Things were, of course, more complicated than that. No one seemed to know, or care, about her people or culture here outside the reach of the Ascendency. And the order she'd been used to was so complex and different in form here, with this new Imperial government meeting a lot of resistance. She needed to learn more about what she was getting herself into. Better that than go back home in disgrace.

So it was she made her way to the city's public library, a clean enough but sparse building of computer terminals and databases. The terminals themselves looked private enough, but there were areas for reading the stacks of bulky datapads lined up on the shelves.
Looking down the shelves, Ela decided to try where to start.