Oh, god, someone is talking to him. That's probably a good thing? Maybe he looks like a useful potential ally. Or maybe he just seems really pathetic and unthreatening. Either way, her accent is terrible, which stupidly helps him feel a little more confident. 

"Julian." And then, with just a hint of a British accent – "We can speak English if you prefer." 

"Oh good, we'll be able to actually talk later," she says, also in English.

"I thought we were talking right now." 

And then back to Mandarin. "I'm - trying to build mana right now. And also talk. I can read fine, it's just - I need more practice talking. I'm from Cairo, what - uh, what about you?"

"Oh, I see! I'm from Hong Kong." He speaks slowly, exaggerating the tones. "City, not enclave. Reading's the hard part, if you've got the characters down you're already in great shape." 

"Yeah, that's what I hear. It's just that to practice talking you have to talk to people, and talking to people is - uh - horrible. - not you specifically. In general." God this is awful. "Also nobody in Cairo speaks Mandarin anyway."

"What made you decide to pick it up?" 

"Half the classes are in it." Does that come off as sounding like she thinks it's a stupid question. She can barely keep track of that in Arabic, she's gonna be totally lost on that front in Mandarin.

"Right, that's a dumb question." Okay okay okay how can he salvage this – "I mean, I think the content is probably substantially similar. I'm going to try and take half my classes in each if I can so I can learn if there are any systemic differences." 

"I just thought something might be full at some point. And - there are probably a lot of spells in Mandarin, I don't want to be unable to read all of them."

"I guess there are some? Like, modern ones. Mostly we get stuff in Classical Chinese." 

She blinks.

She is an idiot. She could have learned that before and now it's too late.

"I guess that makes sense."

"The writing system is the same, of course, so it's not so bad if you want to learn – are you languages track?" 

"I don't know yet. I have eight, but I'm - interested in alchemy and I'm good at clothing, too. My affinity is healing. Do you know what yours is?"

Ughhhhhh this conversation. "Extra-dimension spaces. So, enclave magic." 

" - wow, really?" Why would it not be really, that's an idiotic thing to say.

"Yep! My parents had to take me to a diviner to figure it out, since we're independent." 

"That's amazing. I don't know - what it's good for in here, though, exactly, you probably have to be pretty powerful to make use of that."

"I probably won't be able to do anything with it until after I graduate. So – I just have to be really good at everything else. So I can graduate." He shrugs, like it's simple as that. 

"Makes sense. Do you know what track you're doing yet?"

"Artificing or spell-writing, probably. But I do like learning languages – what are yours?" 

She counts off on her fingers. "Arabic, English, Mandarin, French, Persian, Latin, Coptic, Middle Egyptian." Doesn't actually know how to say all of those in Mandarin but that's fine, probably.

"Wow, Middle Egyptian! That's a good one. I don't think anyone else will have that and they probably wrote down lots of spells. Do you know anything about their magic? I only have Cantonese and English and Classical Chinese and Mandarin and German and French and Sanskrit, myself." 

"Ooh, Sanskrit probably has good stuff. Yeah, I picked it up because - a lot of the kids who are interested in ancient spells aren't going to have thought of it early enough, half of them are probably as clueless about Egypt as I am about China. Apparently. But the wizard community there is ancient, I'm sure they must have written some powerful spells. I know a long time ago they had a good protection system for young wizards - probably not as good as here, but better than what most enclaves have otherwise, I think - except eventually it broke down. Of course. But maybe I'll find something out about it and can try translating any relevant spells into something you speak."

Oh, he likes her. "I would love that! That's sort of why I picked up Sanskrit, actually. The oldest enclaves are in India, and I figured they must have something – that's what I want to do when I can actually use my affinity. Figure out how to make enclaves bigger and cheaper and safer." 

"That makes sense!" She has been saying this a lot because it's hard to think of other things, but this time she says it with feeling. "That would be amazing. I know there's never enough space, most places. - I am also city and not enclave. With Cairo, I mean."

"How'd you manage the last couple years? It was pretty easy for us since we have skyscrapers and mals don't really like climbing stairs." 

"Uh... I guess my mother babysat me, mostly. And there were a lot of mundanes around, we were in a very crowded area of the city. I think that helps."

She honestly hadn't really thought about this question with regard to herself; her parents have been trying to keep her sisters alive for the past several years, which obviously didn't work out very well. But it occurs to her that maybe she survived this long in part because the mals were going after them until the second-oldest died, relatively recently.

"My little sister just turned twelve, so they're going to have to through the whole thing over again." Until she dies, he doesn't say. "Uh. Anyway, it's kind of nice to be somewhere different, even if it's. You know. Completely horrible in every other way."   

"I guess so." She hasn't thought about it that way, either, but hey, yeah, she is no longer cooped up in a two bedroom apartment with her parents going around having opinions about everything she does. "I'm looking forward to classes."

"Me too. Do you have any idea how course selection works here?" 

"I heard the school puts you in a room with a bunch of other people in your year, gives you a schedule, and then lets you request different courses without actually telling you what courses are on offer. I guess you either guess what courses those might be or look around at what other people in your room got assigned to. It sounds... disorganized."

"....at least it's trying?" 

"Well, yes. I think it doesn't make things difficult for you on purpose unless you fail to do your homework. Or if you're out after curfew."

"I hear the enclaver kids pay to have other people do their homework for them. I wonder how one gets in on that, it seems like a good gig." 

"Sounds time-consuming." She is totally also going to do a ton of time-consuming stuff for people, just, more interesting than doing the same homework twice. "I guess if they were taking different classes it wouldn't be so bad, unless you couldn't figure it out without having - attended the lectures. Probably you just have to demonstrate in class that you're smart and a good bet to do it?"

"I mean, as long as you're doing it anyway, it's probably not that much work to copy it over. Different classes would be best but seems harder to arrange. I'm not to worried about it, really, it can't possibly be harder than the entrance exam." 

"Oh right. I didn't take anything formal like that. I guess I should wait to see that I - can easily handle the way the school does things before I promise to do it for anyone else. But I guess it wouldn't be too bad just copying."

"I hope we have some classes together." 

"Yeah! I hope so too. Have you met anyone else so far?"

"I delivered some mail to the Shanghai kids earlier, so I got to talk to them. And, uh, sort of got drafted as a bodyguard? One of their freshmen is apparently totally useless and lives in the room directly below mine and his sister wants me to look after him." 

"Oh huh. Weird that they want a freshman guarding him. Where are your rooms?"

"I'm 77B, he's 64A. Really I think she wants almost anyone else, I just happen to be right there, you know? At least I can walk him to class and walk him home at night."  

"That makes sense. I'm 36A, it can't be that far."

"What about you? Met anyone interesting?" 

"I met a girl from Istanbul who seemed cool. Offered to ward my room in exchange for discount rates on healing when necessary."

"Are you very good at wards? I like to think I'm decent but I'd love to compare notes. If you're comfortable with that, of course." 

"I think I'm okay at them, but it sounded like she specialized in them. I'm not opposed to sharing notes, although the one I was planning to use tonight is in Arabic."

"Right, of course." He's so dumb. "We could – uh – talk about theory, though? I don't know the first thing about Arabic warding traditions."  

"I can talk theory! Although maybe we should switch to - no, harder it is the more mana it is, I will try to explain it in Mandarin first and you can tell me if it makes no sense."

"Or we could try French, then we can both grind." 

"All right." And she switches to French, which she's somewhat better at, but it's still annoying enough to get a little mana out of (she is getting less mana than she was at the beginning, anyway, now that the conversation has managed not to be horrible). Seems considerate, anyway. And she can talk theory!

So can he!