"Good...for you?" 

"Yeah, see, I get better allies when I pick them. Shoo." 

The senior takes some more shooing before she leaves, but she does, eventually, shoo. 

"Sorry about that," she says to El. 

"I blame you entirely. I will never forgive you."

"Woe," she snorts, and then turns to Aadhya. "Do you think any of the argonet parts will be useful for the harp?"

"Yeah, there's enough spare bones that I can use them for tuning pegs."

"Excellent. Let me know if there's anything I can do to help, between that and the beads I know you've got a pretty full workload." 

"Remember you've probably been cut off from the New York homework minions."

"--Okay, yeah, that's true, I will have less free time than I'm used to." 

"Liu might not mind picking up some of your homework if you get swamped."

"Worst case scenario I'm sure I'm in a better position to fight my homework than most people are, but, uh, let's not let it come to that. I'll talk to her if it becomes a problem." 

Lucia has a harder time doing her own homework than she would have if she had been doing it all along, but she's reasonably good at bullshitting from extended exposure to New York, so she manages to muddle through. 

The four of them end up spending a lot of time down in shop, Aadhya using tools less convenient to bring to someone's room than a drill, and all the space, to work on the harp and the beads and the sodegarami; the other three of them lend her an extra pair of hands when one is called for, and otherwise do their homework, although Lucia gets up every five minutes or so to double-check the area for mals using her shininess spell. 

Lucia is between checks, and Aadhya is doing fine on her own, when a murmuring of voices becomes audible from the hallway outside. 

Well, if they're understandable without opening the door, El won't propose going for a water run, even though it's hot in here with the forges going and they're all sweating.

They aren't understandable from the bench they're sitting at. Lucia gets up and presses her ear to the door, her brows furrowing in frustrated annoyance. 

"We could use more water, if you don't think they'll notice us eavesdropping."

"I think they probably will. --They've bribed a maintenance kid, they want to open the shiny new wall with a maintenance hatch." 

"- and what, just leave it like that? Somebody'll take the free maintenance hatch if it's not instantly swarmed, those things take months."

"I'm not assuming their plan only has steps I happened to overhear." 

"Point. Does that mean it's not wise to go swipe the hatch when they've gone?"

"Not sure. I'd at least want to poke it with a nice long stick first." Pause. "I think I hear it going up." Pause. "I'm really glad that this is happening after the argonet incident." 

"Well, it could be we just barely missed the top half of an argonet comically poking out of the hatch, unable to get its hips through."

"May've done, but I'm not sure the hatches are that sturdy." 

"They probably aren't." Sigh. "I wonder if seniors in previous years have had this idea. It's not solely a smart move if you're personally killing lots of mals, any thinning the herd by letting them into the rest of the school would still be valuable."

“I think probably it’s only a good idea if you can be confident that most of the senior class is on your side. And if you’re not desperate—or only a normal amount of desperate—it’s only a good idea if you don’t have any younger siblings.” Snort. “Or an enclave. I don’t have many fond feelings for New York, but if the seniors destroy the school, the New York seniors are going to be in so much trouble.”

"Well, that's only if they get caught. A hatch left behind could be a maintenance kid bolting from a mal, dying somewhere conveniently else, and never getting around to collecting the hatch on account of being dead."

“Well, the problem with that plan is that it creates an obvious incentive to eliminate the accomplice who provided the hatch.”

"Wouldn't put it past some people."

“—Yeah, but because the incentive is obvious, it makes it harder to recruit a maintenance-track accomplice.”