"Would that account for the spellsilver? I'm not sure if 'being spellsilver' counts as a magical property."

"Good question. If you tried to make this with a different metal, would it work badly, or not at all?"

"It's not all made of spellsilver, just this bit here. It's not actually good for most of the structural features of... anything. There are different kinds of spellsilver but I mostly work in this sort because it's the densest, holds the most without having to make somebody an entire gorget."

Margaret thinks for a moment, then snaps her fingers. "Bar can't make magical objects! So I can try to sell back this necklace and buy one with an appropriate bit of spellsilver and if she can't sell it then it's a magical property and if she can then I'll have some."

"...Does this result in me maybe not getting my necklace back? It's worth nearly a thousand gold."

"No, no, I meant sell back the nonmagical necklace I was originally planning to do the test on! I have no plans to do anything with your necklace except referring to it as an example in an incantation and I've never had that damage anything."

"Okay, good."

"Also, I don't think you ever said what it does? Theoretically I don't need to know for this incantation but it might help and also I'm curious."

"Hand of the Mage - gives me an extra hand, useful when I'm working. But since Mage Hand is a cantrip it's not too hard to make."

"Ooh, neat! Is controlling three hands any harder than controlling two?"

"You have to concentrate on it," she shrugs. "It's not that hard."

"Neat. Anyway, back in a minute." So, can Bar make spellsilver?

She sure can, every kind of it!

That's great but it's going to require some back and forth with Ismat about what the kinds are and which kind she should get. Which is the opposite of a hardship because magical metallurgy is so cool.

Sure, Ismat can give her an introductory spellsilver overview.

Margaret is having so much fun. She takes some notes about potentially stacking effects from both magic systems on the same artifact, then goes back to Bar and gets set up with a necklace containing the same kind of spellsilver as Ismat's original, in the same shape and attached similarly to the rest of it.

Anything else before she tries the test? If she gets it wrong she'll need to retrace the whole diagram before she can try again.

Ismat inspects the necklace. "I wouldn't bet it'd work as-is," she says, "though I could probably get it there in an hour or two, but your enchantment's faster."

"It's faster if I get it right on the first try. Doing something new often takes multiple attempts, but then once I've got it I can make them as fast as I can draw the diagrams. It's pretty neat how we have such different sets of constraints."

"Hour or two is a lot faster than starting from scratch, usually it takes me at least four hours for even the simplest pieces."

"Huh. I guess theoretically I could parallelize by paying someone to do tracing while I do design and incantations, if not for the secrecy. Anyway, might as well find out if I need to go back to the drawing board for this one." She lays the diagram out on the floor and gets the correct necklace in each hand and starts speaking in what Ismat won't be able to notice is French.

Ismat supervises thoughtfully without interrupting her.

And momentarily there is no visible result whatsoever, which Margaret is very happy about!

"That probably worked! I can't be sure until you try it, but I didn't have to suppress any explosions and that usually means at least a partial success. She hands over both necklaces.

Ismat's been keeping track of which one is her original; she pockets that one and puts on the new one. She concentrates a bit and the pendant itself lifts up from her chest. "Looks to me like it worked!"

"Awesome! So my magic can interact with your magic at least if it has something to copy. I bet we can get all sorts of cool applications out of that if we ever get out of this bar."

"It doesn't save on materials but on the high end there's a lot of labor cost, even for me and other nonwizards. Can you teach me?"