The Taipei reading room contains two seniors talking quietly about a joint project they're working on, Zhou Taiyang looking over their shoulder and being very impressed, a sophomore who (the consensus is) is probably going to flake out going over the same page of his math textbook over and over again, and Cai Xian, rereading a few chapters of Romance of the Three Kingdoms because he wants to double-check he isn't confusing anything with the Records for the essay he needs to write. He still gives Huang a warm smile when she comes over, as if he was hoping she'd drop by.

Ah, she recognizes him from class, though she doesn't attend the whole thing most of the time since there's no lecture to miss and she just needs to pick up her homework. She bows. "I was referred here by Hua Gao, who suggests there are trades you have to offer."

Xian closes the book, rises, bows. "Of course." This buys him time to frantically scan his memory for Hua Gao, he drilled all the known enclave children so not an enclaver... not one of Taipei's maintenance kids, he knows those... which means she's one of Jinye's homework customers or (more likely) part of her spy network but didn't pass on which Taipei kid was running it...

He wishes he'd had the chance to refresh his Farley file on her but the bow brought him time to bring up the image as best he could and by his vague memory and her style Huang is somewhat traditionalist so he'll downplay the anti-Confucianism... "Trade is the blood of society, and Taipei has never shunned it." Which is of course anti-Confucian but so are spy networks, and if she's going to be scared off by "Taipei likes trade" it's a very good idea to scare her off before they start trusting that she'll report in regularly.

(None of his calculation shows on his face.)

"My name is Yushi Huang. I do not have much to offer but Hua Gao thought it would be worthwhile to visit here even for me."

"I have no doubt that you are wrong about this, Yushi Huang," he says pleasantly. "Every person in the Scholomance has a great deal to offer, or they would not have made it here. Would you take a seat?" He has a spare water-bottle he can lend her (not, in fact, snacks; Taipei is not New York, but comfy chairs and water-bottles would do to make her feel more comfortable.) And everyone else can give them space, and let them talk quietly.

"Thank you." She sits. She drinks water.

His eyes rest for a moment on the book he was reading. "I believe I've seen you in the Three Kingdoms class," he says with a quick smile, "Briefly. Is that going well for you?"

"Better than some of my others. And you?"

"Reasonably well. I enjoy it, I admit." He smiles slightly ruefully. "I can't help but enjoy stories of brilliant tacticians and brave heroes, scheming up perfect, masterful plans to save China." He raises an eyebrow. "It's not as if we get much of that here." His gesture takes in the Scholomance, in all its desperation, a wave of the hand to the door - out at all the people, desperate and afraid and struggling to survive, looking one step ahead at a time because thinking about the future just isn't a Scholomance privilege.

"Sometimes Hua Gao and I take turns reading it to one another while we're cleaning."

"The power of the classics." He pauses. "We can learn a great deal from it. Whether Xuande* or Mengde**, success comes from strategy. But strategy must be founded on wisdom. Kongming*** may be able to see the truth in the stars, but - there are very few stars, in the Scholomance. What, then, is to be done?"

(*: The courtesy name of Liu Bei, the hero of the novel.)

(**: The courtesy name of Cao Cao, the villain of the novel.)

(***: The courtesy name of Zhuge Liang, Liu Bei's top advisor and total Mary Sue.)

"Is divination an interest of yours?"

"No, that would be the problem. Taipei has no diviners to speak of, this year." He smiles. "So we must make do without. You remember all of the difficulties with New York, back at the start of the year?"

"It was hard to miss."

"While it was happening," he corrects gently. "It was very easy to miss before it happened."

He pauses.

"Taipei doesn't like missing that sort of thing. Taipei doesn't like other people missing it, either, but we can tell them if they do, if we know ourselves. If we're blind... what can we do?" He shrugs. "All of it was over a misunderstanding." (He's backing Lan Xichen's line on this; a misunderstanding, not Lan Xichen thinking maleficers are hot.) "But since New York was missing information, they made mistakes. And since their friends were missing information, they didn't help them. And so we nearly went to war."

"You think it would have been possible to know in advance?"

"Yes, of course." He smiles. "If we'd known how New York had misunderstood the situation with Masozi, we could have sat down with them and explained before it became nearly as bad as it did; it was because our information about New York was so bad that some unfortunate incidents fanned the flames of their fear. New York had sincere worries; they hadn't heard that Masozi hadn't known what maleficing did, or that he'd agreed to give it up. All it would have required was that someone know a little more about how they thought and felt and we could have prevented the entire conflict without scaring anybody."

"I doubt that Tianjin had any similar ambitions for mediation."

"Well, Taipei has never been afraid of ambition." 

"I am not very well versed in the enclaves of the world, even the Sinosphere."

"That's quite understandable of you," he says. "Taipei is a very young enclave. A hundred years ago there was war in China - like the war in the Three Kingdoms, the fall of an old dynasty and the rise of a new - war between mundanes, but serious enough to threaten the enclaves. Most of them shut their doors and went into seclusion, saving their lives but giving up contact with the outside and so the prospect of progress in magic, but from seven of them came young scholars willing to brave the danger of the war to advance the learning of mankind. So they traveled through the warring lands to Taiwan, off the coast and free of warfare and with many more connections to the west, to found an enclave that could remain secure against war without surrendering progress in magic."

He smiles, recounting it. "So Taipei has always been very open to progress, very eager to learn more about the world and about other enclaves, so we can have all the knowledge we need to make the best decisions."

... (Has he done a sufficient amount of hinting that he's willing to pay for information about whoever she does maintenance for that she gets it?)

Nope. Not at all. She looks like she is going to tell Hua Gao that this was not a good use of her time.

... Then he's just going to have to say it.

"If you are willing to pass on to us useful information about other enclaves as you learn it, we are prepared to pay for it with mana, to help us make better decisions."

Maybe Jinye is better at hinting? Honestly Xian is not the specialist at this!

"Information like whether they're consorting with maleficers?"

"Oh, more general than that. It didn't look like anyone was consorting with maleficers, when the trouble started. It was just people having uneasy feelings about a boy, and that boy talking to Orion and not wanting to be sent away, and then a girl he'd been talking to fell sick, and none of these things by themselves would have been news, but if you had all of them you could have predicted all the trouble. Even little information like an enclaver's favorite color or that a failing student has more snack tokens than you'd expect can turn out to be a part of something important."