"...what's this about half the enclaves being insane this year, exactly? I'm told I'm no judge of reasonable enclaver behavior."

"I don't know about in the school but outside Istanbul and Constantinople are both doing OK despite their rivalry so they can't be totally incompetent. Damascus seemed to have their stuff together apart from the reader going bad just yesterday, and they got a few years good use out of it first."

"Uh - Toronto sent a freshman this year who went and killed herself last night, someone from Shanghai died on the way to orientation somehow, another shanghai kid had a screaming fit during orientation or so I hear, Sacramento is throwing an absurd amount of resources at stopping one of their sophomores from following Toronto girl's example. And those are just the ones we know about on the second day of school."

"Everything I heard about Shanghai I heard through Seoul and they hate each other, so take it with some grains of salt, but in addition to losing a freshman on the first day they reportedly have two additional deadweight ones. I don't know how deadweight, Seoul made it sound like the kids can neither do their homework nor generate their share of mana nor defend themselves but they were also cracking jokes constantly about Shanghai's lieutenant's mother being a whore as if ninety percent of girls in the Scholomance wouldn't name their price so maybe there's being similarly unjust everywhere else."

" - that does seem like quite a death rate, though, especially all enclavers and especially after we've been in school for - not even twenty four hours, yet."

- There is no way 90% of the girls here would just name their price, what. Even putting aside the moral reasons not to, getting pregnant in here would be a death sentence. Like surely even secular girls wouldn't -

Nevermind, it's not important, whatever mistakes other girls want to make with their bodies are not Malak's problem.

When Julian gets out of the lunch iine, he goes looking for Naima. She's sitting with those two girls who were sitting with Boston, earlier, so they can't be too homicidal about it. 

"Is this seat taken?"

They're in the middle of gossiping about Shanghai so at first she startles unpleasantly at a Chinese kid showing up, but you can't turn people away for being Chinese. "It's not. Annisa, Surabaya."

"Of course! I'm Malak, Istanbul, I don't think I caught your name earlier?"

"Julian Chan Hei-Lei, Hong Kong." No need to specify that he doesn't mean the enclave with this crowd. 

" - I'm no good at tones, yet, should I just call you Julian for now?"

"Hey Julian, you were in homeroom, do you remember anything else about that weird black kid who wanted Monday shop?"

To Malak – "Of course, Julian's fine." 

And, to everyone – "Yes! The creepy kid! I was – " what's a way to say this that isn't 'eavesdropping' – "eavesdropping, and I heard him say, I swear I'm quoting, that he doesn't have to malefice anymore because it's safer in here. Which might be true, right now, I don't know where he comes from, but I'd stay far, far away after midterms. Or before midterms, really, even if it is the truth, who says something like that?" 

" - I mean, it is safer in here, that's the whole point - maybe he came into his mana early? But you are absolutely right that that is not someone I want to be around at all."

"Yeah, it's not going to be safe in here for very long. ...on a scale from Boston to Shanghai how would you rate this year's crowd from Hong Kong? We're trying to decide if there are any enclaves up to doing something about the numerous hardcore maleficers."

"I don't think Cairo's crazy, but it's not big, either, I doubt they want to go around doing general law enforcement."

"I guess Istanbul and Damascus would work with Cairo on enforcement if they felt it was needed and for some reason the western and eastern enclaves decided not to do anything."

"Well, yeah, it's safe now, but he's basically announcing that he's going to be a problem later – and that he didn't plan, he didn't bring animals – ugh." 

To Annisa – "I don't know them well. The enclave on the outside is reasonably competent, at least?" 

The comment about Shanghai is concerning. Julian doesn't have enough going for him to turn down a connection with any enclave, let alone the most powerful one in the Sinosphere, but if they implode before senior year he'd better figure out how to make sure he doesn't go down with them.

"Well, I guess the question is whether any enclavers heard him or if someone should bring it to their attention."

"I guess if it was a serious problem you could get several of the smaller sane enclaves to work together on enforcement? They'd need more than 'he's creepy and admits to ever having maleficed', though - do we know if he's American, he didn't sound it - actually, if he's not American, should we be figuring out whatever enclave is closest to him and see what they want to do about it, or can we expect them to not care about anything he does if they think of him as associated with them - ?"

"If he really volunteered for Monday morning shop, the problem might take care of itself. ...I think he might be African? He mentioned getting a spellbook in Zulu." 

" - right, he did. I think what I worry is that he didn't take Monday morning shop, that it's some kind of specific ploy to kill that girl he was talking with for malia under circumstances where everyone will just assume it was a bad shop class. But that might be catastrophizing? I don't know what things are catastrophizing, in here."

"If he's from Africa then the MENA enclaves and the Africa ones might do something. Subsaharan Africa likes to act like they're all one big enclave, MENA - less so but when they have to, even Tehran. Not Constantinople, they don't count."

Annisa does not want to introduce herself to any enclaves by going to them like a toddler running to the grownups about a confessed maleficer not yet a confessed murderer. "I mean, if he's malicious the plan is presumably to pick off everyone else in Monday morning shop one at a time, no one'll even be surprised. Maybe someone can get clarification from pajamas girl what he said to her exactly, and then we can gossip about it in front of Marcy Tuesday, if we can swing being near her table."

"Yeah, I guess that'd be a good next step. Has anyone seen her? Do we want to do that now, or maybe look for her at dinner?"

"There's no way we're the only people who've noticed something's up. And pajamas girl is with a boy from one of the American enclaves, right? Hopefully, they'll warn her off."