"I haven't done it yet," she demurs. "Thank me if I manage it."

"Oh, I will," Cordelia assures her.

Smile.

"On a completely different note - I'd like to learn a local language. Do you have a recommendation for which I should focus on?"

"Of Barrayar's four languages, English is the one most widely used off of Barrayar, and the one my family speaks natively."

Nod. "I can focus on that, then. I don't actually need help with lessons, I have a translator droid that's fluent already, it can teach me. It just seemed wise to figure out which was best to learn."

"A - what?"

Blink. "One of the technological advances we have are - uh, artificial intelligences. Droids. They vary greatly in intelligence and programming capacity."

"That wrinkle hasn't yet made it into the reports. That's... interesting," says Cordelia. "We don't have anything like that here. I'm having a hard time processing the implications."

"I can try to explain anything you've got questions about, but I'm not sure how to explain everything succinctly. Droids can be anywhere between 'basically a person' and - distinctly not a person. The line between the two can get blurred, especially if the droid has excellent programming and goes long periods of time without being memory wiped." Pause. Why yes, there isn't really a way to make that sound not horrible. Great. "... I'd like to clarify I haven't memory wiped my personal translator droid once since I, acquired her, and now that I'm in command of my fleet no others have been ordered."

"I... appreciate that clarification very much," Cordelia says slowly.

"Yes. I thought it might be appreciated."

"I suppose if I asked you, 'how upset should I be about standard droid-handling practices in your galaxy', you wouldn't be well equipped to answer."

"Likely not, no." She wants to bring up slavery but also not bring that up at any time ever. Her fleet contains exactly zero slaves, she can just. Not represent that aspect of the Sith Empire at all.

"Thank you for explaining, regardless."

Nod.

"I can also arrange for you to speak to her? She's on my - one of my ships, I thought it safer to bring only humans with me. Which actually annoyed her, she had wanted to come, she's intensely curious about your alphabets and why you have two."

"That would be lovely. And I can explain the alphabets to you if you'd like to pass that on."

"If it's not too much trouble, then please?"

"The four languages spoken on Barrayar are English, French, Russian, and Greek. All four are close relatives of languages spoken elsewhere in the galaxy. English and French normally use the Latin alphabet, Russian normally uses the Cyrillic alphabet, and Greek normally uses the Greek alphabet. But on Barrayar, in six hundred years of isolation, the writing systems converged, so the Barrayaran alphabet is a mix of the other three. If you're going to learn English, I recommend starting with the Latin alphabet; there are fewer letters and it's used by more dialects. Any Barrayaran you meet will almost certainly be bi-literate, but few people read the Barrayaran alphabet outside the Barrayaran Empire."

Nod. "I predict Envee will want to learn all of the other alphabets before learning the Barrayaran one, to - see the progression in logic."

"Sensible of her."

Smile. "She likes her job."

"It's so nice when that happens."

"Not exactly accidental when it comes to droids, it's considered good form to program them to like what they do, but - yes. It is."

Thoughtful nod.

Which is more than she could say about how slaves are treated, no one asks someone 'hey do you want to be a sex slave?' they just sort of get judged to be pretty and then someone chooses to act on that and whoops how did that happen, welcome to the change in profession, this is your life now.

She's still not going to bring up slavery, but augh. Why is her empire so horrible.

"... If you have any questions about my culture, please feel free to ask, but sometimes I'm not at all sure how to - impart it all."