Larisa raises her hand. 

"...If he doesn't speak Mandarin, then why the fuck does Shanghai want him?" 

"We think he might have lied to Johannesburg about not speaking Mandarin. He has several classes in it."

That really does not seem much less inexplicable! How and why would a random African indie kid - clearly a poor one, too - have a chance to learn Mandarin? And if he did, why the fuck would he lie about it and make himself sound less qualified and prepared to survive the Scholomance? 

She doesn't interrupt again, though. 

Annette from Atlanta raises her hand. "How solidly do you trust Frank? Last year was a shitshow and I'm all in favor of cracking down on maleficing, but I hope you can understand why someone from the South would want to be cautious about the possibility of going after a black kid because he was uppity and a white guy said he had bad vibes." 

"He admits to the maleficing. He told some kids he went on a supply run with that rats don't hurt if you do it right, and they were appalled and told him it's bad for you, which apparently he'd been completely unaware of. Asked a bunch of questions about what kind of brain damage it causes. They tried to convince him to go clean, though it might be too late for that without stopping magic use which he can hardly do in here; he was reportedly noncommital."

"--Wow, okay."

Suze is acutely conscious of being the youngest person in here. Still. "How did you come by the information that Shanghai's adopting him?"

"He was sitting with them in the cafeteria when I went looking for him to ask some questions about the dying girl, which I haven't told you about yet. I flagged down a friend from Seoul and asked how he'd gotten that invite, she said 'oh, yeah, Lan Xichen's adopted him, gave him clothes and has Shanghai warding his room and everything'. I said 'are you fucking sure' and she said 'not a lot of African indies here, Annaka, and he came around to the whole Sinosphere on Friday, to let us know'."

Winston has a question, but it's one of those questions that should be asked in private and not in front of a third of the senior class. He files it away for later.

"What avenues do we have for learning more about what the fuck Shanghai is thinking?" says Anne from Toronto.

"Let's discuss that in a minute, I want to finish catching everyone up.

The following us to the senior dorms and the shop class thing are enough for us to do an investigation. Our primary focus was whether he's a danger to Orion, frankly. I don't know what will happen if a maleficer tries to pull from the kid with infinite mana reserves but the answer might well be 'new exciting kind of mal that eats the school'. We went to Johannesburg and got the story on his induction. We talked to some kids who'd been on supply runs with him and got the story about the pulling from rats without it hurting. We talked to some kids who'd seen him - lure mals to him with magic, in the bathrooms, he'd been offered trade goods for mal grubs and he could make the grubs wiggle out of the drains to him. One guess is that his affinity is not mal-detection but mal-control, it'd explain that and the conveniently timed jaculi and the kvenlik in Johannesburg. But we're not sure. Another guess is that someone else arranged that for him with their own goals, which he may or may not know; that'd gesture at some explanations for the beeline to Orion and the speaking Mandarin and the sudden friendship with Shanghai, but it's also practically impossible to prove or disprove in here, so." Shrug. "We also talked to someone who'd heard him say that he can stop maleficing in here because it's so safe in here, which isn't encouraging for his actions once it gets dangerous in here."

"And finally, an hour ago, while talking to a New Zealand kid who was on a supply run with him, she realizes she hasn't seen another girl who was on that supply run and friendly with Masozi, Sophie, since the supply run. No one else has either. We break down her door. She's alive but barely, remains to be seen if she'll make it. She spent the last couple of days tailoring a suit of magical clothes for Masozi while delirious and mostly unable to move. She - it looks a lot like someone drained her life force and was too inexperienced to take all of it, but maybe she just caught the flu at the worst possible time, that's her own hypothesis. So if not for the Shanghai complication we were planning to confront the kid and make a decision once it's clear if Sophie lives and whether he did her, but while we're rushing the girl to the infirmary we learned of the Shanghai complication.

And...for the Shanghai situation the most important thing here is that he's openly admitted to maleficing, said he can draw from rats without it hurting which suggests pretty inured to maleficing, and that they've adopted him three days in which they never do even with indie freshmen who are clean as a whistle. I don't know what the fuck they're playing at but I'm terrified, and I'm mad, and my present inclination is to kill him tomorrow morning in shop and let Shanghai decide what they're going to do about that. But - it seems reasonably likely that what they'll do about that is have a war, so we're not doing a damn thing unless people are behind us and we've exhausted our other options, and that's what we're here to figure out."

"Have you considered options for making his death look like an accident?"

Sigh. Probably this was inevitable, but he was really hoping Annaka wouldn't make that explicit yet. And that Annete wouldn't just blurt that out.

Sigh. "It's one of the reasons we haven't gone marching over to the Shanghai table yet. If we don't indicate that we've noticed anything, and he dies in Monday morning shop, then, well, he was a moron who took Monday morning shop as a freshman, too bad so sad. But when we started the investigation we didn't have concealing it from Shanghai in mind, and we've talked to fifteen people. I don't feel great about betting that it won't get back to them. 

Furthermore, now that it's under discussion, if he does die, which he has decent odds of doing because he's an idiot in Monday morning shop, it looks like us, even though anyone would've given good odds that a random indie freshman taking Monday morning shop doesn't make it to Field Day anyway."

"After what happened last year, anyone who spills about this discussion if he does die is an idiot who shouldn't have been included," she half-mutters. 

"Why not try diplomacy, if we're damned if he dies whether New York does it or not."

"Maybe that's what we do next, but I want to figure out what to say, if so. On my own recognizance I'd march over there and say 'no, you're not adopting a maleficer, hilarious how such a horrible insult to your character made it into the rumor mill, you'll publicly announce that you've got nothing to do with him and if we need to kill him then we will, got it' but, well, firstly I only have spell-Mandarin and Lan Xichen only has spell-English, and secondly, it's not going to work, there's no way he just hasn't realized everyone's going to be terrified and pissed off. And the kid dying in an accident might be a catastrophe, but it also might be ambiguous enough Shanghai backs off; it's not sure enough it'd turn out fine to make me happy but I wouldn't say we've got nothing to lose."

"If you talked to Shanghai and they dropped him like an acid potato and promised not to have anything to do with him again, would that even change anything? It sounds like you'd still be just  as worried for your freshmen's lives."

"It would change the odds there's a war if he dies," Annette points out. 

"Yeah, probably we still kill him but we'd finish the investigation into Sophie, first, and let Johannesburg lead on the investigation of that, and we, you know, send out notice of intent and our nicely collated evidence and no one ends up under the impression that we -" She glances over at Atlanta - "uh, lynched a kid for being weird and smelly."

Nod. 

Winston really wishes people would stop shouting things out and constraining poor Annaka's options. This meeting is a really unfortunate size, too large for effective secrecy or planning and too small to not look like a conspiracy to those on the outside.

Landon lifts his hand. 

"I'm not sure this is actually decision-relevant in most of the scenarios, but I feel better about plans where it is relevant - how much evidence do we actually have of this kid's intentions? Because it seems like the things we know for sure are compatible with him being - clearly a threat we need to take out ASAP - but also compatible with him being an incredibly clueless child who managed to stumble his way in here half by luck, and really didn't have any way of knowing about the risks of pulling malia until a few days ago. And...I mean, even in that case it's probably not worth the risk, but - it'd affect the perception of it, right, if Shanghai knows - or thinks they know - more about that then we do." 

"I assume they think they have a good read on their pet maleficer, seems incredibly unwise to adopt one you don't have a good read on. I ...have no idea how we'd figure out if he's sincere, other than that if Sophie doesn't have the flu that rules it out. 

Even if he's just an innocent kid in way over his head - I'm not actually sure we have a choice, here, like he's an innocent kid in way over his head who can therefore have been inferred not to have brought mice, and if he's at the point of drawing rats without feeling a thing I'm pretty sure he can't go clean while still using magic half as much as you need to to survive, in here. But yeah, distinct possibility that this is just a goddamned tragedy and Shanghai.... 'feels sorry for him' does not seem in character, or appropriate given the stakes....has a plan for the mal control affinity? That's the most optimistic possibility I can think of..."

"I really don't like condemning an indie kid for malificing in Sub-Saharan Africa," is Sara's input, "If he's actually drained a human, sure- but he might not have. People drain rats all the time in the Scholomance, if that's all it takes we'd have to kill- well, some established enclavers, for one." Her sister, if she wasn't already dead. "If he can trade for some rats and didn't kill anyone, is it any of our business?"