The Group enter together and acquire food together and then make their way over to Bella together. Annisa contemplates how it'd be embarrassing if they dropped her between afternoon classes and dinner and maybe that's why they haven't except Malak's the only one who even thought of that, she bets.

Malak sits down and slides a slice of cake across the table to Bella.

"I think this is traditional pay for holding a table?"

"Is it? I've been stiffing Suze. I have one already though, you can keep it."

Maybe the etiquette is different for enclaves? Not that he knows. 

"How was your last class?" 

???? What is her game here?

Malak accepts the returned cake with no visible confusion.

"Thanks."

"Last class was mostly fine but one of the Pisa kids was in there, kind of creeping on a Santa Barbara girl."

Pisa?? Is this supposed to mean something? He knows it's an enclave in Italy but that's it. 

"Eeesh." Santa Barbara is an enclave, though, so it doesn't quite compute - "does she not have people who can tell him off?"

"She seemed weirdly receptive! So that's something to keep an eye on, I guess!"

"Honestly there are more things to keep an eye on than I expected on the first day of class! - on the student front, the mals are about as advertised."

Is it still creeping if the target is receptive? And other things she is NOT going to ask this enclaver who probably adheres to weird enclaver rules.

'degenerate westerners' says Sabah's voice in her head. "More so than two kids flirting normally?"

"It's possible I'm reading too much into it but if he'd done it at me I would have been tempted to cut the rest of class!"

Julian is maybe 85% sure there's context here but he doesn't want to sound like some kind of idiot who isn't familiar with the main traits of all the European enclaves.

Flirting! Okay. Something he can work with. "Who has the time to flirt on the first day?" 

Malak has no context on Bella's flirting standards so this is not very helpful information!

"Ah, yikes."

"I feel like the kids whose plan was to be a low-key maleficer should be doubling down on the 'low key' now that we've had two mysterious deaths already."

"I basically expect the Pisa upperclassmen to continue their tradition of stomping on him if he overdoes it but that only helps after he overdoes it, you know?"

"By the standards of everywhere else in the world, 'noticeable at 14 at all' is way overdoing it! But yeah, I don't really suspect him in the murders and I don't bet they'll stop him until there are some to his name and -" She kicks the table. "Valid to skip class, if he seems to register your existence!"

"It'd be a temptation to burn a lot of mana for sure."

"Well, fortunately instead I was sitting with Raleigh from Sacramento and he seems like a completely normal and nice boy, which I suppose could also mean he's a secret maleficer but at a certain point you have to accept the best risk you can find."

"Well, this year's crop of maleficers seem to be pretty determined to eschew secrecy entirely."

"Oh, I know Raleigh!! He was helping my next door neighbor with her drawers yesterday." ...and he thought Malak and Annisa were Boston but he's presumably had that straightened out by now and will simply avoid them forever about it.

"Shannon? She's nice too. She's got a healing affinity, going to adjust her own braces with it."

"Oh! Like Naima. Annisa, you should introduce them." 

"Oh yeah, I met Shannon this afternoon. She was in my history of alchemy class."

"I went with her and Raleigh on a supply run the other day - and speaking of non-secret maleficers the weird African one was along! He was well-behaved on the supply run and actually asked me point blank what was so bad about maleficing and turned out not to have heard of the concept of brain damage."

"Oh, god, that kid was in my homeroom. He said he didn't need to malefice anymore since it was safer in here – I told these guys already – so obviously that's going to last like six weeks tops." 

"Wow. I hope he believed me about brain damage, uh, existing, and didn't figure it was some exaggerated cautionary tale."

"Maybe in six weeks there'll already be some nice case studies for him!"

"Man, I wonder how he got in. I wasn't thinking about it at the time, but - he doesn't seem like an enclaver and Africa to a first approximation doesn't send indies, so..."

"He could be... maybe he emigrated?"

"Maybe he's the equivalent of the Chicago mundies - someone was over the weight limit and it grabbed the nearest person around -"

"I guess that makes the most sense? The whole thing's weird. What is it with this year and maleficers, anyway? Is that normal? My parents said it didn't normally start up in earnest until late junior year." 

"He didn't seem confused enough to be like the Chicago kids! I have no idea what is up with this year, it's definitely more than I was expecting too, and it's creeping out Suze, there was apparently big maleficer-related shenanigans last year."

"Some people come in as freshmen with plans to malefice later but they've almost never started before they even show up."

"What happened last year?"

Inquiring minds want to know. 

"I have not had an entire explanation, but I'm going to join Suze in the library after dinner and get more than 'maleficer-related shenanigans' out of her."

"Well," says Annisa lightly, "there might be more murder than our parents remember but the homework's not too bad yet!"

Julian makes a vague gesture in the direction of the school in general. "Please don't encourage it." 

"Sabah graduated the year before last and didn't say anything about more murder than usual, so - "

"I'm hoping I normally get the work period for homework, today I spent it undoing various people's potion side effects, but I get sort of a mini fake work period by having two history classes back to back in the same room, so I got some of my math done."

"Potion side effects?"

"So this is actually sort of embarrassing but in my defense some upperclassmen also took them! Guy was selling eidetic memory potions at breakfast. They don't work. Some people were having, like, migraines, I just - detected that mine didn't work. Got a spell out of the void from the Spanish Inquisition about it."

"Did they work on the outside and the Scholomance turns them or something?"

"Wow, did he not test them first?" 

"If you don't happen to get the migraine side effects they seem to work, and he was testing on folks from home, not students, so they didn't take as many notes as I do to notice that it was off."

"Damn. It'd be pretty incredible if they worked." 

"If it looks like there's a twenty dollar bill on the ground it's actually a mal, yada yada - though really excellent affinities do happen sometimes...."

"The way he explained it seemed plausible - his affinity is stuff that works on himself, he takes them himself all the time, they work less well on other people but still some - but it's definitely going on my list of dumb things I did on account of being fourteen."

"I don't know, I think you could make a case for it. Well, I could, maybe not you, you're an enclaver, but for us a lot of successful strategies are going to be high variance." 

"I dunno, I'm kind of just planning to keep my head down."

"There are literally two of us in the school right now and I'm not entitled to offer a guaranteed spot, I think I have to consider more mainline strategies."

Julian does actually manage to stop himself from saying that the mainline indie strategy is getting eaten by a mal on graduation day. 

"My parents told me 'keep your head down for two years and then impress everyone for two years' but I don't know if all the murder changes that - plausibly it's worth trying harder to secure safety in numbers now??"

"Probably depends on how things shake out over the next few weeks. If we're assuming the murderer is a freshman they're probably not going to be enormously subtle, you know?" 

"Well unless any of you are secretly maleficers we've got the start of 'safety in numbers' going."

"Maleficing goes against my religious precepts."

"You have a lot of those?"

"I've got one, which is that dying is bad."

An older boy sits down at the table next to Bella without so much as a 'May I?'

"Well, that's good to hear!"

"- hello, have we met?"

Oh god that looks like a senior and it's talking to them. 

Oh god what now.

"Not yet! I'm James, you?"

...

(Is that creeping? How do you tell?)

"...I'm Bella, New Orleans enclave. If you're looking for Suze, she's already gone to the reading room with Atlanta."

"Are you buying or selling and what are you buying or selling."

"No, no, I'm actually just checking in on all the new students, making sure everyone's settling in OK and had a good first day of classes. Have you?"

...?

"The teacher to student ratio seems pretty lousy and I get the sense the guidance counselors aren't really doing their jobs."

Is it wise to crack jokes at the weird upperclassman? Probably not.

"Well, you're not wrong about that! There's a New York freshman who is planning to start up some group therapy with the school nurse, that's more of a guidance counselor than we've had before."

That is the worst idea she has ever heard. The school nurse is going to be dead inside of a week.

"Group therapy?"

"...we have a school nurse?" 

"Isn't that a different thing than a guidance counselor?"

"Is New York...making fun of us, or making fun of the nurse, or..."

" - No I think they're serious actually? It's a good idea, if people have a - healthy outlet, to process things."

Malak is pretty sure that's what God is for.

"It seems to me that telling a New York enclaver about my feelings would only be a healthy outlet to process things if I were convenient enough to only need to process my deep admiration for New York and my anticipatory survivors guilt about how impressive I am and how suitable for an alliance."

"Personally I plan on processing things when and if I survive." 

"... They're not that bad. They helped with the whole - nevermind. That's not actually important. Are you guys settling in alright? Is there anything you need?"

"Mana storage."

A bold move.

"Alright, I'll ask around and see if anyone's got some going spare."

This... is a joke, right?

Where is this kid's home planet and can he move there. 

Does that. Does that work. That has to be a joke at her joke and if she was telling a joke that's probably fine? It was sort of a joke??

"Does that...ever...work out for you."

"I haven't been doing it long but the seniors just graduated, so I bet there's some lying around. Anyways, I've got a lot of tables to visit before the bell, it was nice meeting you all!"

And he gets up and moves over to the next table of confused freshmen.

"What was that."

"...you know, it's not surprising after three years some people go a bit off."

"I am beginning to think I was seriously misled about what school would be like."

"I think I was maybe just insufficiently led. Or something. ....does anyone know what happens if he actually gets some?"

"You... check it over very carefully before accepting?"

"I want to know what New York helped with."

"Presumably the thing that happened last year." 

And Bella's going to learn that soon and it doesn't do in negotiations to declare right up front that she assigns lots of value to it. "I guess it doesn't really matter. Kid's super dead, though."

"He made it this far. I guess he might've been... normal... until recently."

"Maybe it's some kind of... scam... thing."

"On freshmen? What do we have worth scamming us out of?"

"At first I thought he was looking for a girlfriend because that would make any goddamned sense. - and I'd probably have gone for it, he's cute."

"I guess if he can get people to date him by asking then it would be weird to do elaborate setups involving finding mana storage to get... that. Freshmen... presumably ever bring in valuable items? I guess?"

"I have no idea what that's about but I can ask Suze! He said 'James', right?" She's making a note.

Annisa did not strike him as the sort of person to make dating decisions based on cuteness but he senses this is not the sort of thing one asks about in mixed company.

(He looks easy to have the upper hand over. That is what cuteness is in boys.)

Malak does not know what makes a boy cute and is torn between curiosity and self-preservation. If she never learns what makes a boy cute maybe she can avoid ever having to deal with the temptation of cute boys.

"He said James. He's got to be notorious, if he makes a habit of this."

"I hope he does, if there was some reason to single this table out I am concerned."

"Well, he's over there bothering some other freshmen now, so..."

"Oh, so he is. Okay, Suze will probably know what his deal is."

" - I can go ask Alexios, I should do that now actually before the sophomores leave..." She gets up and heads across the cafeteria.

"What's Suze like, what's New Orleans like? It has managed to avoid being hot gossip, which speaks well of you."

"I mean, there's just the two of us right now, that kind of limits surface area from which gossip can escape, but yeah, it's low-drama by and large. Suze is fine? I don't actually know her that well, I moved into the enclave when I was almost eleven."

"Oh, wow. Your parents must be very impressive." 

"They didn't move in, just me. The Domina's my great-aunt but after my mother graduated she almost immediately had a falling-out with her folks. Aunt Evelyn had conveniently lost a grandchild around when I started getting more appetizing and found me sufficiently promising."

"Indonesia doesn't have enclaves so I have only gotten the internet version of them and today has been fascinatingly confirming on some fronts and disconfirming on others. Are they like living in an important person's house or like living on a street with an important mayor? Did you like it?"

"I have never lived in an important person's house or on a street with an important mayor. Honestly the enclave itself is kind of like - I dunno, a nice apartment building? Not as grim as the Scholomance but the same general idea, a building in the void. It has a courtyard with plants though, and a pool, and stuff like that, so it only minimally sucked to be inside it nearly all the time for several years."

"I don't see why they don't go in for more naturalistic artificial light, and illusion views and such. Maybe the richer ones do, I've only ever been inside Hong Kong and even then I only saw the testing room." 

"The courtyard was fairly convincing, it had an illusion sky, but it didn't, you know, smell like outdoors. They're meaning to improve it but most of the enclave spare resources right now are going toward the power sink, which is supposed to come in with the freshmen my junior year when we finally, hopefully, have coverage in all the years to do upkeep."

"I guess that's not cheap even on the outside. Well, having a power-sharer when it's alliance time is probably worth more than having it now."

"That's the idea, it's a little harder while we're waiting but Suze'll have it in time to get out wearing one and it's less likely to just stop working and need to be replaced if there's enough people to keep it in operation."

"Is New Orleans a newish enclave?"

"Yeah, they built it in like, the late sixties."

Malak returns and sits back down.

"OK, so Alexios says James is - harmless, probably, after the thing last year he decided that students weren't talking enough and needed more kumbayah and now he stands on a table once a week and announces all the gossip he's picked up for everyone to hear."

"What the fuck was the thing last year."

"Who still talks to him after he appointed himself the town crier?"

"Yeah, I was getting to that. Apparently one kid went hardcore maleficer and poached an enclaver and killed a bunch of people. And then one of his victim's brother went hardcore maleficer and killed him and a bunch of other people. And then one of their friends went hardcore maleficer and poached someone and killed... most of the rest of his own enclave? And then before this could happen a fourth time all the rest of the big enclaves got their seniors together and put a stop to it, but - I can see how some people could get messed up by all that."

"Is that kind of thing... common?"

"My older siblings didn't make it but I am pretty sure it was just, you know, regular Scholomance death."

"Well I don't think it was before last year, but apparently we've got a lot of people getting a head start on it this year so who knows???"

"It can't be common for so many enclavers to go maleficer. I wonder why it happened."

"Why would an enclaver ever go maleficer? And conditional on having done so why kill his own enclave? And why would a person poach from an enclaver? And -"

"I... guess I can see how something like that might lead someone to respond by just yelling everything that might be happening? Although it doesn't explain the - I guess probably the mana storage was a joke?"

"Maybe he will yell 'and Naima, from Cairo, has no mana storage, anyone want to help her out?'"

"Naima didn't give her name, I think she's safe from that." Clever Naima.

Oh thank God, that was absolutely not intentional but she's so relieved.

"If he's hoping to get it out of the graduating seniors' stashes - would they leave behind mana storage, that seems questionable - then yelling it probably wouldn't even help much."

"Even if he's a bit funny in the head, helping can't possibly be his motive, it'll be almost entirely lies people fed him..."

"He could've noticed which direction the school is heading and want a headstart on building ties with all the vulnerable freshmen."

"Maybe he's playing dumb so people let things slip they otherwise wouldn't? But that just brings us back to wondering what his real game is." 

"Maybe your original read is right and he's just got some screws loose at this point."

"I lean toward the screws loose theory but I'm not going to spot him a drop of mana, for sure."

" - Yeah especially as he has no real cause to ask, he's a Seattle enclaver."

"All the more reason. Seattle likes having a town crier?"

"Apparently? Or at least they haven't made him stop."

"So - he does also have resources, then?"

She is going to spend all weekend being terrified of receiving mana storage. This is a new one. She was really not prepared for this particular source of stress.

"Presumably. But the rest of his enclave might not let him actually hand them all out to indie freshmen."

"I think we should all learn from the apparent prevalance of maleficers being ten times what we were told and not do any sex work or any mana trading or any - whatever the fuck else comes up -"

Naima nods solemnly.

"I guess his whole deal would make somewhat more sense if he's a gifted diviner, all his gossip is only the true stuff, and he thinks you're a prime recruit? But like he could just say that."

"Man, being a diviner in here who can vaguely foresee a catastrophe would suck. If that turns out to be the deal I take back everything I said about him."

"Talk about pointless affinities. This whole place is a catastrophe." 

"It is starting to sound like some moments are more catastrophic than others, though."

"Plan 'keep my head down and pray that Fortitude doesn't see me sneaking out of the graduation hall' is looking better and better."

"I was thinking this morning that unnoticeable might work if you could also fly."

"Some of the mals fly... I guess fewer."

"Yeah, it's not that the air doesn't have them but it's not as thick as the ground, you could in principle dodge."

"Of the stereotypical options I think I have a fair chance at being able to cast or at least co-cast a timespear, but flying through the maleficaria air force isn't a bad angle to consider."

Annisa is thinking about graduation strategies involving Malak!! She's kind of getting ahead of herself there, but it's nice to be appreciated.

"I do weapons. And I'll have a much better idea junior year where that leaves me, but it's a lot more fun sitting in that room trying to think of ways out than sitting there not doing that."

"Any kind of weapon? That's really flexible."

"Yep, I got awfully lucky. When I was little we thought it was just knives, and my father had me trying to extend it to swords with no luck, but then one day I got a slingshot and had it spitting little lightning bolts...turns out it's anything I can use, and the swords were just too big for me."

"Huh! Wonder what shop assignments you'll get after the generics."

"I have a long list of things that are technically sort of a weapon if you really push it and I want to see how many of them I can get away with. But that's for junior year, probably, my plan for this year is mostly for my baby's first knives to be better than everyone else's."

"Legit. The slingshot did not turn out to be practical?"

"Maybe we'll get some ideas in History of Artifice. So far it seems fairly combat-heavy." 

"Maybe it'll get to the ideas that haven't been obsolete for centuries later."

"Tiny lightning bolts are great for impressing Scholomance interviewers with but they don't do more damage than, like, pebbles. I could change my mind about this as I learn how to do more stuff but my current thinking is that ranged weaponry isn't worth it? If you're out of stabbing distance, you can and should just run, and if you're in stabbing distance it's hard to beat a knife - or maybe a shortsword, now that I'm not too small to craft 'em. The things on my aspirational list for junior year are more like - can I get in-affinity shielding if it bites, can I get in-affinity divining if it's weapons that light up in the presence of enemies, can I get mana storage better than the lousy average if it's a mana-storing dagger..."

"Light-up swords would be very Lord of the Rings, which is a completely excellent reason to do things."

"If dual-use mana storage was worthwhile I'd bet it would be more common, it's much too useful to leave on the table. ...I wonder if you could do area of effect weapons, sonics or something like that, anything that's meant to stun large numbers of mals at once – " 

"Ranged weapons seem useful? You're right that you should usually run, but sometimes there's something that runs faster than you, or - in the graduation hall you're running towards most of the mals and being able to down the nastiest ones before you get within reach seems good..."

"And if you're cornered it could come up."

"Yeah, maybe. There was a kid I saw at orientation who had a very pampered gun, I guess we can see how that works out for him."

"I bet ranged weapons will be more useful when you're more powerful. Like, when you're a junior and you have to take classes in more dangerous places and you don't want to skip for mals that are just inconvenient, but also don't want to spend the mana on frying them with a spell unless you have to."

"Yeah. And in anticipation of that you might want a crossbow or whatever earlier on, for practicing."

"I think crossbows aren't good unless you're in a formation with lots of people, they take too long to load."

"I mean, it could be a magic crossbow that generates its own ammo that only lasts for four seconds, or something? I don't really know how feasible that is, though, I'm creative writing."

"Daggers that come back sounds maybe a better idea, gets you range and a hand-to-hand weapon and only one hand used up between them. Or a bayonet I guess?"

"I feel like learning to throw daggers accurately might be harder than learning to hit things with a crossbow but I don't actually know and it'd probably depend on the enchantments anyway. Though would you want the dagger back in your hand if it had just punctured something nasty?"

"It's less getting more ammo in than getting the crossbow to the point where it has enough stored energy to fire the ammo again without relying on the strength of the user. I think the thing that makes it a crossbow is the cranking mechanism? Maybe you could have it crank really fast with magic, I guess."

"..maybe it'd be less mana-intensive if it was recalling, rather than rapidly generating, ammo, but you don't have it in your hand, just back in your bow or whatever...I don't actually know for sure, though. I got all excited and got a book of famous magical weapons and then my father said, Annie, that's mostly stuff that adults spent decades on, get good at knives and if you're still alive when you're seventeen pick one of those fancy projects for graduation, not sixteen of them. And he was right, which is tragic."

"It's why I asked Annisa for a practice knife and not a sharp one, for sharp I've already got something better than we'll be able to make in here." Also you can't just ask someone to make you a maleficer's knife, that's incredibly sketchy.

"I dunno, don't people usually need more than a year of practice with making a certain kind of weapon before they make a really good one? I guess I'm probably thinking of mundanes. It does seem like you'll probably only have time to pick and get really good at one of them, though."

"Yeah. Still, good to have a list of possibilities. Just because I need to make good use of my Spanish Inquisition spellbook before I ask for another doesn't mean I don't write down ideas for what's next, then I have a lot to sift through when I have the chance."

"Does the Spanish Inquisition have good spells? - not that it really matters, I don't have Spanish."

"Wow, does the school think you have some heretics you need to torture?" 

Malak edges away from Bella with an exaggerated look of terror.

"Oh no, the spanish inquisition."

"I don't know why it's from the Spanish Inquisition specifically! It had a soneta for cancelling ongoing potion effects and my best guess is that that was maybe a time when wizards were fighting enough for this to come up such that a spell was written."

"Well, seems like it might be real useful in here, considering."

"Yeah, maybe the school is telling me I will have to fight maleficers." Sigh.

Another student sits down at their table uninvited. This one's a freshman, not a senior, and she brought a whole plateful of crusty bread rolls for the table, which she plonks down right before taking a seat directly opposite Annisa.

"Annisa, right? Hi! I'm here to lightly threaten you," she says cheerfully. "April, Toronto enclave. Please be sufficiently threatened to get nice and cooperative but not so threatened that you start making things up just to placate me. I know perfectly well that you didn't kill Chantal and I don't even want to take her stuff back, I just want to ask you a few questions about what happened to it."

OK lunch was fine but this is really making her think she's better off taking all meals alone in her room.

What the fuck.

What, indeed, the fuck. 

School is really just a very happening place, isn't it.

If this had happened this morning Annisa knows she would have panicked because this sort of did happen this morning, and she totally did panic. But she's older than she was this morning, and it takes more to make her panic. "I don't know about in America but in Indonesia it's actually kind of rude," she says, "to tell someone that you're planning to commit suicide and they can have your stuff, it sounds like a trick of some kind. Or a test."

"No, It's pretty rude in Canada too, Chantal just did not know this because she had the heart of a very depressed angel and any sane process would have kept her home to take her chances in the enclave but, alas, instead of sane processes we have politics. So! Do you still have access to her spellbook? Because if you do, I want to trade you for copies of all the spells. At a fairly steep but not utterly outrageous discount, because it's my clavemate's spellbook but she did, after all, deliberately give it to you."

"I don't have it, but I probably have better than average chances of finding it again" since it's in Malak's room. "What're you offering?"

"I'll trade you a decent spell I learned in the enclave. Freezes things, English, variable input but it gets stupidly inefficient if you power it up enough to cover anything much bigger than an apple. I'm betting that her spellbook will have at least one thing that's at least that good plus a bunch of stuff that isn't, and I'll find you a second spell of similar caliber if there's something in there that's really genuinely good besides the layered ward I already know about."

"I did get a couple of her shirts. Is there going to be any trouble, if I wear them, or for the buyers if I sell them?"

"I'd recommend not wearing them around her mother but her mother isn't here. No, there won't be any trouble."

"Then I'll keep your offer in mind if I see the spellbook again."

"Thanks, that's all I was after. Nice meeting you. Enjoy the bread."

She gets up and leaves.

"is the bread safe?" She asks after April is gone.

"It looks fine?"

"So the suicidal girl willed you her stuff?," he says to Annisa. Not talking about the thing where apparently Canadians can get into the Scholomance even if they don't want to go. The world is unfair, news at eleven. 

"I guess I owe you all an explanation," she says, trying to sound sheepish but not exactly guilty. "Yeah. She - uh, I had had a baffling conversation with Edmund Pevensie, London, and I saw her come away from a conversation with him looking all annoyed, so I said 'oh, is he confusing you too' and she was like 'oh, he was trying to talk me out of suicide'. And then she said she was going to walk into the Void and I could have her stuff, she only wanted me to check in the morning and tell people if it worked, so they knew they had a way out. And I had absolutely no idea what to say to any of that! I figured she was probably just - I thought she'd probably change her mind, and also that isn't supposed to be possible, right  -"

"It's not," Bella confirms.

"Well, nobody could blame you for taking her up on it. I'm just surprised her enclave isn't insisting on restitution in full." 

"That would suck because I don't, in fact, have everything, or at least I suspect not, her door was already open when I got there in the morning and she was telling everyone she was suicidal and there wasn't mana storage, magic items, anything obviously valuable and less identifiable than the clothing. Maybe they're not sure what I've got and don't want the embarrassment of a protracted fight about it in which everyone's reminded they sent a suicidal kid? The, uh, the spellbook's French, so the Scholomance clearly got the last laugh here."

"Maybe that's why it wants you to learn it?"

Julian makes a mental note to ask Annisa about this later when it's just The Group. She might still lie to them, of course, she's only known them for a day, but there are still some things you don't want to talk about in front of enclavers and making off with an enclave's magic items is one of them. 

" - I got a bunch of French in language lab, despite not knowing a word of it that isn't also English," she tells Bella for context. "Anyway, in the morning the door was open and the room was empty and someone'd been through it and it occurred to me that it might look kind of like I'd poached an enclaver on the first day of class and I realized belatedly that a couple shirts weren't worth that. ...though they're lovely shirts. If, uh, anyone wants them."

"...it shouldn't even look bad to keep somebody home in the enclave, you just, like, say 'she has an untenable disability' or 'she's ill and we aren't sure she'll recover quickly enough to manage school without adult care' or something."

"The clothes are probably enchanted, are you sure you don't want to keep them? You could wear them under other clothes."

"For us – uh, sino wizards – it's really embarrassing to not have your kid make it in. But that's probably different in places that don't do tests." 

"I thought only half of you made it in."

"What do they do about untenable disabilities or serious illness, then?"

Oh good the aspect of this everyone finds mysterious is Chantal's enclave's choices. "Indonesia disqualifies for diabetes, clotting disorders, severe asthma, that kind of thing - I had assumed the more rich and powerful your enclave the more obvious that call is, they can probably make it at home!!"

"I should clarify. It's really embarrassing for enclave parents. And this girl was an enclaver, right? Untenable disabilities – if they can get away with it they'll usually try to shove them in, but I think it depends on where they are in the enclave council and what the rest cohort looks like. The thinking is a sick kid probably won't make it anyway, and it looks better if they die in here than if they die out there."  

"That is so horrifyingly stupid! If I had an untenable disability I would have stayed home and gotten a cut of the proceeds for my slot!"

"A diabetic kid might be completely fine on the outside where insulin is a solved problem that inconveniences them once a week! You know, if -" Gesture, you don't say 'if we make it out', "there should be a section of Scholomance Confidential just dedicated to shaming parents who murder their kids to save face, with as many details as all the graduates can collectively remember."

"I don't know if parents care about what it says on Scholomance Confidential."

"We can buy a full page ad in the Wall Street Journal. - it's surprisingly cheap, to do that. I looked it up when we were figuring out how best to auction out my weight allowance."

"Pffft."

"Doesn't that involve looping in a bunch of mundanes?" - oh wait this was a joke. Whoops.

"It's not like every Chinese parent does this! We still want our kids to live. But, yeah, there's an enormous amount of shame around having a kid who's seen as a liability." 

She casts a sideways glance towards the Shanghai table.

"So you just gotta make it more shameful to send the kid unqualified." This is an objectively stupid flight of fancy but Annisa's mad about parents who aren't trying to keep their kids alive and it's carrying the conversation away from what Annisa did and Bella seems to find her objectively stupid flight of fancy entertaining. 

Julian is feeling a little bit prickly because – okay, it's obviously awful, but he also kind of gets it? When he thinks about being an enclave parents and having all those resources and tutors and god knows what else and still managing to produce a child who can't even get in the door – eurgh. Humiliating. There are so many reasons he should never have kids. 

"If you have a good idea for pushing back on two thousand years of Chinese academic culture, please be my guest." 

Oh no did this stop being 'make fun of Chantal's terrible parents' at some point, she didn't intend it to.

"I mean mostly I think they should just build another school already but I get why that's gridlocked."

Oh, good, safe territory. "I want to work on that! If – well, the obvious. I think in thirty or forty years the Chinese and Indian enclaves will have to at least seriously consider it, with the way our population is trending." 

"Do you think two is better than one, bigger one? I can see the arguments for either."

"I can see the argument either way. Whatever they decide on, I just want to build it." 

"And here I thought I was getting ahead of myself wondering if jetpacks count as weapons."

"Hey, as long as I'm in here, I'm going to be as laser-focused on survival as the next kid. But wanting to live doesn't mean you can't have something you want to live for."  

It was friendly teasing. Is he clear on that? His expression looks friendly back? 

She takes one of Toronto's rolls.

Is this friendly teasing? Julian can't tell. He knows Annisa and Malak are more focused than he is and he doesn't want them to think that he's too head-in-the-clouds to be good Group material. He nervously munches on a roll. 

"I'm hoping my mal ward gets better with enough mana in it, it's pretty rare and unreasonably expensive for everyone else I've known to try it but - I want my kids to be safe without a school. When I let myself dream."

"Haven't thought that far ahead but I did have a list pinned in my room, all the English-speaking enclaves by desirability."

Naima munches a roll and doesn't talk about having any dreams at all, because she doesn't.

Oh thank god Annisa doesn't think he's an idiot for having plans. 

"What's your top candidate?"

She doesn't want to give the list in front of Bella; New Orleans wasn't very high on it. "Why, if I tell someone with an affinity like yours what all the best enclaves are, you'll beat me out for them."

"Well I'm guessing Toronto's not as high on the list as it used to be, considering."

"List modifications of the day have been Sacramento down, Toronto way down, Boston up, New Orleans up, Santa Barbara down. Should I post live rankings somewhere? That sounds like a great way to die, actually."

"What happened with Santa Barbara again?"

"I don't know, the Toronto sibling deal is still really hard to beat." Julian privately thinks he could get it a la carte, but he shouldn't be insensitive about it. 

"I mean, yes, but an enclave affiliation in here is worth a lot less if your enclavemates - I guess, realistically it was probably a one-off - uh, Santa Barbara is just going off Bella's comment that the girl was friendly with the Pisa maleficer."

"Oh, right. I guess that's worth a small adjustment, even if it's probably just the one kid."

"What's wrong with Sacramento?"

"This morning they heard about Chantal and had a big collective freakout, it turned out because they have a - suicidal sophomore who they were previously only supervising during the day and now will have to do something about at night?"

"...what kind of sophomore can't kill themselves at night? Did they take away all his sharps?"

"His sister has strongarmed the rest of them into burning a ton of resources keeping him alive, or maybe they all just collectively agreed to do that. Such as, for example, babysitting him at night."

"I have no idea why the Void news changed anything, I did not exactly ask! I actually did not ask the stressed-out Sacramento seniors any questions but I did ding them secretly on my list."

"Maybe I can ask Raleigh next time I see him if it doesn't seem like it would be - too soon, or whatever."

"Maybe the depressed kid is really central to his year's graduation strategy and they think he'll snap out of it?" 

"Can't rule it out. Maybe he can get meds from the nurse or something."

"Depressed kid is a sophomore."

"....they could have planned in advance?"

"They probably grew up with him and even the ones who aren't literally his sister think of him as a brother and it's hard to let go. But - if I were him it'd make it even worse. That I wanted to die and instead I was taking everyone I cared about down with me."

"Yeah." Not really a lot you can add to that. 

Nod nod.

"Wonder how much of the enclave will be left before he dies?"

"In Surabaya sometimes with really old families, the ones who don't have an enclave but they own their land and it's very well shielded and maybe not all the paths precisely obey geometry, when your grandmother or your mother gets very very old, and forgetful, you start guarding her, because she can't do it herself, guarding her like you would a child only it's even harder because she's fully grown and has lots of mana, and then one day you just fall asleep because you're so tired, and then that's that, and no one blames you, even though they would if you hadn't tried at all. 

My grandparents told my parents not to do that. Because objectively it's not actually the slightest bit better to work yourself to exhaustion first, it's just a game."

"...makes sense," murmurs Bella. "If looking out for him hasn't killed anybody yet they might just think they can get him through it, though..."

"If it works out I will, uh, give them my points back on the list, I guess."

"I guess I don't know how true it is that watching someone all night is actually impossible."

"It could be an attempt to, like, show off that they don't cut people off for temporary issues? Which might help under some circumstances, but only if people believe that it's generalizable and not just for relatives."

"And only if it doesn't kill them."

"I would think more of them if, like, something got him in the dinner line and he was clearly going to be out of it for a couple of days and they pulled some overnights to get him through, that'd be - impressive coordination and obviously impressive nighttime fighting skill and it'd suggest - having enough slack to not need to cut people loose at the first sign of weakness."

Speaking of coordination – "Anyway, we were thinking of going down to the gym tomorrow to do some running practice. Want to join us?" 

"Sounds great, I hate running."

"Perfect."

Julian has successfully made a social overture to an enclaver without sounding like a remora and is going to take a moment to feel pleased with himself.  

"I'd be tempted to get the History of Artificing homework out of the way tonight but if I don't learn French all the knives in the shop won't save me, so probably history'll have to wait for later this weekend." Conveniently this means they can invite Bella if running goes well and not otherwise.

"I speak French, if that helps."

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH why does fucking everyone speak fucking FRENCH fuck!!!!  If they weren't all here at the table she could solicit French tutoring separately from each of them and then seem like not that much of an idiot to any one of them who was unaware of the other four tutors, but instead, THIS. 

"Oh cool! Once we've had shop I might be interested in swapping for French tutoring. Or, you know, if the spellbook turns up, French tutoring for French spells."

"Cool. When's your shop, I have first thing Thursday."

"Tuesdays before lunch. If my math turns out easy enough I may skip it for extra shop time on Thursdays, we'll see."

"I've also got Tuesday before lunch." 

"I figure almost everybody doing artificing is going to have gone for that. - me and Malak and Annisa all have the same room for it, although you might not have been there when we figured that out."

He checks his schedule. "106?"

"Yep, same one. That's lucky."

"We don't know for sure that there's another English section, it might just be one very big room."

"I wonder why shop's even language-segregated, it's not like there's any auditory instruction." 

"I'm pretty sure there are lots of workshops on the blueprints, it would be weird if it crammed everyone into one."

"I guess you wouldn't want to be confused about whether somebody was yelling 'duck, fire in the hole' or 'damn it they're out of iron filings'."

"Are there more than eight, eight would be four years and two languages and you might split the older students out before you split the freshmen out, they get to spend more time in the shop and their stuff's more delicate."

"Yeah, but all of the freshman artificers are going to specifically pick Tuesday before lunch, if they can swing it at all, so it'd be baffling if they were all in one room, wouldn't it?"

"What fraction of the school is artificers?"

"I guess I don't know that. It's the best spot if you even might be, though."

"What fraction doesn't have a track picked going in?"

Shrug. "I don't, healing can go several different ways. The school doesn't seem overly opinionated about it, it put me in both history of artificing and history of alchemy."

"Huh. I think Shannon's doing alchemy but I don't know if that's just her personal preference or if her affinity in fact bends that way. I think most people are incantations, though."

"I was taught you wanna stay out of shop level as much as you can, freshman year, unless your affinity is leaving you no choice about it. Because there's a lot down there which we can't handle at all no matter how clever we are."

"I suppose. If you've only got the one class, though, is later in the week than Tuesday even that much safer?"

"The gym is pretty far down but if I am to become acclimated to running I guess there's no better time."

"Seems best not to wait until the big mals come back, yeah."

"Yeah, we might want to reconsider the gym in a couple weeks but it should be all right tomorrow."

"We could always run laps through the freshman dorms."

"That sounds even more horrible and soul-sucking, let's do it."

"Seems like we might wind up tripping over something if we don't have a clear view before turning the corner."

"I was thinking we'd stick to the outer ring, so all the corners are more like gradual curves."

"Yeah, that seems safe enough probably."

"Works well enough if you don't mind going at the speed of the slowest person. I was thinking we might want to trade off four people exercising and one person reading homework out loud, though, if we wanted to make double use of the time, and that only works if you're all in approximately the same place."

"Probably we should try to get some actual gym time for the first few weeks while we can, switch to laps around the dorms later."

"It would probably be silly to build a wagon to tow the fifth person in."

"Running and reading doesn't sound like it'd work but we could brainstorm or quiz each other."

"On the other hand, have you considered how miserable it would be to run laps while yoked to a wagon like a horse? Worth a little silliness, maybe."

"You could have one person at a time take a break from running and read to the others, was the idea. It might not work in practice, though."

"I wasn't thinking of the indignity so much as the shop time but maybe one of us will get it as an assignment."

"I'd actually be more worried about taking up hallway space in case anyone needs to run past in a hurry." 

"Pretty hard to stop if we suddenly notice we're running straight towards something."

"I think the hallways are wide enough provided we're single file but stopping may be a concern, yeah."

"In a couple weeks we can switch to doing stairs, stairs are torture and it's not at all hard to stop if you suddenly need to."

"Doing stairs for mana deliberately though will mean we get good at stairs faster and get less from the required stairs trips."

"But it'll make passing periods less of a squeeze."

"I've heard that if you manage to gain a lot of weight in here and good luck with that then you get more mana for all the additional you you're carrying around, so you could try to keep up with your increasing athleticism that way."

"Seems like it'd be easier to just strap some metal plates to my back, and - that's still a bad idea, right, you get more mana but it slows you down."

"I think you can probably just do exercises that you don't actually need to run away from mals, when you get older. Like, I dunno, pull-ups. I just don't want to be the slowest kid around in three weeks."

"Oh, it's probably pretty easy to install pull-up bars in the rooms. One advantage of them being so narrow." 

"Horrible wall sitting takes longer to get to the point where it's horrible but is just as horrible after that when you're in good shape, and you can do homework in the meantime."

"I wonder what happens if you install a pullup bar and then your neighbor dies and your room expands."

"Probably falls. But I still feel like being good at running is not the thing to trade for more mana generation."

"I'm actually kind of unpersuaded that endurance matters for escaping mals very much? Reflexes do but you don't train those by running, and peak sprinting speed might but I don't think jogging trains that either."

"Horrible wall sitting?"

"I think this probably depends on how sad your cardiovascular system is starting out. We can start with sprints if you want, though?"

"Oh, I introduced everyone else to horrible wall sitting earlier, Bella, it is an exercise done by lowering yourself to a sitting position with your back to the wall and no chair, and it is very horrible."

"It doesn't sound very horrible but I suppose the worst exercises don't."

"Oh, just try it." 

"I will, but we aren't near a wall."

"Sooo, do any of us have plans after dinner, or should I start working ahead on homework and durable trade goods production alone in my room."

"French syntax, if that works for Julian."

"Exploring the library, got it. Down for that."

"I do need to finish my geometry homework, but we'll probably have time for both." 

"I could stand to get to know the library better."

"Doing all my homework except history of artificing which I guess I'll do with you guys tomorrow, then working through my Inquisitive spells. In the library."

"Sounds like we're all headed to the library, then?" And she stands.

"Yeah, do you want to see if there's space for all of us in the reading room we share with Atlanta or is your carrel calling you?"

"Wouldn't turn down a reading room if they don't mind our practicing French in there."

"Suze has French, it's practically obligatory in New Orleans, and if you're quiet it won't carry to the Atlanta kids a rude amount."