The girl turns to him, grinning pointily. "I'm sure it will be a pleasure to meet you as well."

The boy inclines his head. "Agreed."

"How do you two know each other? The same enclave, or are you getting ahead of the alliance game?"

"We are an enclave of our own."

"We really aren't. His mother is Beijing, but we're not really Beijing, and good for us. We are at best a team of our own."

"-a brave choice. I come from Dubai, myself, but they and I do not always agree on everything."

Like whether the power of friendship will keep you alive. He's thinking no.

"What made you strike out on your own?"

"Beijing likes tradition. They have tried and tested strategies. Their strategies don't work well enough for our tastes, and we have our own ideas, and we're going to use them. The clave kids think we're insane and want nothing to do with us."

Is that a threat?

"Is that a warning?"

"Huh? No, I'm just letting you know the scene. I don't know you well enough to want to threaten you yet."

"The freshman from Dubai are good kids. My affinity is poisons. I try to be sweet enough to make up for it, but I do not have the stomach for good kids."

"Good kids are a nightmare. It's like they're from an American cartoon series about friendship."

"I don't think Dubai could be from an American cartoon. Too ethnically homogenous in the wrong direction."

"Kids training for the Scholomance should know better. That much is true anywhere."

He pauses to do a spot-check for mals; luckily, with the cafeteria this busy, people with more muscle are handling most comers.

Ghassan really needs some muscle.

"I was looking for enclavers and competent indies. Let us say you two are the latter. What do you need, and what can you offer?"

"Down to business! We find ourselves lacking in alchemy. I do creative writing and I'm very good at it, Lao does artificing, affinity for shadows - if you need to see in the dark or to vanish into it, he's got solutions."

"What have you made so far, Lao? What I have now is a poison that can paralyze some mals- I need to run more tests. I also need to test the newer one that could," in theory, "kill them."

"Darkvision shades are the really useful one - my proof of concept was a hat that prevented sunburn but if you want that one you're sadly out of luck, it remains at home with my mother."

"They sound useful. What would I owe you?"

"Hmm. How much of that paralytic would you offer? Jian can't mother-hen me at night and I'm not exactly defenseless but there's nothing wrong with pursuing an advantage."

".01 milliliters for most kinds I tested, but the groglers took .03. I can offer .2 milliliters right now."

"Mn. Maybe we'll wait to trade 'til you have more of a stock. Twenty doses isn't nothing, but those shades will last."

Oh, it's like that. He understands it, but it's really much easier to be stingy than sympathize with someone else doing it. He has more than .2, but not so much more that he can over-promise to these two.

"Anything you would give me for that much?"

Which makes it obvious he has more than that, but not how much more.

"We've got some reagents we could part with, brought them for arbitrage anyway. Stuff like yao grass. Very dear here, not so much back home."

Reagents sound like alchemist bait, and Ghassan really needs to bait an alchemist.

"Deal. When I build up more of a stock, we can discuss other trades."

He retrieves a vial from his backpack, and waits to see how much they try to stiff him.

Lao retrieves a quantity of yao grass which is barely stiffing him at all - more giving him a chance to haggle for courtesy's sake.

He knows which side his bread is buttered on.

He'll haggle exactly the amount it takes to look like he's not an idiot, and not any further than that, which means they settle on the deal Lao wanted anyway, but Ghassan gets to save face.

Lao smiles lazily and slips the vial into his pocket. "If you get the lethal stuff working, we should talk again about those shades," he suggests.

"Of course. It was lovely meeting both of you," he says, making sure to make eye contact with them both.

Ghassan takes his reagents, reviews everything in his head that he needs to track over the next few days (poison dart refills for Daria, more supply for Lao's darkvision shades), and sets off to finds someone else to talk to.

"What a fine young man."

"Would that we were more like him."