"--Well, part of what we're selling is information--Mum's been bribing graduates for the past decade and a half to keep her appraised of the most dangerous things to keep an eye on in the Scholomance, and knowing to keep away from the vents and poke the food with a stick could keep them alive for months longer than they'd otherwise have had. Plus pajama girl got a spare pair of slippers, she was barefoot, it was painful to look at, the redhead was part of a three-way trade with this merchant guy, and this other girl got a bit of Mum's best healing ointment. Your accent's Italian, are you from Pisa? I assume you're mostly set for fodder but we do have a breeding pair of Darwin's Bark Spiders for familiars, if you wanted to buy eggs."

"I am, on both counts. Teresa Calloconti, pleased to meet you." She extends a handshake, gesturing a little more widely than necessary with her (jet-black) nails.

"We keep terrariums. Flies, frogs, and snakes. Spider familiars, though, that sounds intriguing."

She shakes her hand. "Darwin's Bark Spiders. Their silk is the strongest mundane organic compound in the world, you can stab someone in a totally unenchanted shirt made of the stuff and it won't do more than bruise. Mum and Dad got them when it turned out Wilbur's affinity was thread. Not as good as sirenspider silk, of course, but much safer to get."

"Make that very intriguing! How much silk can you get out of them?"

She cocks her head and looks at the twin's clothes. "For example, how long did it take to make those outfits? If I'm guessing correctly, of course."

"You are guessing correctly! Making these full outfits took several weeks, but that includes enchanting them, and of course we didn't have too much reason to rush; we could only carry so much in and we had plenty of time to make these before induction. It needs lots of protein to convert, of course, but they can eat mal grubs, so that's not too much of a hang-up."

"Only weeks for that much? Then yes, I want one. What are you asking for them?"

"Non-magical ones wouldn't be as fast," she admits. "Also we don't actually have any babies available yet; they would have counted against our weight allowance, so there'll be a latency period until we have any mature enough to start making into familiars. We can negotiate now but we can't deliver yet, I do not want any mistaken expectations there. As to the price--what do you have to offer? We haven't been in business long enough to have some kind of standard reference price."

"Well, mana's the standard currency absent other things. We could trade flies as food, but letting you at the terrariums is unlikely, so up to you whether that's an improvement on grubs. If a lot of cousins are interested, which is plausible, we could talk a spell or two... You seem too well-prepared to be short on languages, we could find something solid to part with."

"I," she says with unapologetic smugness, "speak twenty-three languages."

"God damn, how the hell did you manage that? I'm only at nine, and that's usually pretty solid for fresh meat."

"Mum married a mundane linguistics professor and they spent our critical years chattering at us in every language they collectively knew. And then hired us tutors for a few we didn't when we were older."

"Clever Mum. Etruscan on the list? That's my only really obscure one."

"No, you don't get to join the ranks of people who really did not expect me to speak their obscure language! Interestingly the one where it was Basque was Chinese, didn't expect that."

"All I remember about Basque is that it's unrelated to anything, so I guess that isn't completely inexplicable. Still puts them on my 'interesting, talk to this one' list, though, what was their name?"

"Song Jian. Also openly a maleficer, which is why I was talking to her, on account of wanting to sell baby spiders."

"Ah, she would have gotten onto my list eventually anyway, then. Got to check up on our competition, you know? Either to make friends or to see the idiots coming before they go off the deep end, I quite doubt anyone's better at reading those signs than us."

Well, most of us, at least. She glances briefly at cousin Marino, who is chatting up some French girl, but doesn't let her smile drop.

She follows Teresa's eyes but doesn't comment on the cousin. She rummages around in her bag, then pulls out a piece of smoky quartz. It's not a Radiant Mind crystal, but it's not garbage either. 

"In mana terms, enough to fill two of these for a male, or three for a female. That's for a healthy one of starting-to-turn-them-into-a-familiar age, a whole egg sack to rip for malia would be much cheaper but you'd have a hard time keeping all the babies from eating each other long enough to grow up."

She taps it to get a slightly better feel on its capacity. "Hmm. A decent deal, I think, but I'll get back to you. Any types of spell you're particularly in the market for? I'm guessing between the cousins we'll want a breeding pair and three males beyond that, maybe as many as six more."

Also, if she can manage it, she'll be the only one in the family with a female. Lying and cheating family is forbidden - not letting them notice they're giving her leverage until too late will get her respect more than resentment.

"Something to deal with noncorporeal mals would be good, we've got a few of those but could do with better. Anything that's got a particularly good damage to mana ratio, it's never too early to start thinking ahead for graduation. If you have anything that's better at checking for poison than what we've got, that would be good too, the ones we've got are reportedly good but not perfect."

Teresa pulls out some paper and writes notes in shorthand. "Noncorporeals I think we'll have something to offer. My favorite is a 'solid air' spell in Romanian, which is a bit specialized, or in Italian or Latin I'm certain we have more general ones both uncommon and worth knowing. The rest I don't know offhand, it could be that the good stuff is too rare to trade to unproven outsiders. Or, make that 'currently unproven'. And - I forgot to ask your names, my apologies."

"We're Lucy and Wilbur Warren. We have Latin; we don't have Romanian or Italian. Do you want me to just list off all the languages, because I can do that."

"Heh, sure. Brag away, Lucy."

"Twenty-three languages is bragging, which specific ones is just details," she says with blatantly performative virtue. "English Mandarin Cantonese Japanese Arabic German Spanish Latin Old English Basque Catalan Welsh Gaelic Modern Greek Ancient Greek Russian Polish Hindi Tamil Marathi Kashmiri Urdu Telugu," and then a big inhale because she said all that in one breath.

This deserves applause, in Teresa's opinion. She gives a short golf clap. "The only other overlap with me is Arabic and the Greeks, probably unsurpringly. Wilbur, same list?"

"It would be a little hard to avoid it, honestly. It's too easy to accidentally say something in a language you shouldn't, in private."

"It's possible, just annoying. Unless that's somehow set up by enclavers having practice, in some way that isn't obvious... Ehh, probably doesn't matter, it's quite impressive from the lot of you regardless."

"It's probably not a normal problem, it's just Mum's been drilling into us since we were born that 'you are each other's first and best allies, you can trust each other as yourselves' and in our case this had side effects."

"Seems like a good call, even so. Where should I look for you when I've talked with my cousins? I'm 83A."

"I'm in 630B. We're giving out Wilbur's room number less readily on account of more of our valuable stuff is kept there and I'm our frontman."

"Caution is a habit, they say. Pleasure to meet you both."

"Pleasure to meet you too."