Wow, she's so cool. She's either a halfling or a gnome - gnome seems more likely but gnomes aren't scary like tallfolk.

"What's that sign say?"

When Tillia turns around to see another halfling she does so with a friendly smile, and nods off her cowl. "Oh hello!" She holds it out, then realizes that it being too folded up might not be the problem. "It's the signs for the Mage Caucus- all the representative wizards from the wizard schools, and any other arcanely inclined delegates that might be interested. They're meeting below the high arches tomorrow morning, before the convention. There's some thinking about how we might reform education, and the general laws around magic and-" Tillia realizes that she's been talking too long, and should let the other halfling speak. "-and are you a delegate?"

"Yes, but, uh, not a wizard one obviously."

Tillia puts down her stepladder, and puts the hammer on it.  "Oh, I only started casting spells recently myself. Before that I was doing mathematics and arithmetic- mostly in topology, though some arithmancy.  I still do a lot of that. It's my-  actually, what's your trade, when you're not being a delegate?"

"Flax processing. Or it was. I don't exactly have a flax farm to go home to."

"Oh, I'm sorry." She looks at a loss. "You want to help out? This would be done faster if I had someone to hold the stepladder when I'm standing on it, and the Professor" the word has noticeable emphasis "had to go deal with an administrative matter. Westcrown Wizarding College is actually something of a mess- they're really more of an academy, the way they are now. Not at all like the stories."

"- sure, okay." Aina holds the stepladder.

Tillia climbs the stepladder, holds up the parchment, and begins hammering. "What would you like to do, if you could pick?"

"I think I might need so long to think about it that I need a job before I have one. Though just now being a delegate is fine."

She hammers, loudly. BANG. BANG. BANG. "Enjoying it? Are you on any committees?" she asks, and climbs down, hammer in hand. "Thank you, miss?..."

"Aina. I'm on the slavery committee. I thought Permira would just vote the right way on everything so I didn't need to, but she said she needed more of us."

"Gosh, yes, that's important. I could ask the Professor to join you, if you need more votes." Her eyes are bright with interest now. "Did you get anywhere so far?"

"It's sort of hard to tell. I'm not sure anything we did counted after a couple of the angry tallfolk left. But maybe it did, everyone else just carried on like normal."

"Hmm. Sounds like you might need the Professor. She's - well, she's good." She smiles, perhaps a little shyly. "And a human, she has a letter, from here, from Aroden's time, saying she counts as human."

"...is she actually?"

Tillia giggles. "No, she's an elf. She was a professor here, in Aroden's time."

"How long have you belonged to her?"

Tillia grins. "Twelve seconds! That's how long it took to sign the papers, after the Professor paid for me. She's been my employer. For ten years. As a calculator. At the Arcanamirium. And now-" she hesitates, very briefly "now- she's teaching me magic." 

"What's a calculator?"

Tillia lights up. "oh, well, you know, arcane magic is about the shape of an invisible thing, like syrup in a bowl, that you run your fingers through? And sometimes, when it's smooth- manifold- you can calculate how it can move- ripple and flow." She moves her hands, as if to demonstrate.  "Sometimes when it's not smooth, even. The Professor is trying to find out how it works when it's not smooth. And I help!"

"I do the mathematics- the figuring, counting... well, how much goes around the finger on the left side and the right, more or less. That's what a calculator does, at least at the Arcanamirium. I hear the merchant princes have calculators too. Anyway, we've been working on this tricky thing, where it twists, for a couple of years now."

"That sounds so complicated..."

"It's fun!" she hesitates. "Well, it's fun for us!"

"Actually-" she looks up at the great clockwork mechanism at the peak of the hall- "Best I get on with it, or the delegates won't see these before tomorrow." Tillia picks up the stepladder and hammer, and raises her eyebrow.  "You want to come with me? It's nice to have company when doing these!"

"Sure!" It's not like she's eager to go home. Permira is scary, Alonso's family rub her the wrong way for some reason, and her own companions are at their best and hardest-working when they're worrying about what she'll do when she gets home and not when she's loitering visibly.

Permira will not necessarily notice this cool free foreign halfling anytime soon. She's not a delegate in her own right. Maybe Aina can just have a cool friend who she doesn't have to share with Permira.