- okay, Chantal was suicide and if people decide to reinvestigate that on the strength of all the other murders Annisa's going to be so unhappy. Though probably not accused, since she has no real way to have murdered Song Lan and has never heard of the other two so she's probably never been near them. 

Also, wow, that's even deadlier than school's supposed to be, which is saying something, though if the kid's going after enclavers the enclaves will come down hard very soon. 

"Well," she says quietly to her table, "uh, on the whole that's a more cheerful explanation for all the bustle yesterday than 'there's gonna be a war', so, that's good?"

Sophie Hara, UK independent, died last night.

Oh. 

It would be stupid to feel responsible. He doesn't; he met her once, and he's not so emotionally immature that he would blame himself for not protecting someone like that, not in the Scholomance. (Not for more than a moment, anyway.)

Probably it would be a bad idea to grieve. Statistically speaking three-quarters of the people he meets are going to die, and that's if he and Lucy don't die themselves. It would certainly be a bad idea to grieve publicly. It would mark him as weak. 

But he thinks a freshman on the Monday after induction is allowed to have some feelings about the very first death of somebody he knew and liked. He squeezes Lucy's hand. It's not much, as public displays of emotion go, but she'll understand, and she's the only one it's safe to display them to. 

Also, they were going to make such cool hats together, and he's kind of mad that that's not going to happen now. 

She squeezes his hand back. 

She's going to have to check up on Masozi at some point, but Sophie is dead; Wilbur's feelings are more important than hers right now. 

(She does feel a little responsible; not for Sophie's death, but for Wilbur's grief. She was the one who threw him at her, after all.)

"I assume this is uncharacteristically useful?"

Oria snorted, and said, "A bit. He's been spreading gossip weekly for a few months, but this is more substantial."

"Should we do anything?"

"...someone's going to be coordinating. New York, probably, maybe Shanghai."

"I can offer our help. If that's wise - I'm weaker but also unknown."

"Hmm. In their place, I wouldn't trust our usual standards at the moment. A freshman maleficer is a freshman maleficer."

"And looked at in the wrong light, causing chaos or war could benefit Pisa on the outside... So, send sophomores?"

"Yes and yes. One to each, ideally. Luca?"

"I can offer to Shanghai," he says, easily. He looks over to their table and, unlike his cousins, follows exactly what is being yelled. He tips his head. "But can it wait until lunch?"

Teresa returns to her food. There's no reason to try to manage her older cousins, especially since she'll hear how it goes either way.

"It's kind of good, but it also means someone in our class has murdered four - no, I guess three people?" she says to Annisa. "Which is not actually a great number of murders, for as many full days of being at the school. Especially if it's someone we're likely to run into. - Especially if they're doing it randomly, those people don't sound connected at all."

Shit. 

- okay.

She knows it's ridiculous, but her brain has immediately labeled this an important side quest (for SOMEONE ELSE to handle), and - she should probably try not to go anywhere without at least two people, then? Great. Okay.

Kind of hard to stop a crazy serial killer with a gun but that just means - that means that this is not her problem. And that she's going to have to be more careful. Which she can do.

Well, that explains what was up with the Atlanta seniors. Four deaths this early on is much worse than a normal year but on the other hand none of them were people she knew so it's still a lot better than her entire projected Scholomance career. This is a very low bar for three days but honestly Atlanta does not quite live up to New York's exalted survival rate of eighty percent and she and Kanimir are the eldest of five so she has bigger problems. 

(Is that selfish, when all the indie kids with siblings are going to lose some? Yes, but she's willing to cop to being selfish. You put your own oxygen mask on first, she can worry about being a good person when the youngest, Robin, is inducted and beyond any aid she hasn't already given him.)

This is not fair at all. He was warned about what dangers to expect, and there were lots of them, but he was not supposed to have to worry about people with guns.

Well, that's not great.

He should be safe -- he hasn't done any maleficing, he doesn't have an aura, he probably isn't even the only one here who brought in some mice just in case. But that doesn't change the fact that if the enclaves decide that the best thing they can do is demand everyone allow them to search their rooms, they'll find his hastily-constructed mouse terraria.

He kind of wants to blame the maleficer who was apparently stupid enough to murder multiple people but that's pointless, blaming other people for being stupid doesn't stop them from doing it. It doesn't matter if someone else's stupidity gets you eaten by a mal, you've still been eaten.

Jaipur is currently waiting, choosing not to pounce. There was a decision, well over her head, about how they're handling this. Hira knows that not all of the freshmen are happy about it- Daya is champing at the bit, wishing she could take care of the maleficer problem herself, and she would put money on Navya feeling the same way.

She thinks caution is smart- they don't need to make an enemy out of New York. Or at least, she thought that this weekend, when the upperclassmen told them what little dregs of information they thought their freshmen needed to know. The number of dead so far is causing her to rapidly reconsider a lot of her preconceived notions about the Scholomance. If there are freshmen maleficer serial killers- Jaipur needs to move fast. They need to move first.