"If you need mana now much more than you will later, Suze's been willing to lend it to me at interest and I'd be willing to lend it further at, uh, more interest than that."

"Half the mana and - have you got something synthetic and cushion-cut, sized to fit into the handle of a dagger?"

"I expect St. Petersburg will lend to me at only one layer's worth of interest, if I need it that urgently." Ugh, she wanted to look like she didn't care that much about the gold leaf, not like she cared too much about mana.

"I don't know what a cushion cut looks like," she says to Annisa "but all my gems are synthetic except the amber. You can take a look when we're back by our rooms?"

"I think there's cloth under here?" She's by a stack of incredibly large slabs of raw tree wood, too heavy for a single person to lift and likely too large to carry up the stairs safely. "Canvas, anyway. Can anyone help me lift the wood off it?"

"I'll probably do you half the mana and one gem," Annisa says, and goes to help with lifting the wood.

Malak hurries over to help.

"This is bizarrely large wood, I don't know if trees grow that wide."

"Medang trees do. - and probably not just them, just, they're the ones I know of. Is it good wood?"

Franklin is cheerfully but quietly collecting sand and cement he can later mix with bathroom water to make concrete for forges. He's also got a bunch of pieces of iron that are sure to come in handy for terrarium locks and other projects albeit not with the knife. Fortunately his parents were aware of his packrat tendencies and his cargo pants are enchanted for durability and capaciousness.

"If one or more people will be my backup for a run on the tool chests and that run successfully acquires a saw I will cut up that wood into pieces of a better size."

"I have a cable saw, if we think that'll help. I haven't practiced using it, though."

"One of the two-person reciprocating ones? I'm willing to try it but it might take longer than desired."

"One of the upperclassmen just went for that tool chest over there and came out in one piece, I'll check it with you."

"Yeah, one of those. Maybe it can be plan B."

"Okay." He takes the longest piece of scrap iron, a bent and rusty stake, out of his pocket to poke the chest with.

Annisa will stand to his side warily, though obviously both of them are going to run for their lives if anything pops out.

Neither of them should be standing directly in front of the chest, but he can reach out from one side with his poking stick and trip the latch and give the lid a couple provocative raps before actually lifting it.

No monsters observably await them. Instead there is a circular saw, a bunch of drill bits (but no drill), a screwdriver, a ball-end glass cutter, a wooden plank with a metal attachment that's evidently meant to serve as a gauge, level and miter square all at once, and a bizarre s-shaped joint wrench.

Oooh, that glass cutter will be an asset for doing the better terrarium lids with grooves. It gets poked with the poking stick and then, when it fails to protest this, shoved in another pocket before Franklin starts hoisting the circular saw.

"Is anyone else after that screwdriver?"

Annie should probably have right of first refusal on the screwdriver since she helped with the chest but he's not going to appoint himself the screwdriver arbiter and anyway he's busy hauling the saw over to the tree slabs and checking if the batteries have any charge.

Annisa is in fact going for the screwdriver. "You can borrow it sometimes," she offers Bella.

"That'll do."

Oh good she hasn't horribly offended Bella. Probably.

There are six rolls of canvas lying squashed under the middle of the stack of wood, like there used to be more around them but the accessible ones were taken earlier. It's coarse, hardly fantastic for clothing and certainly not suitable for underwear, but it's fabric and it's beautiful and you can hardly ask for better material to make a set of floor cushions or a whole floor mattress out of. 

"Did you want fabric, too, Daria?" she asks, because you are supposed to be friendly with useful people who are talking to you, even though she would MUCH rather take ALL of the canvas for herself. - but also Malak said she needed to be more willing to squeeze out everything she could get? "There's a lot here, I don't mind handing off one roll of it for free." 

There, now she won't have to share fifty-fifty.

"Yeah, I could use a roll." She throws a chunk of nearby wood scrap into the pile, and then goes to poke the nearest roll with Annisa's knife when that doesn't disturb anything.