your translation magic? And something about what you're doing here?"

"Comprehend Languages is a first circle spell that lets me understand and read any language, and it only works on the caster, 'bout an hour but since it's only first circle I can do it a bunch of times if I want. Tongues is a third circle spell that lets me understand and speak any language for about an hour, but doesn't help with writing coming or going; that one I can cast on other people. There is also a second-circle spell called Share Language which lets me grant a language I speak to another person complete with literacy; that one lasts for a whole day, so if it winds up being that I'm mostly talking to just you or while you are handy to translate, I might preferentially rely on that one going forward. I'm not sure what information I should recite to convey that efficiently for people."

"Probably not the circle thing, that won't be familiar. Hm." Tema writes something approximately summarizing that.

"Thanks."

"Do you have any idea what you'll want to do while you're here?"

"Oh, let's see. Arbitrage, maybe, or at least scoping out the possibilities for my priest friend if he shows up. - he's a priest of the god of trade. I can teach people spells, do research, that kind of thing."

"So maybe you want something about prices, and I'm not sure what recurring repetitive things might come up in teaching spells and doing research. Is the religion thing going to be important?"

"Uh, I guess he might decide the place is ripe for evangelism but that's not my speed."