Wait, what now? 

Wait, WHAT now?

- is he okay? Do they still do that in China? Maybe it's a- signaling thing, that he's super unconcerned about mals? Julia is not sure he should be that unconcerned about mals! She can't protect him! She's a freshman! And the seniors and most of the juniors are currently running around having their freakout! It's just the New York sophomores and freshmen here! Who are not equipped to solve mal-related - well, actually, Orion could handle it. Julia is pretty sure Chinese people don't know about Orion yet. 

"Uh, hi," she opens her mouth to say, but you can't respond to that with "uh, hi", that's a protagonist of Legally Blonde thing to do but Julia is not out of her element here, she is IN her element here, she is in her very own reading room. 

"- please sit down and have some tea," she says instead. Tea goes with bowing. And that's showing off, a little; New York has tea. "It's real, not illusioned, because the teapot's picky."

He stops bowing, sits down, and politely waits for her to pour him a cup of tea. "Thank you, ma'am. I understand that one of our allies has offended New York and Lan Xichen would like to send his deepest apologies and express his great shame about this fact."

She does not know who Lawn Gee-chin is! Presumably someone important in Shanghai! Julia tries to think who has insulted her so far this week and can't come up with anything. "Uh, it's -  all seagulls to me?" Oh no, that's probably insulting. "I mean, I don't know who you're referring to."

He considers 'I don't expect you to pay attention to the details of our unimportant enclave' but dismisses it as passive-aggressive. "Ma'am, I'm sorry, it must be the language barrier. Our new ally is Masozi."

" - wait, seriously? That's smelly garbage dump maleficer kid, right?" Oh no that's definitely impolitic. "Not that he'd be smelly if not for the garbage dump! I don't think it's intrinsic."

Wow, that's impressive, she's worse at politics than Lan Wangji. Or maybe this is how they do politics in the Anglosphere? Maybe she's insulting him to show that she can get away with it. Which is fine, being insulted is also cheap.

"Masozi is a former maleficer. Of course, should he return to his old ways, Shanghai will handle it. We have no tolerance for maleficing in the enclave."

" - I mean - 

- okay, I'm a freshman, as you must have noticed, from the fact my haircut isn't horrible, and really you need to talk to Annaka about this like right now, or Olivia if you can't find her, but I think you are......maybe underrating how big of a problem this is? Or maybe not, because you bowed kind of a lot, but - uh maybe you have what kind of problem this is sideways? Like, you're trying to solve the problem that Masozi called me a stupid slut or something - he didn't, just, uh, I see how you'd approach that, if that had happened, by being like OUR WHOLE ENCLAVE IS VERY ASHAMED, and I would appreciate that! If that were what happened. But actually the thing the seniors are worried about is that he's stalking the next Domina's son and several people have conveniently dropped dead in his general vicinity and blah blah blah Chicago - I'm not actually sure how Chicago factors into this except SOMEONE did it and we don't know who and that's just, like, you don't go OUR ENCLAVE IS VERY ASHAMED about that problem?

If, uh Beijing had been destroyed the hour of induction and then New York had adopted a maleficer who was stalking one of your freshmen after you'd told him to fuck off and a couple people were already dead and we were like 'oh he's cool now' then I think you'd probably want us to stop that? Rather than to bow? Or in addition to bowing?"

"I would want to talk with those in charge about the misunderstanding, ma'am."

"Seems like a really good idea except they're, you know, all running around talking to everyone else's seniors, because they think Masozi might be on a murder spree and you might be planning to let him as long as he dumps the mana on you! - hey Frank!"

Frank is just exiting the reading room that Sao Paulo and Buenos Aires share. "Julia," he says irritably.

"This is - uh, I don't ...know if he gave his name -"

"I'm Meng Yao, ma'am."

"This is Meng Yao! From Shanghai!"

"Get out of here, Julia, go find your sister," says Frank, and sits down right next to her on the couch, not really leaving her enough space.

"I don't know where she is!!"

"That is why I said 'go find her'. - she's with Kyoto, or Tokyo if she's done with Kyoto, and depending how those went, with either Beijing or St. Petersberg, after that -"

"Okay.

Don't - die."

Frank does not dignify that with a response. "You're here about Masozi?" he says to Meng Yao.

"Yes, sir." Should he bow again-- it would be sort of awkward at this point and the bow did make Julia uncomfortable-- he bows without kowtowing. "Unfortunately, we're not clear on what he did, because about forty minutes ago he found Lan Xichen and started crying because he'd been informed he offended New York and he had no idea how, and since then we've been scrambling to find you to apologize. But we apologize wholeheartedly and we take full responsibility."

The kid does not have a power-sharer, so this is not an actual conversation with Lan Xichen. 

"Uh, he mostly gave offense by being a maleficer, and you can mostly take full responsibility by having nothing to do with him."

"Are you aware of him maleficing in the school? We didn't know he had done such a thing."

"Oh, are we going with 'she just caught an extremely severe extremely sudden flu' - look, Lan Xichen is wildly out of line, the thing he's doing here is completely insane, everyone is terrified, and we're going to have a repeat of last year or worse if you guys don't step way the fuck down. And if he wants to have diplomatic talks, like, by all means, sounds great, I am aware as anyone else that the way this is headed none of us graduate. But tell him this: don't go after Annaka's kid sister who she's constantly fretting about, don't send - minions - come up here your goddamned self and tell us how many bodies we're supposed to drag away for you."

Okay, now he's pretty sure that insulting people is what they do in Anglosphere politics. New York was definitely invited to the sworn brotherhood party, it wasn't his fault they didn't send people.

"I'm Lan Xichen's sworn brother. Sir."

What. What does that even mean. It can't be an alliance, you don't announce those sophomore year. Frank hates these people and hates that if he just says 'and I'm the Queen of England', which is really tempting, then maybe everyone will die. 

"I wouldn't put up with maleficing from my literal actual brother," he says instead, which probably isn't better but at least isn't low-effort. "If you're standing by 'she got the flu' then what are you here to say."

"I don't know who 'she' is, sir. Masozi confessed in a very confused way that he'd done something to offend you and we hurried to apologize as quickly as we could."

Frank takes a deep breath.

"Oh. Okay. Sorry. Look, it's been - so on Thursday and Friday Masozi stalked our freshmen, including the Domina's son who has a weird characteristic that makes him particularly vulnerable to maleficers, so we were pretty freaked out, and conducted an investigation. And we learned that Masozi's so good at drawing from rats it doesn't even hurt, which I assume you knew, and which suggests he can't go clean, so that's cool, and we learned that he got his slot in a unlikely mal attack coincidence and also has an affinity for mal control, which he lied to us about. And then we were trying to track down the kids who went on a supply run with him and one of them was missing, found mostly dead in her room drained of all her life force, so at that point we're about ready to make the call and then Seoul's like 'oh, yeah, Shanghai adopted him', and that's how my day has been going, how about yours."

"Well, I was pulled away from making healing potions by my sworn brother"-- groveling is cheap but he will let himself emphasize that phrase-- "by the discovery that unbeknownst to us our new ally offended the most powerful enclave in the Scholomance, and then once I went to apologize I discovered that they're trying to kill our ally and possibly start a war, so this has not been one of the better days of my life either. Sir."

"If we were trying to kill him he'd be dead. We are trying to determine if he needs killing, and we'd be delighted to learn you also want the answer to that question. Sir."

"You have the word of both myself and Lan Xichen that if anyone attached to the Shanghai enclave, whether ally or enclaver, uses malia we will kill them without you having to be concerned with the matter."

"Is that retroactive, the girl went missing Friday."

"His promise to not malefice anymore happened during orientation, so yes, we would take that very seriously."

"Cool! Maybe we can start with you looking into that and then you can drop us a line and say 'hey, thanks for catching that, New York, we almost allied with a maleficer, big ooops, we owe you one'." 

"We are aware he used to be a maleficer. He was unaware of the effects because he grew up with no education of any sort about magic, was frightened to discover the mind-altering effects, and was eager to quit since before we spoke to him. He continued to say these things under my truth potion, which an untrained freshman is absolutely not able to throw off. We believe that this is an exceptional circumstance in which forgiveness is warranted."

"There's forgiveness and there's alliance. I will entertain a case for forgiveness as much as the next guy, but I think I'd go for his having been clean for, I dunno, a month, before New York announced we're allies. Maybe a week, if we were in a really big hurry. - that's sarcasm, I feel like the actual minimum expectation here is several years. In case we're, you know, misunderstanding each other because of the cultural differences."

"I think," he says politely, "perhaps this should wait until Annaka's arrival so she's fully looped in."

It is incredibly fucking hypocritical for Shanghai to be acting like having Annaka looped in has in any sense at any point been anywhere on their list of priorities. But he can seethe in silence about it, sure.

"May I have an escort to the restroom?"

It's the third day, on the highest level of the school. What's he playing at. 

....Frank will rope in ten scattered sophomores and they can all go together, how about that.

Well, he wants New York not to think he's running off somewhere else in order to murder random freshmen. 

Once he's there, he whispers a spell very quietly under his breath and sets his thoughts to loop away from getting offended at anything New York is doing.

New York does not understand themselves to in any sense have custody of this Shanghai junior or responsibility for his murder habits!! To have that understanding they'd first need to look up sworn brothers really fast, at a very minimum! They can escort him back to the library, though. 

Annaka's been found by the time they get back. She's consulting in whispers with some people outside the door of the Montreal/Toronto reading room. She turns around to see Meng Yao and - visibly steels herself, a little, and then walks over. "Thank you for coming. Frank, can you canvass for resources we can spare the infirmary, apparently it's not a sure thing if Sophie's going to live or not." 

"Yeah. Uh, this is Meng Yao, Lan Xichen's ...sworn brother." He's still not sure what that is but apparently it's a big deal and he can avoid setting Annaka up to offend the guy by being unaware of it. 

Annaka is also not sure what that is. She has heard 'allies, but also you're fucking' but that seems probably homophobic? Also if it's a sex thing why would you call it 'brothers'. "I appreciate you coming here, Meng Yao" she lies very transparently, sitting down. 

"I appreciate you taking the time to speak with me, ma'am, I know your schedule must be very busy," Meng Yao says.

Annaka HAAAAAAATES Sinosphere diplomacy. The thing she wants to do is just hand him all of her goddamned transcripts and say "so, do we have any factual disagreements?' and then go from there but if she does that then everyone will die. 

"New York always has time for Shanghai," she says, instead. If she is any good at this STUPID SUBTEXT GAME that means 'POSSIBLY you should have considered talking to us WHEN YOU ADOPTED A MALEFICER ACTUALLY'. Maybe he will instead take it as 'I think you're important enough to get away with this'. See, this is how wars start, miscommunication. 

He's practiced at not poking at the thoughts that his thoughts are looping away from.

"From our perspective, ma'am," he says, "what happened is that Masozi-- who is quite young and, mm, not the most competent socially-- discovered from one of his friends that he'd offended New York on Friday. He came to Lan Xichen terrified and in tears with absolutely no idea of what he did wrong. We didn't investigate further because we wanted to apologize immediately, which turned out to be wise because to our complete shock New York is accusing our ally of murder and considering gearing up for a war. --I hope of course that this is a misunderstanding, some people can be quite careless with language."

"I, too, hope this is a misunderstanding. New York has no intentions of going to war, though I'll confess our uncertainty about what response to expect from Shanghai should we conclude that a maleficer represents a threat to our students and take action about that."

"I hope we can reassure you about that. Shanghai's policy in general is that use of malia by members of the enclave is punished by execution, and should Masozi violate this policy we will treat him as anyone else. If you have proof that he's used malia we would be in your debt for bringing to our attention this unforgivable error of judgment."

"I'm relieved to hear that." Now, maybe, she can set down the transcripts. "These are precise transcripts of conversations with eleven different students about Masozi's conduct leading up to Sophie's disappearance, and his conduct leaving up to the mysterious mal attack in Johannesburg that earned him his slot. I hope you'll forgive us for wanting to have a complete report before we disseminated it; until an hour ago when Sophie was discovered, we had only vague suspicions and didn't expect the situation was time-sensitive, and we thought it more considerate of your time to present a full report than a half-baked one.

The transcripts were collected in anticipation of the need for transparent, public, predictable handling of maleficers, after the fiasco last year. The first page is a summary. Underlined sentences in the summary have corroboration from at least three sources; highlighted ones have corroboration from at least two sources outside New York. These transcripts were private to New York until an hour ago, but in the last hour they have been shared with Kyoto, Seoul, Sao Paolo, Buenos Aires, London, Paris, and some American enclaves, as we've realized the investigation will need to rapidly transition from a private to a fully public one."

"Thank you very much for your carefulness and completeness," he says with very sincere gratitude. "Do you mind if I take a moment to read them thoroughly?"

"Of course. Note a handful of redactions on page 4 for sensitive information about one of our freshmen."

"Of course," he says.

This one is much less insulting. Maybe Julia and Frank were actually the New York equivalent of Wei Wuxian? He empathizes with Annika. He would be so excruciatingly embarrassed if a delicate political situation accidentally ended up handled by Wei Wuxian. 

Top-line summary:

Masozi is a freshman indie from Africa, here on a Johannesburg spot. He obtained his spot when a Johannesburg inductee died shortly before induction, during an incident where Masozi was also present and impressed Johannesburg adults by protecting younger students. The incident involved an attack by a kvenlik. Kvenliks are not endemic to Johannesburg. Masozi has stated that his affinity is mal sensing. He has been observed in using magic to control the behavior of mals, and evaluators consider it likely that his true affinity is for mal control spells. He has stated that he draws malia from animals, that drawing malia from rats is not difficult or painful for him, and that he did not know that drawing malia was dangerous, addictive, or taboo. He has stated that he might consider stopping because the Scholomance is so much safer than the outside world. A freshman who went on a supply run with him on Thursday and was noted by other participants in the supply run to be particularly friendly and trusting towards him vanished after the supply run. She was found insensate in her room on Sunday, having made him a perfectly tailored suit of clothes while dying. She is delirious but stated that Masozi was her friend and that she merely collapsed from a sudden severe flu. It is unclear at this point if she will survive or recover.

The incidents that incited the investigation are two incidents of Masozi behaving in an aggressive and erratic manner towards New York freshmen after having been directed to leave them alone; they do not themselves constitute sufficient reason for action, but prompted further investigation. Masozi has swapped classes in order to take shop with the New York freshmen after having been told 'we don't trust you, go away' and 'stay the fuck away from the New York freshmen'.

Masozi told Johannesburg he did not speak Mandarin but is taking classes in Mandarin at the Scholomance. It has been claimed that Masozi is acting with the backing and support of Shanghai. Shanghai's presumed denial will be communicated as soon as it's available. 

Silas Kowalski (New York, freshman): 

"He followed us out of the cafeteria and to the stairs; it was ambiguous, at first, if he was following us or just trying to stick to a crowd, but as we started heading down the stairs it was less ambiguous. I was trying to get Julia and Zeke's attention, to make sure they knew we were being followed, but Julia noticed herself, and told him, you know, 'we're not going to the library or the dormitories, we're going down to the senior dorms and you don't want to go there without an escort'. - I know Julia's not diplomacy track, so to speak, but she didn't sound hostile or anything, just - she thought he was confused about where we were headed, and she wanted to give him a heads-up. 

He said, well, I'll be a lookout, he said he's good at spotting mals. Julia said that the reason there were ten of us was so there'd be plenty of lookouts, and that we had enough of them, and that we were going to a private dorm room and the whole school wasn't invited, just people she could vouch for. 

He said "I won't go in the room, then". And then he ran right into the pack, past Julia - she kind of backed off - and right up to Orion and said "hey, Orion, want me to be in front? I'll point out mals!" Orion said "uh, do I know you -" I was pretty panicked at this point, he had a maleficer vibe and he'd charged right into the middle of us and - and there's the question of what a maleficer could do with Orion, right - some of the kids had backed off and were pressing themselves against the walls in a way that would itself have been super dangerous, week 7 - Julia said "look, kid, other people are as dangerous as mals, if you can't trust them. We don't trust you. Go away." He ignored her completely, he kept talking to Orion, who - you know Orion, he's faceblind, I think he wasn't totally sure the kid wasn't New York, never mind that none of us are black - anyway, the kid ...maybe did a bit of magic, standing right there in the middle of us? Don't - don't put that down as a sure thing -"

"On Orion? The kid did magic on Orion?"

"I don't know! I pressed the button on my power-sharer, for 'if I stop holding this down then assume there's an emergency at my location', and the kid goes "look! A mal! At the bottom of the stairs!!' and Orion charges off - that's not uncharacteristic, Orion really likes fighting mals, but then we're all just standing there frozen without Orion and Julia'd roped in two of the poor Chicago mundies, not that six of us shouldn't have been sufficient to keep an eye on them but our scout positions had gotten all messed up by everyone who knew things trying to be out of grabbing radius - I'm still holding the button down, and I inched ahead to try to keep Orion in my field of vision without losing sight of the kid either - we all just stood there dead silent, watching him, while Orion impales this little thing and comes back up -"

"Did the boy do more magic?"

"I don't think so."

"Why didn't you summon help -"

"I didn't want to overreact!! All he'd done was - well, everything I just said -"

"Follow you, repeatedly not leave when asked to leave, ignore Julia telling him that his conduct was threatening, run right up to someone and do magic, disrupt your formation in the middle of the hallway -"

"I'm not sure if he did magic. I had my finger on the button. Anyway, Orion came back, and we were all standing there, and one of Julia's girls said 'your affinity is mal-sensing?' and the kid said 'yeah' and then Julia told him - that he could follow along ten feet behind and tell Orion about mals, if he wanted - it was kind of that or, like, get into a potentially deadly fight? I was just glad that he wasn't in a central position but I was worried - that's not enough consent for a maleficer, is it -"

"'you can follow ten feet behind' shouldn't be, no."

"I switched off the emergency summon trigger. I took the back so I could keep an eye on him. We proceeded down the stairs and made it to Frank, who noticed the maleficing aura - none of us had been sure - and told the kid to scram. Frank can probably tell you that part better than I can."

Fuck fuck fuck he should have got Lan Xichen first--

"My apologies," he says, "I should have thought of this earlier but we're all frazzled-- may I fetch Lab Xichen? We thought this would be a simple apology but for an issue this complicated we need all of Shanghai's leadership on board."

"I thought about suggesting that myself but didn't want to presume on his time," Annaka says. Is that indirect enough for 'yes please do fucking do that'. 

"Excuse me," he says, and walks slowly until he gets out of sight of New York and then runs.

Annaka would like to lie down and take a FUCKING NAP but instead she goes looking for St. Petersburg. She hates her life and feels she deserves the Nobel Peace Prize or something.

He finds Lan Xichen in the Shanghai reading room and pulls him into a private corner.

"Where's Wen Qing?"

"Busy, she's saving the life of a girl who got drained by a maleficer."

"Good. They think Masozi did it." He summarizes the situation.

"So we're going with 'shock, horror, demand a full investigation'?"

"And then deep offense that they'd make a false accusation at a Shanghai ally, if we can swing it."

"Right. Spells--"

"Standard ones, I think, plus I've looped my thoughts away from being offended-- they're so rude--"

"That's an ugly patch, I'll repair it."

"We need to get someone to guard Masozi, show we're taking this seriously--"

"Wangji? He's my brother, combat affinity--"

"A senior, I think. Annaka's sister is utterly incompetent, I don't think she'd get it."

"I'll call in a favor from Kyoto too-- maybe ask New York to send someone? So they know there's no funny business."

"Yes-- where's Masozi-- why are all the people he likes so offensive, I want to give him a guard he knows so he's not terrified but we can't put Wei Wuxian or Nie Huaisang in a delicate situation like this--"

"We need Wangji after all."

Wangji, Masozi, and a trustworthy senior are fetched; meanwhile, Meng Yao and Lan Xichen put on their politics spells.

"I should know more about New York-- this is my fault--"

"No one is perfect, a-Yao."

"I should be!"

Masozi is still in Lan Xichen's room. He's been trying to focus on practicing copying out Mandarin characters. It's incredibly hard to focus, though, now that Lan Xichen and his calming effect are gone. Which at least means he's getting more mana from it. 

And then a senior comes in and says, "New York has accused you of maleficing, we're going to put you under guard in your room while this is being investigated."

(Poor kid. Obviously it's a false accusation but equally obviously they can't say that to The Literal Worst At Politics In His Year And His Year Includes Wei Wuxian.)

Masozi is mostly just very confused! 

"I...mean...I did do maleficing before I came to the school? I thought you knew that?"

Is that the sort of thing you get put under guard for if New York is offended enough? He really wishes Lan Xichen were here to explain what's happening in a way he can understand. 

"In the school. They think you killed a girl. Sophie something?"

"....Sophie's dead?" Masozi manages to push out. And then starts crying, despite his best efforts not to. (He told her she needed to be more dangerous... And it wasn't enough, something happened and he wasn't there and he didn't manage to protect her...) 

Oh god poor kid.

Instead of saying this the senior says, "so there's going to be an investigation and if it turns out you maleficed we're going to kill you."

Sorry, kid, but horrified and broken might keep you alive. She hates this job.

Masozi gets up and follows her. He's stunned and upset and confused enough that he's not even checking for mals, just staring woodenly at nothing and mechanically putting one foot in front of the other. 

He's going to die. It would be incredibly stupid for Lan Xichen to offend New York even more over this, so he won't, he'll do the smart strategic thing, and then New York will kill Masozi and it will all be over and he's never going to see his baby sister again. She probably won't even know she ever had a brother. 

Man when he survives this he's going to be so goddamn loyal to Shanghai. Maybe that's what Lan Xichen is thinking?

"Kind of stupid," she says, "breaking your promise the day after you made it. Like, at least wait a week, right?"

...There's no point in trying to defend himself. Every time he's done that it's only made things worse, because he doesn't understand any of the rules and it's too late now. So he just keeps walking, and tries to cry quietly. 

Annaka gets back from talking to St. Petersburg and Kiev and - journals. Mostly she is writing the incredibly long angry rant about what a horrible person he is that she would dearly love to deliver to Lan Xichen and can't. International diplomacy is all about smiling at horrible human beings who you know for a fact are incredibly evil and not blowing up the world with them. World War II was won by siding with Stalin, and all. But probably privately someone wrote a rant they wouldn't say to Stalin about what a shit human being he was. She hopes they did that. She thinks a little less of them, if they convinced themselves that probably all those gulags and famines were a misunderstanding, just because it made it easier to smile at his horrible horrible face. 

Lan Xichen is objectively probably slightly less of an awful person than Stalin because as far as she is aware of he has not had the opportunity to cause any famines but it's still a very very vicious angry rant.

Lan Xichen arrives and bows deeply. "I'm very sorry about all stress this has caused you. I'm sure you have horrible weekend. Please accept these gifts as token of my apology."

Nie Huaisang bringing in tea, perfume, and candies was actually useful. He's really been much more useful than Lan Xichen expected.

One step behind him and to his left, Meng Yao bows.

Well, it's not the least promising start ever. She's tempted to say what she would actually consider to be adequate compensation but that's probably NOT INDIRECT ENOUGH. "My concern is for the Scholomance," she says instead, "and for the precedents set by the great enclaves like Shanghai that all others look to."

"Everyone's primary concern here is to prevent war and ensure justice. Masozi has been placed under guard by one of our best seniors and my own brother. We request Kyoto to send guard and welcome you to send your own so you know there's nothing untoward happening."

"We'll send someone. But independent of whether Masozi is the maleficer responsible for this particular incident, it is agreed that he was a maleficer as of three days ago, yes? And a quite competent one who could draw malia from rats without hurting himself? Can he in fact use mana at all, at this point?"

"I see him use mana myself. He can draw from Shanghai's powersharer if you want confirmation?"

"Mostly I want to understand your intent in doing such a dangerous and threatening thing."

"I like to read your reports first so we are on same page? --Also, I apologize for absence of Wen Qing. She is busy saving life of Sophie."

"How good of her."

Annaka passes her reports across the table. Again. They're so neatly organized and underlined. "There are some redactions on page 4, for a private matter."

A few pages in, Meng Yao thinks: well, this looks bad.

"I like promise of confidentiality please? I wish to discuss things that I don't wish to leave this room."

Annaka would REALLY LIKE to be able to present her parents with a complete account of her actions but she'd like to survive to graduate even more, probably, if only because it's a prerequisite. "I can agree to keep confidential things you tell me in the course of the investigation, though I might learn them through some other route."

"I agree. I say which things are confidential before I say them. --My sworn brother makes truth potions. Much of what I have to say Masozi confirms when he is under truth potion. I distinguish what he says under truth potion and what he can be lying about. I understand if you're worried that we lie about whether he take truth potion. Later I think we arrange for him to repeat his statements under truth potion. We figure out then how to assure you that is truth potion."

God, this is expensive. 

She can mostly understand him if she concentrates. She bets people didn't have that problem with STALIN.

"That...is good to hear and would help.

...even if I accept that he swore that he wanted to stop, and meant it, I think he is likely to fail at that. Most people can't kick an addiction the first time they try. I see why you would believe in his good intent. It still looks like you did a reckless and confusing thing, and I don't understand why." Oh no that's probably too direct.

"Requesting confidentality, we have six freshmen this year. Two are useless: Wen Ning is monolingual in Mandarin and too meek to fight even in practice; Nie Huaisang responds to stress by breaking into tears. Three of the remaining are not suited to form alliances to protect first two: Jiang Cheng is angry at everyone; Lan Wangji doesn't like speaking; and Wei Wuxian says whatever is on his mind no matter how offensive. The last is Song Lan who disappears during induction. His room is empty so we believe he is prevented from induction somehow, perhaps killed. I am relying on Song Lan to take care of other five, and he is not here. So I seek out alliance with someone competent and vulnerable. Masozi dies without Shanghai, so he is loyal and grateful. He's not reliant on me being there or on charming personality of Jiang Cheng to shepherd Wen Ning and Nie Huaisang out. He has no options besides us. So we ally quickly, because without us he dies, that is point." 

"Surely 'competent and vulnerable' describes several freshmen who are not maleficers and very alarming to everybody!"

"Not so vulnerable that they die without us for certain. --Well, Chicago, but we don't know about Chicago when we ally." Thoughtfully, as if a side point: "Induction is very dangerous this year and we both-- Anglosphere and Sinosphere-- are victims."

Don't say that you bet his enclave was involved in Chicago, that will not help. It can go in the angry rant. 

Don't ask why Shanghai sent dead weight, either. It's not like Julia has the world's most useful affinity. (Julia's just immature, though. She'll grow up...)

"So you figured - you make it clear that he won't survive without you, he is loyal, he gets your deadweight through even after you're gone, and if everyone else is a little scared that you have a pet maleficer, well, no harm done, you can kill him for it if he becomes too much of a liability?" 

"He's very intelligent. I teach him Mandarin to get a sense of this. I suspect strong chance of him making valedictorian in spite of before the Scholomance only teaching himself things from books. You lead enclave. You put yourself in my shoes. You have freshman with strong chance of being valedictorian. You have chance to make him loyal to you so he can't be poached by other enclaves. There is year you are very worried about-- there is chance everyone dies, which is unthinkable for enclave of our power. Your own brother is in this year. Freshman malefices in past, but he is horrified by this, he wants to stop even before you speak to him, and he has no idea of consequences. You have reputation with Sinos, you can explain to them. You don't know he troubles Anglos! He doesn't say this. As far as you know he has never met them. So you take chance on freshman and keep close eye on him. Sinos know you do this, are not worried-- even Seoul who hates me is not worried." He bows. "I apologize for oversight not speaking to Anglos. In general, you don't pay attention to us, we don't pay attention to you. My English is very weak. I expect Seoul to convey information to you in reassuring manner full of hatred of me personally so you know they are not biased by liking. I expect this to happen in few weeks where you are reassured by everything is fine so far. I am busy managing Sinosphere, it is overlooked. I am sorry. I know it causes you very stressful weekend, and I wish it does not happen. --Of course perhaps he is maleficer and then Shanghai is very grateful to you for collecting such useful information. We owe you many favors in this case for your hard work."

Well, she doesn't want to die. 

"Maybe he's a maleficer now. I do believe you he'll drop them, if he is. Maybe he's not. If he's not, and he's loyal to you, and he's got a bunch of dead weight to carry across the finish line in four years - which is also the year with my kid sister in it - how do you think he's gonna try to pull it off."

"I expect he learns to use his affinity to do to mals what you're scared he does in Johannesburg. --Request for confidentiality, his affinity isn't mal control, it's minds. He pushes it in direction to be able to sense mals. I don't know if he controls mals but I am very very very surprised if he does, freshmen aren't that good at getting their affinities to do things they don't want them to do. He lies about it because he knows everyone is scared of him and doesn't know why and worries that mind control affinity scares them more. He confesses to me without meaning to when I give him truth potion." 

"Okay. That - does make him scarier, right. You see why that makes him scarier. Because it seems like it'd go really well with maleficing."

"Yes. --If it helps, insufficient mana is not problem I expect Shanghai enclave to have? Our deadweight is surprisingly good at collecting mana. It's using it that's the problem. I think maleficing would solve wrong problem. I also think it's not in his interests to pull malia again. Even if he keeps Wen Ning and Nie Huaisang alive, Shanghai enclave outside does not employ maleficer. He gives up essentially guaranteed spot at one of best enclaves in world."

Annaka stares miserably off into the middle distance thinking about the Allies chopping up Europe between them. And the alternative wasn't getting all of Europe and governing it nicely, it was - well, she doesn't know actually? She hasn't taken a mundane history class since she was twelve and Transportation Logistics On the African Front (readings in Italian and Arabic) was a great class with some kickass spells but a different emphasis.

"Okay," she says. "Here's how we'll do this. I'll give you a list of questions. It'll be long, it'll include, like, to get Shanghai out the door in four years, would you use malia, have you used the mind-control affinity on people, what happened in Johannesburg, etcetera. We'll go give him a truth potion and I get to ask all of my questions. Then, if I think you should get to keep him, I will narrow the list down to enough questions to satisfy everyone else, while leaving out all the ones where the answer is embarrassing or terrible for message or whatever, and while still making it clear that this is an enormous burden and enclaves tempted to follow can't reasonably do it. And we'll do the truth potion thing again, in the auditorium. Without putting about that we got the answers in advance, I think more people will come if it's high drama. I need to think about how we'll prove to everyone it's a real truth potion but I know someone who might have some ideas. And that way - you claim this is a wildly exceptional circumstance, and doesn't set as appalling a precedent as it looks like. There are some Anglo enclaves that agree with you, or I wouldn't even consider this. But an enormous to-do about an edge case of a taboo can firm it up, if we do it right -" Shit is he even following her, his English isn't great. Well, if he's a bit off balance, all the better.

"And you take a truth potion and tell me you don't know a damned thing about Chicago."

"I'm happy to. I suspect Shanghai may be victim of whatever caused Chicago as well. Do you like me to do it now or wait until you've verified potion?"

As it happens they don't know anything about Chicago but Meng Yao can't help but think that it would be so easy for Lan Xichen to get around one of Meng Yao's truth potions if he wanted to! Annaka is so insufficiently paranoid about this!

"The latter. I'll get back to you when I have a plan for verifying the potions; maybe someone in the Anglosphere can provide one of their own and everyone can drink both, that's symbolic and hard to quibble about. I'm willing to do the initial conversation with the kid as soon as you're ready, though; if you fake the potion for that one you'll just be embarrassed in the auditorium."

"I like to talk with you about exact questions-- maybe I see some questions you want to bring up."

"Yes, all right. We can work those out now." Flip swiftly past the angry rant pages, Lan Xichen probably can't read English but if he can it'd be super awkward. "Okay. I want to ask, broad categories, under what circumstances would you use malia, what has Lan Xichen told you about malia, why'd you decide to go clean, if you were going to die would you pull malia to save your life, stuff like that - not everything is obviously disqualifying, but I have to actually know what's going on if I'm going to keep my people safe. I want to ask what happened to Sophie and what happened in Johannesburg and what he's done with the mind control affinity. I want to ask what he was after when he picked a fight with our freshmen in the hallway, and how he got interested in Orion Lake, and whether he plans to mess with our students. I want to press him on what he'll do if things look desperate at graduation time - he might not know himself that well, but it's a place to start. I want to see if he has, you know, life goals incompatible with being a maleficer. I want the answer to a bunch of random confusing things - the mal grubs, the Monday morning shop class, why he didn't tell Johannesburg he speaks Mandarin..."

"He doesn't speak Mandarin. He gets advice on taking classes from Wei Wuxian who says 'oh, yes, absolutely, you can take math class in language you don't speak, it is fine' because Wei Wuxian is genius who believes everyone else is genius. Fortunately class is not very language-heavy."

" - I see. 

I'm not - expecting the kid to be a saint, there's a reason I didn't suggest doing it in public first. But if he's a serious threat to the other students, then - even if I were inclined to give you a pass on that, the rest of the Anglo enclaves wouldn't be. There'd be a hundred people coming up with assassination plans. So he's going to have to be reassuringly committed, and the situation is going to have to be genuinely different enough no one can claim theirs is like it, or you and I do not actually have the power to put this to rest."

Honestly, an assassination is better than a war. Fewer people die in assassinations. If it looks bad he'll pick the best of the assassination plotters and make sure they succeed well enough that Shanghai doesn't have to notice and take offense at it.

"It is unfortunate he is ally," Lan Xichen says sadly. "It is inconvenient timing. If he is not, we say 'oh, as a favor to our good friends New York, we leave him to survive on his own, in eighteen months if he uses no malia perhaps we explore possibility of alliance again.' But Shanghai is reliable with alliances. My word is good, you understand. If only we talk sooner."

If only I hadn't assumed that THREE DAYS was soon enough because who the fuck allies with someone in THREE DAYS, Stalin. 

"I understand. It is unfortunate. But we will determine what can be done."

Lan Xichen is going to look through Annaka's list of questions and suggest his own, aiming for suggesting questions which hint to Masozi the way that he's supposed to be thinking about things without tipping off Annaka that he's doing this.

Annaka is not sure whether to expect them to use a truth potion for this or not! If not, they're going to be humiliated in front of the whole school tomorrow, and she's fine with that outcome too. Lan Xichen can propose his questions with weird phrasings either because he's up to something or because he's not a native English speaker, sure. 

...Can he just rewrite Masozi's thoughts?

If he has a few hours alone where he can concentrate he can rewrite Masozi's propositional beliefs and replace them with the beliefs he prefers Masozi has. Not for a long time, just for long enough to throw off the truth potion. But his affinity is for controlling minds, not reading them. And the results he gets when he doesn't know someone well are-- weird. If Lan Xichen were going under a truth potion, he'd be able to rewrite him so flawlessly no one would notice. But with three hours and an incomplete idea of what he'd need to stop Masozi from saying... Annaka is good enough that she'd notice something was off.

He hates it though. This problem has such a simple solution that is under his control and instead he has to rely on Annaka's good judgment. 

What happens if Masozi fucks it up? They can't let New York threaten war and break up one of Shanghai's alliances. That's a terrible precedent, New York has to know it can't interfere in the internal governance of Shanghai by threatening war, that's not safe for anyone. They can aim for a face-saving excuse if Annaka is unconvinced-- if Annaka knows that she needs to give them a face-saving excuse, that she needs to signal that this is an exceptional circumstance and it's not going to happen again--

She seems scared, he thinks. She doesn't seem like she's trying to get control over Shanghai, except that she is scared and wants to make sure she's safe. If he knew who their second-in-command was he could talk to them, second-in-command to second-in-command-- look, we're happy to back down on this but you have to make it clear this is an exception, you can't dictate our internal matters by threatening to go to war with us, I know this is exceptional and you know this is exceptional but I have Beijing to think about, they have to know we're not rolling over whenever you give orders-- but he doesn't know who theirs is and he has the sinking suspicion it's Frank. Frank doesn't seem like the sort of person who's interested in letting Shanghai save face.

He's going to have to improvise. He hates improvising. 

"Hey Annaka!" calls a voice. "Annaka I have a note for you!"

" - oh. Hi Orion. A note from who?"

"Olivia! She did Morse code but I forgot about Morse code so as long as I was there she gave me this for you."

"Right. Thank you," Annaka says to Orion. If Annaka were a terrifying superweapon she'd do so much more with it. Maybe that's why she isn't.

She shows him out. Reads the note.

"Beetles were discovered in Masozi's room, everyone thinks we should be apprised of this. ...should we head on down there before more things happen."

"Yes, it seems wise."

Great. Off they go. People are staring but Annaka will have to figure that out later.