"I could make a knife that had shadows inside it. It would still be a shitty knife."

"A cloak probably would work best, for hiding. And we could get... I don't know how valuable the raw silk is to you, but we could get some of that, and if it's too dear to you to offer a worthwhile amount we could maybe make up the difference in arcana, you know? What are your languages?"

"Mum married a mundane linguistics professor, I have twenty-three."

"Fuck!" Jian says appreciatively. "Mandarin, English, Mongolian, Latin, and Basque for me. So if you run across anything really cool in those, you know." Grabby hands.

"Oh, cool, I have all of those except Mongolian."

"Oh, fuck you, you have Basque? Basque is supposed to be my thing. I learned it specifically to piss people off!"

She giggles. "Sorry, you'll just have to settle for pissing off people who aren't me. I have a bunch of obscure stuff, Dad didn't select for practicality at all when he was learning languages."

"Now I have absolutely no way of repelling you if you turn out to be an asshole, anyone else I can start explaining vocabulary terms and bits of grammar until they run away."

"--I mean, I still don't speak Mongolian, and I super don't want the school to decide I speak Mongolian."

"Well, fair enough. I don't have a lesson plan prepared for Mongolian, but I can whip one up if I really have to. Not that I expect to, honestly, you seem perfectly capable of taking a hint in less potentially lethal terms."

"I have been known to miss actual hints but I promise you if you say the actual words 'fuck off' I will comprehend them."

"Jian will remember this."

"Just don't say it in Mongolian and we're swell."