Why is it an inconvenience to Thalia's career that she might be a shape-shifter?
The urgent, immediate reason is that an untrained shape-shifter attracts manticores, so she is basically Monster Catnip until she gets her powers under control, which means no stage performances in the interim even if she weren't also embroiled in the murder mystery etc.
The more long-term but also more potentially surmountable reasons is that the whole schtick for stage magicians here is that it's not Trader or Sylvestri magic, it's stage magic. Not "it's a trick," but "it's the Mystical Powers Of The Beyond" (in that way where everyone who's not a little kid knows that's a schtick and there's stagecraft going on, but they still enjoy being fooled for the length of a show and wondering how they did the impossible thing). So being able to do real magic makes it more of a "great, what's the point?" thing if people know, and also I think gives a certain suspicion -- you're not an ordinary magicless Solitaire, you're a TRADER, how do we know you're not cheating?
(That said, it is fixed to one animal form and I don't think they have much magic beyond the one shapeshift option, unless that's going to come up in the hypothetical sequel or I missed it. So it's not as if she suddenly has vast illusion powers or whatever.)
...Also there's just a big social gulf between Traders and Solitaires, and I think that's the longer-term issue as much as anything. Like Becca, I wish we'd gotten more time delving into this part of the worldbuilding!
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The urgent, immediate reason is that an untrained shape-shifter attracts manticores, so she is basically Monster Catnip until she gets her powers under control, which means no stage performances in the interim even if she weren't also embroiled in the murder mystery etc.
The more long-term but also more potentially surmountable reasons is that the whole schtick for stage magicians here is that it's not Trader or Sylvestri magic, it's stage magic. Not "it's a trick," but "it's the Mystical Powers Of The Beyond" (in that way where everyone who's not a little kid knows that's a schtick and there's stagecraft going on, but they still enjoy being fooled for the length of a show and wondering how they did the impossible thing). So being able to do real magic makes it more of a "great, what's the point?" thing if people know, and also I think gives a certain suspicion -- you're not an ordinary magicless Solitaire, you're a TRADER, how do we know you're not cheating?
(That said, it is fixed to one animal form and I don't think they have much magic beyond the one shapeshift option, unless that's going to come up in the hypothetical sequel or I missed it. So it's not as if she suddenly has vast illusion powers or whatever.)
...Also there's just a big social gulf between Traders and Solitaires, and I think that's the longer-term issue as much as anything. Like Becca, I wish we'd gotten more time delving into this part of the worldbuilding!