"My friend Mari is in an enclave and I've visited it, but we didn't talk about that sort of thing. If it gives an enclave a big advantage, can't they have malificers and not tell anyone? It's not as if anyone can just walk in and look to see if there are any; they have guards. They only let me in because I was with Mari. It sounds like an unstable equilbrium."

Ellen is looking around, notices El.

"That girl has an aura sort of like this one. I can't see her fingernails from here. Is she a malificer? Are there a lot in the Scholomance?"

"I think it's mostly a problem if people are doing it in the Scholomance, not outside? A problem for the other enclaves, I mean. Obviously it's still bad if people are maleficing outside."

She follows Ellen's gaze. "Yeah, she's in one of my other classes -- clean fingers, but that's not the only tell, and she's barely even trying to hide it. And I didn't think there were that many, but I ran into another one at orientation, and then Shanghai also adopted one..."

"I suppose you could paint your fingernails, but if she isn't trying to hide it why would she bother?" I'll ask her.

She walks over to El.

"Blair thinks you are a maleficer but you don't have black nails and I don't know how else to tell. Are you?"

What kind of question is that. "Piss off, Pisa cleared me."

"So you aren't? You could just say so. How can I tell next time I see someone else with your kind of an Aura and ordinary fingernails?"

"And who is Pisa?"

"She's Pisa, ask her." El points at Teresa. "Maybe if you turn that charm on her lot they'll teach you the spell their senior used!"

Since El is talking to Ellen right now, Lissa turns her glare at Briar. She does her best to convey "what the hell is your problem" through body language and expressions only.

Ellen gives up on getting any information out of El, beyond the fact that she isn't a maleficer — at least says she isn't — goes back to her seat, picks up the textbook. After she has read the first few pages she puts it down again, turns to Blair.

"This book is written to teach incanting to small children who don't know anything. The girl you thought was a malificer says she isn't. How can you tell?"

El wasn't exactly subtle, so Teresa is ready to say her piece before Ellen even gets back. No need to raise her voice, though.

"It's true, my seniors checked her. Scary aura yes, maleficer no. Somehow. And we're the experts."

"So you are a maleficer — is Pisa the name of your enclave? Is Briar wrong about maleficers in enclaves? Why did that girl snap at me — I just asked and she could just answer."

"I don't really know her, but I think she snaps at a lot of people. My enclave is Pisa, yes, it's an old Italian city. We're the exception to the rule. It's been centuries that we've all been maleficers, and we haven't ever started a war or let anyone go rogue attacking a rival. And in the Scholomance, we haven't been perfect, but we police ourselves. First sign of ripping malia from a human and all the cousins come down on them, lethally. And we're useful trade partners, so Europe has agreed that we're not a problem."

"Thank you. That explains a lot."

"She thought you might be able to tell me how to tell which people with auras were maleficers and which were not. If people who aren't get mad at you when you ask them, it would be very useful. If it's a spell, I have lots of spells, mostly for fire, so I could trade you one."

Apparently there are enclaver maleficers? And the other enclaves just let them? If she were in charge of an enclave, she wouldn't just let people go around being evil just because it was "useful."

Besides, she's not sure why anyone would trust a self-admitted maleficer about whether El was or not. El is obviously a maleficer, so probably Pisa is just lying.

A moment later she realizes that Ellen asked her a question, but now she's talking to the maleficer enclaver. She's going to wait a little and see if there's a gap in the conversation.

"At least she was less rude about it," mutters Lissa, tilting her head towards Ellen. It's actually kind of weird how she just walked off right after that.

"I guess. Plus the not accusing me of murder."

Waiting for an answer, Ellen is considering the problem of sources; it was easier at home, because Anya always told her the truth and Apa either told her the truth or didn't answer. Briar has told her one thing that wasn't true and another that probably wasn't, at least two other people said so. And her level of confidence about who was a malificer was backwards, more confident on less evidence. She is probably one of the people Apa had told Ellen about who were not careful about what they believed.

After class she can ask Mari about malificers and enclaves and Pisa and auras, but until then she should discount things Briar tells her.

"It's not for sale, sorry. We have trade secrets that keep us from going hollow and insane like rogues, and it is too likely to help someone else learn them. Bad news for us, obviously, but not just that. If every maleficer could work without restraint, that would be bad for the world, too."

"Thank you. That makes sense. I guess it's black nails or don't know."

Ellen picks up her textbook again, looks through it to see if it says anything she doesn't already know or anything that she knows isn't true. The list of verse forms for spells is missing lots of them but it doesn't actually say it's a complete list, and there probably isn't one. She doesn't think kennings would work for spells in any of her languages, but if she can find a textbook on Old Norse in the library ... or maybe the void would give her one. She already has two Germanic languages, a third shouldn't be that hard. Something something Surt's wound snake ...

She puts down the textbook, starts trying to compose a spell that she is pretty sure won't work in any of the languages she speaks.