"If getting lost kills you, definitely."

They head in that direction.

Masozi looks up as they approach. Makes eye contact, brief nods, then he completes the rest of his eyeball-sweep of the room while he's distracted from the map anyway. 

"I'm Masozi," he says. "Pleased to meet you."

He's tall for a freshman, very skinny, and holds himself as though expecting to have to fight off a murderer at any second. He's wearing cheap flip-flops and mismatched, poorly fitting clothes with some not-fully-cleaned stains and a definite whiff of garbage. 

Makes her think of the gang kids. The other kind, not the ones that swagger. She has a knife in the left jacket pocket and is standing ready to fetch it out if she has to, the body language of it is glaringly obvious to him.

"Wendy Kholer. New to all this, those fucked up rats weren't rats after all."

"See, I bet you'll get along. Sorta. And you do need to know the map. Kevin Astley, looking to set myself up as the trader guy. I've got leads on lots of stuff, by the way. Masozi. Am I saying that right? Anyway, likewise."

Masozi smiles at Kevin, though he's not sure he particularly likes the boy. "I have dung beetles that I might want to trade later but probably not yet. Um, if you know anyone who'd trade me their shit as food for them, in exchange for future favours -" 

He breaks off, because he's doing a scan again and someone dropped a crumpled piece of paper on the floor three yards away, near the wall - no wait that's not a– what the FUCK IS THAT. 

He spins around on the spot, instinctively positioning himself in from of the new girl, Wendy, who's presumably less experiencing at holding them off - though she's clearly not helpless, she's got the basic situational awareness, maybe she can get the other experience in time before she gets herself dead. Maybe.

"Mal. There. Look out." 

Out comes the knife, where exactly-

THUNK. Now there's a glittery butterfly knife spearing through the trilobite-thing that was disguising itself as rubbish. It crawls along the floor a bit, bleeding. He - looks around for any more before pulling his knife back with a tiny tendril of mana and stabs it from a distance again.

"Bleugh, hell. Nice catch. Also, very resourceful the dung thing, I'll keep it in mind. Anyone mind if I keep that?"

Shrug. "You can have it. ...What'd'you want it for? Is it useful for alchemy ingredients or something?" 

"Sometimes, and some people have things that can eat mal bits like your beetles."

"And when we're all stuck here together everything you can get is something, right?"

"The girl called Lucy will trade things for mal grubs," Masozi offers, in case this is helpful information. The rest of the room seems to be clear, so he goes back to intently studying the map. 

"I'll have to check if this thing has any eggs in it, then. Wendy, study the map. Oh, and when you hear a loud bell, five minutes to curfew. That's not for a while. Good luck!"

And off he goes.

...She looks at the map. Eyes Masozi a bit suspiciously. Something feels slightly off. He feels like he's always half a second from stabbing something, which, fair, but it makes her tense too.

Eh.

"Did you have any idea about all this before today?"

Her distrust is reasonable and Masozi wouldn't be even slightly offended if he were to consciously notice it, which he doesn't because mistrust is the assumed default state of affairs between strangers. 

The fact that Wendy is coming into this even less prepared than he is does leave him inclined to tell her more than he usually would. A little. He doesn't know which parts will be context she's missing. 

"I knew about magic - my parents were wizards too - but not much about the school. My parents died in the last few months and it seemed like going to Johannesburg was the smartest plan, I'd heard there was an enclave there, and they ended up not filling all of their spots for the school so they let me go along." 

Sigh. Complaining - won't be useful.

"Great. Yeah. What do you think I need to know most urgently? If you tell me to fuck off I will."

"- No. I don't mind giving you advice." He tries to smile reassuringly at her. Imagining he's comforting his little sister works; that's about the only time he ever goes for 'reassuring'. "Um, I - think you probably want to learn how to do some magic. Do you know if you ever have, before? I think the first times I did magic were by accident and it didn't - feel like anything special?" 

"Yeah I'm not sure I've ever actually done any magic? Unless fixing an old clock by hitting it counts, but that sounds like the wrong thing."

"Hmm. I - can try to trade favours with Lucy again, she wants mal grubs and maybe you can help me get her some, and I bet she knows a lot more about how to learn magic, her parents sent her and her brother in very prepared. But - in the meantime I can - show you my shield spell?"

He doesn't have that many actual spells that he's willing to talk about, but the basic door-shielding one, he learned from a kid in Malawi. "I can go do it for the school nurse, I heard one of the older students talking to her and she's mundane and can't do spells but it seems helpful to keep one grownup in here alive." 

"That's a good idea, hell, a nurse in here- But wait, what language is it in, you're not supposed to learn too many."

"- Oh, right. The one I know is in Zulu. Maybe you can plug your ears, and just - watch and see if you can feel how it's magical?" 

"Apparently I can ask my room for spells too, probably going to do that. And I'll follow you, got a nurse-y question anyway."

"Sure, all right." Masozi hadn't managed to quite catch the snippet about asking the room for spells - he'd been scheming so hard to get to the library - and it's very good to know! 

He heads over to the nurse's office, which now has a very makeshift sign on the door. Halfway there he glances back at Wendy. "- You've got good awareness but you should specifically watch the ceiling. They come out through the ventilation. And don't trust rubbish on the floor, mals can hide that way." 

And then he reaches the nurse's office and knocks. 

A young woman - though much older than anyone else in the Scholomance, maybe early twenties - opens the door, cautiously and with an ivory knife held in front of her and clearly very very twitchy. 

"Yes. Are you here for medical help?" 

"I'm Masozi and this is Wendy," Masozi says politely. "I was going to shield your door so she can watch the magic and so mals can't get in at you. ...Oh, there's no sink in here, that's smart, means they can't get in that way." 

"Also I got a medical question but I can fuck off instead, it's..." Shrug. "And I'm gonna plug my ears while he does it by the way, so don't be alarmed, learning only a little bit of a language is a bad idea because magic."