Language lab was exhausting, the school apparently thinks she's good enough at all the languages she knows that it doesn't need to drill her on any of them and should instead introduce another. It seemed like a good idea at the time to say "oh I know twenty-three languages, that's an absurd number, of course I'll go language track" but actually language track means learning more languages on top of the pre-existing twenty-three, which is, in fact, an absurd number; she sometimes thinks that if there is a God then They forgot how many languages a reasonable person, even a reasonable wizard, is going to speak when they enter the Scholomance while she was growing up. 

She refuses to display her exhaustion, as she gets in line at the cafeteria. It's still early enough that she's making first impressions and she does not need someone's first impression of her to be that she can't hack it. She encourages Atlach to sit at a reasonably visible point on her temple and checks for mals anywhere around. 

Malak is exiting the food counter with a good quantity of food, none of which is pretending to be haram, having successfully evaded Raleigh's suggestion of walking to the cafeteria together by stopping by the girl's bathroom first. This way he can find out that she's not a Boston kid when he looks for her at the Boston table, rather than when he follows her out of the cafeteria line and she sits down with a bunch of indie kids. If she's not right there to see him realize his mistake it'll be less embarrassing for him and maybe she will not be totally ostracized by Sacramento. She finds Naima, as promised, and sits down near her after checking the table for mals.

"Hey! Looks like magical conflicts is not going to be as useful as I'd hoped."

Is that a spider? Annisa's understanding was that if you try to keep insects alive around lots of wizards someone'll accidentally pull from them and kill them while trying to cast a spell. Which seems like it'd be extremely awkward, if the spider in question is someone's familiar. Maybe she has a way to protect it. Annisa thinks she'll just not ask about that and not cast any spells so as not to be the girl who accidentally murders someone's familiar, even though if she doesn't have a solution for that the spider isn't long for the world...oh no now she's been staring and not saying anything - "Hi! I'm Annie, artificing, how was your first morning of classes?"

"Long. I had language lab and the school decided I was fluent at everything I already speak, so I was starting something brand-new. I'm Lucy, uh, languages, my twin brother does artificing though. How was yours?"

"Good! I had intro comp and the assignment was looking over a bunch of drafts of a spell and keeping track of what they were improving and then writing a final draft. What's your brother's affinity?" Twins are an advantage; some people induce them on purpose. Rude to ask, though.

"Thread! It's why Mum got us a breeding pair of spiders for familiars. He made and enchanted our clothes," she adds, smoothing a hand down the silk of her shirt. 

"Oh, that's cool. How do you protect the spiders, do you have to shield them all the time?"

"--Oh, familiars aren't vulnerable to incidental cheating the way regular bugs are, it's about how smart the critter is and a familiar that's a spider is smarter than a non-magical small mammal."

"Oh, that's clever." Doesn't answer what they're doing with the breeding pair's babies but maybe they found a distant library nook, if you ask too many questions you look like you're thinking of something clever yourself. "Thread's a good affinity, very flexible."

"I know! And we managed to barter for a chunk of the muggleborns' hair last night, you have to feel sorry for them but wizard hair is such a good material for his affinity. What's yours?"

"Weapons. When I was little, we thought it was just knives, and my father was working so hard to convince me it ought to cover swords, too - 'they're just big knives, Annie' - and then one day I got a slingshot and had it spitting lightning by the end of the day. Turns out it's anything I can wield. My swords were too big." She has used this anecdote at least four times because it's very well crafted. Cute, memorable, establishes that she's well-prepared and has known her affinity since she was very young.

"--Oh, nice. That's a great affinity to have in here."

Naima spends like two minutes shoveling food into her mouth as quickly as possible, so as to spend the rest of lunch on things that are more interesting but less strictly necessary than eating. Such as talking to Malak.

"Yeah, I was really hoping for more spells, or things that looked like they might lead to spells? But on the other hand I feel like the social stuff about how interpersonal conflicts work and the mechanisms behind them might be useful for me, so I'm gonna try to take this one pretty seriously anyway. Do you want to compare notes? I think I took pretty good notes."

"Yeah, sure, here's mine. When I saw it on my schedule I was delighted, I hadn't requested it but I was so sure we'd be getting some good combat spells, which is pretty good for History. But then instead we get a whole lecture on 'sometimes, people want different things' and quotes from mundanes with hard-to-pronounce names. Even if we get some spells once we get to the actual history it's going to be months before we're covering anything that might have spells in a language I can speak."

Naima's notes are pretty good. They spelled some of the mundanes' names differently, who knows who got it right, the lecture was not kind enough to provide a spelling.

Oh, hah, there's Malak, and the table still has some seats. Annisa takes a scoop of hash and a scoop of something she can't immediately identify from the safe counter and wonders why this place doesn't serve any rice, which people are known to be able to unproblematically eat at every meal for years on end. Maybe there are inconveniently rice-sized and -shaped worms. 

She heads over to join them.

"Oh Hey Annisa, did you know that sometimes people want different things, and that sometimes they will have a fight about it, or, maybe not have a fight about it? Because Naima and I Just had a double-length lecture on this fascinating and novel concept."

"What? Oh, there's my plan where we all graduate by holding hands and combining our powers for the benefit of everyone ruined."

"I'm sure we'll learn some spells. Hopefully. You can't have a whole class on the history of magical conflicts without any combat spells in it, can you?"

"You could have exclusively combat spells that require a dozen senior wizards with an army behind them to cast. - I don't think we've met, by the way." The time you interrupted us when we were sitting with Boston doesn't count. "I'm Annisa."

"Naima, Cairo, city-not-enclave. My affinity is healing. Good to meet you."

"I had intro comp and it was great, are either of you in intro comp?"

"No, but I'm interested! What'd you learn?"

"I've got it tuesday/thursday last period."

"We got six rough drafts of a spell - not anything super useful, a spell for cleaning ink smudges - and were supposed to track the changes and try to write a further revision. Well, I did, I didn't check if we all got the same assignment. But it was a fun assignment."

"Ooh that sounds great. I was a little worried that if I went creative writing it would be nothing but French Poetry - well, I'm sure I'd learn other styles too - and praying that some good spells come out."

"Huh, what kinds of changes? Can I see?"

"Yeah, sure, I should probably finish it before next class anyway, don't want to get behind -" And she pulls it out. "So - we didn't actually cast the spell, but the notes say the effects and why the effects weren't precisely as intended - this version's overpowered. So where's the power coming from? Emphasis does power, repetition does power, unusual syllabic stress can do power, so maybe we could cut this line - that's revision 2 - or this line - revision 3 - or this line - revision 4 - or all of them, revision 5, which unsurprisingly doesn't work at all. 2 and 3 get inconsistent results, probably because it's now unbalanced. 4 is no longer over-powerful but still just as mana-intensive as when it was, I don't know why. Six is an effort to balance out 2 but it gets the stress wrong and so the targeting's terrible. - I'm sure usually revising spells is much harder than this and they just gave us a toy problem where lots of variations had some effects and it was also easy to see how they were the wrong effects.

"Oh that's fascinating, getting to see all the moving parts that aren't working right. If four isn't overpowered but is still mana-intensive, then does that mean there's something doing power drain in the rest of the spell without any positive effects? I wonder if - revising some of the poetic elements without cutting, or maybe condensing the material across multiple lines without entirely cutting any one of them...? I wonder if there's some way to condense the lines cut in two and three into a single line, or something... I'm not seeing one, but... Sorry, I don't actually know much about spellwriting, you probably learned more in class. But I see what you mean about it being interesting."

"It was pretty much just the assignment and a textbook." She sets it on the table. It's faded and in mediocre condition, and it's labelled 'SPELL THEORY' on the front. "But yeah - I think four must've been - modulating, rather than intensifying, syllable stress can be doing that too? And without the modulation you're still using all the power you're just wasting most of it. I'm decidedly not creative writing track but maybe I'll try to take one class like this each term, it seems useful and a nice break from everything else."

"Yeah, maybe I'll push for a comp class next semester. Had to spend two requests just getting my shop and lab to reasonable places this time, though, so there wasn't much wiggle room. It wanted to give me shop first thing Monday morning."

"Oh man, me too!!! I was so mad. - because I was tempted, if I hadn't been tempted I wouldn't've been mad. Why does it even offer freshman shop first thing Monday morning."

"Well there's got to be a first and most dangerous slot. Probably they never changed how the school assigns classes since the mals got in, so as far as the school knows when scheduling that's the best slot and everyone should get a fair shot at it."

"Well, I've got Tuesday before lunch now, which should be good and also not kill me, and Marcy's in it. Oh no, is New York also in it, I've been worrying that we'll have to pick early between them and Boston -"

"There's gotta be multiple sections of Tuesday before lunch intro to shop, that's where I put mine, too. A third of the class must have asked for it. I guess maybe the question is what room?"

"106. Maybe we can swap rooms, if we want to all be in the same one."

"The workshops are pretty big, I think? I would guess there's only one freshman section and maybe not everyone got their request for that spot granted. And some enclaves probably prioritized getting the same spot to watch each other's backs over getting the objectively best spot if you're on your own, and a lot of kids aren't artificing track and might not mind something later in the week. I've also got it in 106."

She checks her schedule. " - yep, 106. Maybe it is all the same. Seems like there must be too many of us for that, though."

Well, most kids are on other tracks, and enclavers have older students to source their materials. Annisa wants to say something flippant about the obvious superiority of artificers to all other students but she doesn't really know these kids well enough to joke, yet, even though it feels like she does with Malak.

"New York and Boston at least had someone running around so they could coordinate - we should've kept track of who else was doing that, actually, I bet it's a decent proxy for, uh, whether they are the way enclaves are supposed to be at all or not."

snort "It'd be a bit hard to keep track of that beyond who sent a runner to our room. I don't know whether any other enclaves had a kid in the room with us, but those two were the only runners I saw."

"There was a kid from ...Dubai, I think? If I fantasize about having a choice I already wasn't gonna choose Dubai." She knows almost nothing about the enclave and obviously they're higher up the totem pole than an independent from Indonesia but she's known since she was seven that no one in the Islamic world was going to want to marry her and this anticipated rejection had long since become mutual. If she has the luxury of choosing. You only get to want one thing and 'an American enclave' is two things, right there in the name. 

She blinks. Thinks back.

"Some kid in my homeroom announced that he wanted a Monday shop class, and then ran out to see if anyone had one, and then came back and whispered with someone in our room who - looked like the kid who came in in pajamas yesterday? I wouldn't pegged either of them as enclavers, though, they seemed pretty clueless."

"...well I guess some people are crazy enough to take it. What is with the suicide rate this year?"

"Noo, I bet that's not it, not a girl in pajamas, I bet no one told the mundies to swap out - shoot, the poor kids. I mean, something was going to get them sooner or later, but I'd have told them that for free, if I'd been thinking about what the first thing they'd screw up was, which I wasn't."

"Oh, are there - I assumed anyone with a spot would have someone who told them how the school worked, I feel sort of bad for not saying anything now. - augh, I should have realized something was up, she asked me whether it was bad to be in a language lab."

"Oh, not knowing to swap out sure. But if the one kid was actively trying to swap into Monday morning shop that's - did no one in your homeroom warn them after he announced it?"

"I mean, he didn't say the second bit out loud so everyone could hear? I thought he might have been trying to kill her on purpose or something, but I don't know why he would've been doing it that way, and I didn't want to get in the middle of whatever it was. He had this aura? And stank, the way they say far-gone maleficers get sometimes. But that seems like a bizarre way for a freshman to be, doesn't it?"

- well, that's extremely alarming. Annisa is extremely alarmed.

Great, half the enclaves are completely dysfunctional and there's at least two pretty serious maleficers running about in the freshman class.

"...Yeah. There was someone with a pretty bad aura in our homeroom too. Anyone else feeling like we might've picked an unlucky year to be born in?"

"I haven't noticed any others, but it's only been a day? Maybe he is trying to assassinate her for malia in an empty classroom somehow, I don't know. Maybe they're both clueless and they're leading each other a cliff. It's a little black kid, boy, dressed in rags, stinks. I guess avoid him until someone with more resources decides what to do about someone like that?"

"I hope New York and Boston aren't secretly also shitshows, enclaves are - the only unit with which I'd expect it to be possible to put someone down without hard proof or neighbors scareder of them than the consequences of killing them."

"...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." 

"Is she? - is she an enclaver, or did she somehow - ?"

"Well, that's just what I heard – "

Malak thinks back to what Annisa was saying earlier.

"Well she doesn't have much of a chance on her own, and she's American..."

Annisa looks around for the girl formerly wearing pajamas. It's not an easy task in a room this big. Maybe sitting with some American enclavers, that narrows it down to ten tables, and the enclavers themselves have power-sharers so she only needs to check the indies -

...New York?

"Is that her?"

"Yeah. ....Good for her. At least she'll have a fighting chance." 

"Yeah. I'm just impressed, honestly. And I guess that means the situation is on New York's radar."

"Not much they can do about it if he hasn't actually murdered anyone yet."  

"...so we think New York definitely knows and we should not tell them that someone might be trying to murder one of their girlfriends, just in case they don't know?" She does not know how this talking to enclavers thing works at all.

"I am pretty sure New York knows, but we can let it slip to Marcy too, just in case they don't."

"Sorry, who's Marcy?"

"Boston enclaver we were with at breakfast, Boston really seems to have their act together unlike half the other enclaves."

"I wouldn't normally try to interact with her again this early, she's really great and she'll have dozens of followers, but I think Boston would want to have a heads-up about this."

"I think the idea of gossiping about it in shop where she can overhear is a good one, that way she will know without it looking like we're being pushy for her attention."

"I can also tell Daria and Shannon this evening - Daria's Kiev but it's just her, they do cohorts and she missed hers, and Shannon's the girl Raleigh's been after, not that I expect Sacramento to be doing much policing."

"Do we - want to try to talk to the girl herself before Tuesday, if we think she might be dead by Tuesday?"

"If I were a maleficer I'd wait until, like, week 3 to kill someone, the shop shouldn't be that deadly yet, and I wouldn't kill New York's girlfriend until he dumps her, which he might not."

The only enclave Julian's interacted with is Shanghai, but if he had to pick an adjective for them "together" wouldn't be it. 

"I don't know about telling Boston, specifically. If half the enclaves look like disasters, it seems more likely to me that it's some kind of calculated strategy, or they have even more resources to throw around than it looks like on the outside, or something else we're not thinking of. At the end of the day, enclavers live." Which has that inevitable nasty corollary. "My best guess is either the Americans know already and plan to do something about it, or they won't because he's not going to go picking off their freshmen." 

She chews her fork. "I guess so. I just don't like the thought of losing access to evidence."

"I mean - we haven't actually seen that many enclaves looking like disasters, we were exaggerating a bit. There's rumors going around about shanghai, you might know more about that than we do, Toronto brought in a freshman who killed herself last night, if that's a ploy it's a really expensive one, and it sounds like Sacramento is - risking a lot and spending a lot of resources to protect one sophomore who's in danger."

And Julian thought the sino drama was bad. 

"On the first night? Really? There are a thousand kids who'd kill for that spot, and she just – " 

"And her enclavemates - I don't know if they knew but I hear they weren't surprised. I'm not saying every enclave is a trashfire but we've heard of two hard-to-fake major mistakes by enclaves and we haven't even been here a full day yet."

"And whatever happened in Chicago, I don't think it was a ploy. Shanghai's deal might be? Reportedly they lost a freshman and have two other useless ones but that's from Seoul, secondhand..."

"Maybe mana sharing and healing and shield holders and real storage are so useful that most of the enclaves don't have to be competent," she says, and then stabs her food with somewhat more force than strictly necessary. 

Well this situation calls for tact, circumspection, and careful choice of words, among other skills Julian absolutely does not have. 

Okay, giving it his best shot. "I know the Shanghai freshmen a bit, one of them lives below me and his sister drafted me for provisional bodyguard duty. He seems – quiet. I don't know if I'd say he's totally useless. Less survival-focused than we are, for sure, but they're so powerful and maybe that's normal for them."  

She doesn't think Marcy was like that but if she says any more positive things about Marcy they're going to think she's obsessed. "We should go get a seat in the library," she says instead. "Four's enough we can venture out a bit, on the first day, maybe find a nook that'll be defensible even later."

"I think some enclavers are normally competent and some are coasting on having enclave resources."

"A library spot would be good. I haven't been up there yet."

"Yeah, let's go."

"That's a good idea." And then he forgets all about possibly offending Shanghai since he's just had a very clever thought. "You know what I think the deal with Shanghai is? It's peacocking. It has to be. I don't know anything about the dead kid, but the quiet one, and that breakdown during orientation – it could all be their way of saying, look, we're so strong we can carry this deadweight all the way through to graduation. They're very traditional, right, so it makes a weird kind of sense – it shows that they're magnanimous, that the little people can trust them to look out for their interests. At least that's how a lot of the sino enclavers will parse it, I think, and that's the obvious target audience." 

" - huh. That makes sense. It - doesn't fit with their reputation outside but of course those don't have to line up perfectly..."

"I feel like it would get them indies who find 'we'll forgive your incompetence' an attractive pitch but maybe that's not as bad as it sounds, somehow."

"Well, if you're an indie you don't get that kind of treatment. I think it mostly says, look, if you join us you'll definitely get to meet your grandchildren, we can give you that." 

It feels dangerously close to thinking ahead. She nods. Stands up, grabs her bookbag.

It clicks, then, she thinks. Istanbul hasn't gotten over 1917. Shanghai hasn't gotten over... she doesn't remember the year, but whenever China stopped being an empire and did... communist stuff? And world war stuff?

They probably shouldn't do anything about the baby maleficer, aside from staying away from him, but talking about it is a good intimacy-building exercise. Annisa hasn't forgotten that these kids are not her friends and are probably going to die, but if they don't, you want good working relationships. She makes her way out of the cafeteria and up the stairs to the library, keeping a lookout. 

Julian will bring up the rear, because taking the more exposed position seems likely to build goodwill and it's not a very costly gesture on the second day. 

The library. It's enormous; it stretches out indefinitely off into the distance, with a Void-sky above and thousands of cozy reading spots. Almost all of them claimed, of course - enclaves get the good seats, and then older students - but there might be a little reading nook somewhere that no one has already laid claim to, where a group of freshmen could watch each others' backs and maybe even put up a ward once they have more mana, and do their homework.

Or maybe they'll all get eaten. That does happen to many freshmen who attempt it. 

She looks down the stacks, even though she can't tell by looking which one might be good.

Malak is contemplating whether she could kill the maleficer if she had enough mana. Probably she could, if she really had to? She's not going to unless the situation gets much worse, because walking up to a maleficer unnoticeably and cutting his throat is an extremely stupid plan. But, if, for some reason, he was killing students and the enclaves weren't doing anything about it and so she was in danger from him anyways...

"I say we pick a stack and keep going until we find a carrel or start to get out of sight of the main reading room, in which case we backtrack and repeat. Sound like a plan?" 

"Works for me."

"Sure, let's look for an english stack? I don't know if we have any other languages in common, and I don't want to be walking past a bunch of mandarin scrolls every day if we make this a regular thing."

"Oh, right," she says, and passes on the French one she was about to look down. Here's an English stack. "Try this one?"

She proceeds down the stack. Might as well be up front about this if she's going to be studying with people. "I only have English and Javanese, though we'll see what the school tries to add on top. We learned my affinity early and I'm not quick with languages, so it didn't seem worth trying to load on anymore."

"...huh, not even Latin?" Well played, Annisa, well played.

"Something with artificing or alchemy, then, I suppose?" 

"Figured common knowledge we were eavesdropping would be sufficient to get someone to say it in English," she says to Malak, somewhat pleased with herself, and to Julian, "Weapons."

"Oh." He does his best not to sound jealous. "That's good." 

"Well it worked. This time." She pauses a moment to think over the last day. "...lamb's blood?"

"Indonesia hasn't any religious wizards anymore, they all died out. I did know I'd heard it somewhere."

"The school decided I needed to learn metallurgy, for some reason. You can have a look at my textbook, if that sounds useful. Lots of metal weapons." Which is an idiotic thing to say, now that he's thought about it for two seconds, of course weapons affinity girl knows that many weapons are made of metal. 

"Well then. Fool me twice. I guess now I have to start plotting my revenge, or people will start to think I'm gullible."

"Why didn't it give me metallurgy, I would've loved metallurgy, but no, just Monday morning shop to try to destroy me with my own hubris. I'll show you my intro to comp assignment, in exchange, I really liked it and felt like I learned a ton."

"Carrel," announces Naima, from several paces ahead. "I don't know whether it's a good one."

"Sounds good. I also have intro English comp but I must be in a different section – still, if we have different assignments that'll be information." 

"Oh, yeah, maybe you'll get the same. - oooooh." The carrel is not spectacular but it's not far into the stacks at all, if it stays where it is, which it might or might not. It only has two chairs, but they could in principle drag back two more, and it looks monster-free.

Malak does the same calculation " - OK, who wants to stay here making sure it doesn't run off on us and who wants to go grab some more chairs from somewhere else?"

"Well, I'd go off with you but I hear you're plotting revenge. If you go off with someone plotting revenge you shouldn't expect to come back."

"Oh really? My mother always said 'Keep your friends close, keep those you know to be plotting against you closer'."

"I'll go." 

Oh no - how to get out of this - "Uhm. Actually I just remembered that I want to talk to Naima about something, why don't the two of us go and we can talk while we're getting chairs."

"..Okay, Annisa and I can wait here." 

That was weird, right? That was definitely weird. Did he already say something to offend her? 

She and Naima will hurry off to get chairs.

" - I didn't actually have anything I needed to say to you, it's just that Julian is a boy and, secular, right, so explaining would be hard - "

Julian looks stressed. Annisa's getting at least moderately good at reading Malak, though, and she doesn't think that was about anything Julian said or did - oh. 

"She's religious," she says softly, once they're round the corner, and shrugs so as to hopefully communicate any of "how silly of them" or "how respectable of them", depending how Julian is himself.

"Oooooh, so not about breakfast. Understandable."

"Huh. I didn't think there were many religious wizards." 

"Well, in Indonesia there aren't, they all died out. Because they wouldn't send their daughters to the Scholomance. But I guess the Middle Eastern ones are more pragmatic."

"They'd certainly have to be. Where I'm from people are mostly religious in the parades-and-light-ancestor-worship sense, less so with the sincerely believing in a higher power. But then I've led a fairly sheltered life." 

"I'm not actually sure what sincerely believing in a higher power ...cashes out to. Like - maybe the world started out like the school, someone making it and cutting it off from some bigger reality to keep their children safe, I don't strongly expect that didn't happen..."

"Huh. And in this hypothetical, we graduate when we die? Or did the whole system get unhooked somehow and we're all just floating out into the void, like Chicago." 

"Oh, I don't know, I haven't given this a lot of thought. We sure do seem to be floating in the void, though, at least that's my understanding of how...space...works..." Oh no she was sounding so cool and thoughtful and then that was a really dumb ending.

"It would be nice if there were some real grown-ups out there somewhere, wouldn't it?" 

"- yeah. I guess in that sense I don't believe in a God, not in something else that - cares if we live or die, like we do." ....enough bonding. "Did you want to see my intro comp homework?"

"Yeah, sure." And Julian can hand her his copy of Fundamentals of Metallurgy. 

Malak and Naima return, bearing chairs.

"Got chairs! Also I remembered that I ambushed you at dinner yesterday, so I don't need to plot any more revenge yet."

"Oh right, you did. I am justly avenged - no, that's the opposite - venged?" There goes her ability to act like a native speaker of English.

"Beats me, English is my third."

She puts her chair down next to Julian so she can also look at Annisa's comp homework.

"Native for me and I'm not sure. Revenged upon?"

"Ooh, thanks."

She is confused. Isn't Hong Kong part of China? She would have thought Mandarin was his native language.

- huh. Oh, right, Hong Kong something something Britain? "I am revenged upon," she says, slightly Britishly.

Is Annisa making fun of his accent?? Oh god does he sound all British and pompous. 

Oh no, he looks annoyed, she must have done it wrong!

"Huh, I was gonna say that 'venged' sounded better, but somehow in a sentence they both sound fine," says Naima, without looking up from her textbook. " - hey Malak, do you want to split the comprehension questions for magical conflicts down the middle and each do half, they're probably not important."

"Yeah, sounds great. We should review each other's answers though, probably some obscure bit of it's going to be on the final for ridiculous points, it's how the school likes to do history classes. How sure are you on your spellings of all those names from the lecture?"

"Not very, names are spelled weird a lot of the time. Maybe they're also somewhere in the textbook?"

"Yeah, but I couldn't find them in the index - could just be that the spelling is really weird - I guess we'll just have to go through the chapter carefully and hunt for them."

Annisa should probably work on her comp homework before she reads ahead in metallurgy, a class she is not in fact taking, but she offered it to Julian, so her hands are tied, she'll just have to read about metallurgy. She does this, pinching her fingers so they'll hurt too much for her to get fully engrossed.

Naima hunts through the text looking for things that are capitalized. She can go back and read the full text later, if it turns out she has time for that and doesn't need her weekend for something else, which she'd better not count on. Whenever she finds a name she jots it down and checks whether it matches any of the spellings in her lecture notes.

Julian feels no such compunctions about getting engrossed in Annisa's comp assignment. There's nothing in the world as satisfying as correcting bad prosody, it's like scratching an itch. 

After a while he looks up and says, a bit sheepishly – "I'm sorry, I seem to be, ah, doing your homework." 

" - OK I think I found one but I am very upset about how it's spelled, here, look - " the name is 'Clausewitz' " - I think the lecture said he was Russian, so I guess Russian transliterates into English kind of absurdly?"

"Isn't it a fun assignment? I got it and then I almost forgot to watch my back for two hours, it just - wants to be set right, and - I shouldn't be declaring my favorite classes after I've had two of them but I think I'm going to find comp really enjoyable." She neatly avoids specifying what she will pay him for doing her homework. He looks too straight-laced and sheepish to accept pay in kisses and anyway Malak will think less of her - no, that'd be stupid of Malak. Malak will think something of her, though. Is there something else in the category 'costless to give, appealing' -

Julian understands that this is an inherently awkward situation and he doesn't want to leave the debt hanging over Annisa's head. "I'd rather, uh, hang onto this, in case we have the same assignment in my section." There. Not perfectly graceful, but it gets the job done.  

"Ah, yep, okay, that's this guy - and I think 'Durkheim' must be this one?"

"Yeah, all right. I had some notes in progress and I'll want those back, but you can finish it first, if you're on a roll." 

"Oh, yeah, of course. I'll just copy over what I've got, I'm almost done." 

"I got 'Sharp' right, anyway - oh, can I see the comp sheet? I don't have the class, but I'm curious what you did with it."

"Here you go!" 

She takes it and looks it over, then reads it over again, chewing her lip. " - oh huh! You're right, that's much better."

Julian knows what he's good at, but it does feel nice to hear Naima say it. 

Malak should do her own comp homework, especially since she might be tracking in it. She will not look.

"Now I'm curious." And she cranes her head, but only a little, so he can easily enough pull it away and tell her that'd still be doing her homework, if he wants to be a stickler about it, but her read is that actually he wants to show off. 

He does! He does want to show off. 

- Oh but now she's curious.

" - Hey, if one of you who's seen it already wants to copy the prompts, I want to do it myself since I might be creative writing track but we could compare after. Or I can just wait for my own section next week."

She reads it through, humming it to herself a little bit, not saying the words - you don't mess around with spells - but trying to hear them. He's taken the intensifiers in the second and third lines and left in weaker ones, and then reworked the fourth. It's not just more practical, it also flows better; it would be more fun to say aloud, even if you didn't know anything about how spells ought to taste on your tongue. 

It's better than she'd have gotten if she spent all weekend on it. Well, grades don't matter, and she knows what she's good at. 

"I'll copy it over for you, you're right that you ought to try it yourself first so you can appreciate it - it's very nice," she adds to Julian -

"Thank you! We have to write loads of poetry in Classical Chinese for our entrance exams, everyone is always complaining about it but I think it's really quite practical. It's got all these formal constraints you have to balance so it's good training for spell-writing." 

"Huh! Indonesia lets you interview in English, though more kids do Chinese, but I guess it makes sense that Hong Kong would only let you test in Chinese." Does it make sense? He's a native English speaker. Note to future Annisa, look up the Hong Kong something something Britain situation. "Ours didn't have much poetry. Maybe it would've if I hadn't specified artificing."

"Hong Kong uses the same tests as the mainland and the written sections are in Classical Chinese since that's what the vast, vast majority of Chinese spells are in. And Chinese wizards of all kinds are just nuts about poetry. I guess the language distinction is less important for us,  since we almost all speak both English and Cantonese." 

The mainland. Note to future Annisa: Hong Kong is ...an island? Probably an island. Certainly a separate landmass. In Indonesia everywhere's an island but most places just glob all their land together in enormous mounds. "I'm not sure who devises our tests," she says instead. "I think it's a council of several different important circles, none of them enclaves and so none of them with proper authority over the thing. Maybe the Chinese-language tests were the same as yours."

- OK she was kind of suspecting that hong kong was on the coast but now it sounds like it's off the coast. And they all speak English there? New Hong Kong facts.

She returns to her copy of the comp assignment.

Julian would be happy to fill everyone in on the location of Hong Kong if only they happened to ask. 

"It wouldn't surprise me, Shanghai pushes them pretty aggressively. I wonder how it works in the rest of the world – I think in India all the big enclaves have their own tests but surely someone's got to run the thing." 

"They've got more slots per capita than us but I wouldn't trade them, it sounds awfully complicated if you're not an enclaver. Whereas in Indonesia no one is, so," shrug. "No local disadvantage. I'm still planning to emigrate, of course."

She keeps feeling like this is a good conversational opening to share how she got in, and then remembering that this is a terrible idea. Like, if Malak shares and she's the only one left, then she can do it, if it'll be awkward otherwise, but you don't want to just go around looking for excuses to talk about it.

She will... start on the first comprehension question.

"In the middle-east it varies, some enclaves don't even have enough for all their kids, some have a few spots going spare that they - sell to independent wizards. 'Sell' isn't quite the right word, they... give them out as gifts? But to people who have helped them a lot in the past."

Does that make it awkward not to say. Is she supposed to share or is this a situation where you can assume that Malak is explaining a situation that applies to both of them.

She will, uh, keep working on that first comprehension question and see whether anyone else says anything.

"When I was eleven I looked up who had the most slots and then which country was the richest and then which country had the most intermarriage - so the kids won't be second-class citizens forever - and then I decided I was moving to America, if -" gesture. If I live to nineteen. "Toronto and Sacramento could scare me off yet, of course."

Malak feels like her explanation adequately covers Naima, who does not want to talk about the deal she made with Paris for some reason, probably because it sucked. Malak is not sure what deal Mother made to get her and her siblings in, but it has gotten them all in so far and she has not seen any onerous burdens imposed by it so it was probably a much better one?

"America's pretty good if you can get it, I hear." Except New York but she doesn't think other people share that opinion so she won't voice it.

"Is America at the top on all of those?" This is in no way relevant to her but maybe it's a useful set of words or something.

"China has slightly more slots total and Britain has more per capita, I think. That's probably going to change before our kids are old enough to attend, inshallah."

It's a bit early – in their acquaintance, in the year, in his life – for Julian to say what he's thinking, which is that even if he graduates and gets a spot in an enclave, he's never going to have children. He loves kids, he's known that since he held his baby sister for the first time. But it just wouldn't be fair to them. 

"America's the second-most slots per capita and the richest and most of South America has more racial mixing but that's of the peoples native there, doesn't have a lot of bearing on whether people'd look at my kids and see a foreigner, and America's pretty high up on that list and does have lots of Indonesians. And also can't tell us apart from other Asians and has lots of those."

"I guess it makes sense to shoot for, then."

Hmm, if Malak's doing her comp assignment then maybe Naima should just do the whole set of comprehension questions? She can probably finish them by the end of the work period if she focuses.

Malak did get some of her half of the comprehension questions done before switching tasks. She's pretty sure she'll have time to finish the comp homework and her half of the history questions before the end of work period, and she wants to get the composition part done first so she can compare with Julian.

If left to his own devices, Julian will happily spend the rest of work period experimenting with Annisa's comp assignment to see if packing in more assonance has any relationship to mana efficiency. 

Annisa has a study group! And a carrel in the library not far from the reading room, but where they can sit on chairs, instead of sprawling on the floor around the enclavers like sad little supplicants. ...and statistically one of the four of them will be dead by the end of term, so stop being happy and focus on not being that one. She reluctantly puts the metallurgy book aside and goes back to her comp assignment; she's not going to just copy Julian, she wants to try to actually figure it out herself, it's good practice even if her final solution isn't as clever as his...

Nothing jumps them. The library's the safest part of the school, and it's the first day. She makes herself not really fully focus on the work, but only because it's a good habit.

When she finishes her copy of the comp assignment she swaps with Julian.

"Oh - wow, this is really good." is all she can manage to say because inside she is screaming. This is way better than what she did, and - Julian is from Hong Kong, but he's probably not any smarter than most sino kids, right, it's not like she was picking her studymates based on their test scores, she doesn't even know those - so this is probably what every sino kid can manage, which means it's probably what the school is expecting, which means she is going to fail composition so badly. Well. That's... not fine. It's really bad. But it's not like creative writing is her only option, she'll just have to do better in artificing. If she won't be able to write any good spells she'll just have to spend four years making herself an invisibility cloak. She can do that. Maybe.

"Thanks! I like yours, It's clever how you worked in that slant rhyme, there." Julian just manages to bite his tongue before he can say 'for a non-native speaker,' even if it does make Malak's work more impressive. In here, it's the results that count. "Anyway, what do you all have next? I've got history of artificing." 

"Same. - are you not creative writing track? I figured -" If she wrote poetry that good she'd be tempted by creative writing track and she has the world's most aggressively artificing-friendly affinity. 

"My affinity could really go either way, so I haven't decided yet." And he's going for valedictorian, but that's not something one mentions this early or possibly ever. 

"I've got History of Artificing and then History of Alchemy. I guess maybe the school doesn't know which track will be a better fit for my particular brand of healing and is giving me some background on the uses of both?"

Annisa starts packing her bookbag. "I don't think you said what your affinity was?" He definitely didn't, she remembers that right alongside peoples' names.

- slant rhyme? She's not sure what that is. Also, that sounds a lot like what he would say if he noticed that she sucked and was too polite to say it to her face.

- Wait a second, history of artificing is... not usually given to people who aren't considering artificing. So Julian's artificing track. So this isn't even 'randomly selected sino kid', it's 'randomly selected sino kid who's not doing incantations' She's doomed.

"Oh, me too. I guess we're all going together." She is NOT going to cry about how doomed she is but - her throat is choking up - probably she should not talk much or they will hear how upset she is -

He did not. It's not exactly something he leads with. 

"Enclaves. Maybe extradimensional spaces, maybe large-scale constructs, I'm not entirely sure. My parents had to take me to a diviner, since, you know – " I'll be totally useless for the most important four years of my life. But that part goes without saying. 

It's bad luck, but it also means his affinity isn't incantations, he's just that good at it. (Might mean he's undervalued as an ally... - stop getting ahead of yourself). She refrains from commenting because the only things she can think of are 'oh, bad luck', which he obviously knows, or 'well, you're set for life if you make it out', which he also obviously knows, or 'some enclave might have enough slack to get you through on a promise to build them out afterwards', which he also obviously knows. It's not the sort of problem you'll contribute to with three seconds of thought. "Room 413?"

Malak is pretty sure Mother is planning to found an enclave somehow - she and all her siblings were told that they shouldn't worry about securing enclave slots while they're in here, and shouldn't commit to anything that locks them in for twenty years after graduation - but she cannot think what she or her family could offer Julian that he can't get elsewhere. There's probably something but secrecy runs in the family so she has no idea what it is.

- Also he does not even have an affinity for cleaning ink smudges, Malak is SO DOOMED.

"Yeah. 413."

It looks like Julian hasn't lost his – study group? prospective future allies? friends? – over his obvious uselessness. At least not yet. Small victories! 

"That's convenient, we can go in a pack." 

Malak is always happy to travel in groups! Though she feels kind of guilty now because she is starting to like these people and the usual reasons company is good don't really apply when she's the company. If a mal comes after them, all she can really do is hide so it eats someone else instead of her. Hopefully she'll learn some more spells soon so that's not the case.

She reminds herself that she shouldn't actually feel guilty about this, everyone in the school is trying to save their own skin first. She's not feeling guilty because leaving them to die in her stead would be wrong, she's feeling guilty because she has positive feelings about them, which is why she is supposed to be careful about having positive feelings about her fellow students.

"All of you had better not be eaten, this is a really convenient setup we've got here and I'll be very put out if you go die and ruin it." That's unserious enough to not be an excessive amount of friendliness, she thinks. 

"I was thinking about taking a jog around the senior res hall after curfew, you know, build some mana, but if you insist I guess I can stay in my room instead."

"I'll do my very best. - Malak, do you suppose there's some way to convince Damascus that the obvious interpretation of the microscope deal is that their three weeks of guard duty start when they give the microscope back, I've been thinking about it and I'm almost sure we never specified which three weeks."

"Yeah, they'd cry foul if you saved it up for the end of term but waiting until they give it back is fair play."

"You brought in a microscope?"

"Oh good. Yeah, I'm kind of interested in the end of healing that combines magic with science, you know, giving the magic really specific instructions instead of just saying 'person is sick, make them not be'? And I thought that being able to see the specifics might come in handy someday, even if I can't do anything on that scale yet. It's just a pocket one, it's not that heavy."

"And well worth it, if you've loaned it out to an enclave already. You should meet my neighbor Shannon, she has a healing affinity too. She's very American but she's perfectly nice."

"Damascus used to have a microfilm reader, which they shared out to the rest of the middle-eastern students, helped economize on mail weight so we could all bring more stuff in each year. It went bad, the kid who was using it got blinded, we didn't hear if they think he'll recover - anyways, I think Damascus also sent in some spellbooks that way and really wanted to maintain access so they rented Naima's microscope."

"Oh man, blinded, that's a bad way to go." It could take weeks of sitting around, startling at every noise, but it was a sure thing eventually. If he looked likely to recover maybe they'd be able to keep him guarded until then. "I guess there had to be a catch or more people would do that."

"I think they figured they were treating it well enough and that if it wasn't satisfied it'd do something else before going straight for the eyes - My guess is the kids who were around when they made it all graduated and the new caretakers slacked off."

A decision that one of them will now have plenty of time to contemplate, dying alone in the dark.