by Naomi Novik
I almost always have to sit in the front rows. It keeps my attention remarkably focused.
Today, though, I was able to get a seat about halfway up, and no one around it said oh sorry, that one’s saved. It helped me to calm down to sullen irritation before lunch. The initial damage was already done, in terms of people thinking Orion was saving me, so it was time to take a deep breath and find a way to rescue the situation. And as soon as I’d forced myself to do that, my revised strategy became obvious.
So at lunchtime I made a point of sitting down next to Aadhya and whispering to her, “He walked me to class!” and followed it up with, “He can’t really like me, though,” just before he came out of the line, spotted me, and came over to our table and sat down across from me with narrowed eyes.
Orion’s never dated anyone, or so I concluded from the fact that I hadn’t heard about him dating anyone. Unsurprisingly, the news that he was apparently gone on me bolted through the entire school at even more lightning speed than the story of his rescuing me in the first place. By the time I had to go down to the alchemy labs for my last session of the day, a boy named Mika, whom I’ve never even spoken to—I think he’s Finnish—had saved two seats at a prime table, and when I came in, he called, “El, El,” and pointed to the one next to him.
That certainly was a change. I always rush to get to lab early despite the higher risk of being one of the few there while the room’s mostly empty, because if I don’t arrive while there’s still a decent table open, everyone will have saved the good seats for their friends, and then I’ve got to sit at one of the bad tables, the ones directly underneath the air vents or closest to the door. I can’t wheedle for a spot, it makes me too angry, and threatening makes me feel equally terrible, just in the opposite way. So it was very nice to walk right into a half-full room and still get a seat at the best table, without having to barter for it.
Of course, this happy state of affairs was dependent on Orion playing his part, but he came in just before the bell, looked round the room, and came straight to the seat next to mine. Mika craned his head around me to peer at him and smile hopefully. Too bad for him the gesture was lost on Orion, who was too busy studying all my ingredients and the reaction I was working on.
Most people get alchemy assignments to produce antidotes and preventive elixirs, or the good old standby of producing gold out of cheaper elements. I’m never set recipes for anything that useful; I’ve got to trade for them. I had already rejected several assignments this week—turning lead into radioactive palladium, producing a deadly contact poison, and converting flesh into stone—before I got my current assignment to produce a jet of superheated plasma, which might be useful under at least some circumstances. For example, it would be absolutely ideal for charring bones into ash, which you wouldn’t think would be the first thing that would jump to a person’s mind, except Orion looked at it and said immediately, “That’s hot enough to disintegrate bone,” with hard suspicion.
“Oh, have you done this one already?” I said, insincerely. “Don’t tell me, I want to learn it for myself.”
He spent most of the class watching me instead of doing his own work. It made me angry, but being angry’s always good for my work. My ingredients were iron, gold, water, a chunk of polished lapis lazuli, and half a teaspoon of salt, which had to be arranged at distances proportional to their relative quantities. Woe if you’re off by a millimeter. But I got them lined up properly on the first go. I could hardly embark on an exercise routine in the middle of my class, so instead I softly sang three long complicated songs to raise the mana, two in English and one in Marathi. The sparking-flame bloomed inside my cupped palms, and I managed to edge my ritual tray nearer to Orion before I tipped the spark over the ingredients and jumped back. The thin blue flame swallowed them all in a gulp and roared up mightily, so hot that a sweltering wave rolled out through the entire classroom. There were even a few alarmed shrieks from inside the air ducts, and scrabbling noises went overhead.
Everyone instinctively ducked under their desks, except Orion. The paper twists he was using to hold his own ingredients had all caught on fire just from proximity, and he was desperately dousing flames. It made me feel much better.
So did having Nkoyo invite me to dinner on the way out of the lesson. “We usually meet at thirteen minutes to six, if you want to join us,” she said. I didn’t bother making sure Orion was overhearing; she’d have made sure of that herself.
“If I can bring Yi Liu.” Hopefully Orion would get bored with my lack of actual evildoing at some point, and I didn’t trust all my new friends not to ditch me as soon as that happened. But Liu would be happy to broaden her circles—she doesn’t have the same effect on people that I do, but she’s still not a popularity queen like Jack; you have to really go the whole hog before the malia starts to cover up—and she’d remember I’d done her a favor when I had a chance.
I caught Liu in our hall going back to her room after class and told her; she’d been at an afternoon workshop section herself. She nodded and looked at me thoughtfully and volunteered, “Orion was asking questions about Luisa in writing workshop after lunch.”
“Of course he was.” I grimaced. Jack would definitely blame me for that, what with Orion following me around. “Thanks. I’ll see you at thirteen to six.”
I didn’t see Jack anywhere around, but I checked for any malicious spells on my cell door and did an especially thorough look over the room before I went inside, just in case he’d got ambitious. But there wasn’t anything, so I buckled down to my mana-storing exercise routine until dinnertime.
My plan has been to fill crystals throughout this year unless an emergency or a really golden opportunity presents itself—like that soul-eater could have been!—and then use a few of them judiciously to establish my reputation just before the end of term, so I can get into a solid graduation alliance early next year. We all stockpile mana as much as we can in between near-death experiences; even enclavers. It’s about the one thing you can’t bring in with you, even stored tidily in a power sink like Mum’s crystals.
Or rather, you’re very welcome to bring all the filled-up power sinks you want, but they’ll get sucked completely dry by the induction spell that lands us all in here, which is massively mana-hungry. In fact, you get extra weight allowance in exchange. Not much extra, so it’s not worth it unless you’re an enclaver and can casually throw away thirty filled power sinks for an extra quarter-kilo. But Mum’s never had more than ten filled crystals round in my life, and the last few years we had less. I came in with my one small knapsack and my empties instead.
And I’m ahead of the game at that. Most power sinks are a lot bigger and heavier than Mum’s crystals, so lots of kids can’t afford to bring empties in, and most of them don’t work nearly as well, especially when they’ve been built in the shop by a fourteen-year-old. I’m in a decent position, but it’s really hard to get on when I’m constantly having mals flung at my head. And it gets harder and harder to fill them with exercise, because the older I get and the better shape I get in, the easier the same exercise gets. Mana’s annoying that way. The physical labor isn’t what counts. What turns it into mana is how much effort it costs me.
Next year I desperately need people watching my back and helping me fill more. If I can only make it to graduation with fifty full crystals, I’m confident I can single-handedly blaze a path for me and my allies straight to the gates and out, no more clever strategy required. It’s one of the few situations in which a wall of mortal flame might actually be called for: in fact that’s how the school cleans out the cafeteria and does the twice-yearly scouring of the halls. But I’m not going to get there unless I stick to my pace. Which currently means, drumroll, two hundred push-ups before dinner.
I’d like to say I didn’t give Orion a thought, but actually I lost a good chunk of my push-up time pointlessly calculating the odds that he’d
follow me to dinner. I settled on sixty–forty, but I admit I would have been disappointed if I hadn’t seen the flash of his silver-grey hair at the meeting point when I came out. He was waiting for me. Nkoyo and Cora were both waiting, too, failing not to stare at him. There was a wild struggle between jealousy and confusion going on on Cora’s face, and Nkoyo just looked woodenly blank. Liu joined me halfway down the hall, and Jowani came out of his room and hurried to meet us just in time for the walk. “Any of you know anyone else studying Old English?” I asked as we set out.
“There’s a soph, isn’t there?” Nkoyo said. “I don’t remember his name. Anything good?”
“Ninety-nine household cleaning charms,” I said, and the trio all made noises of sympathy. I was probably the only student in the place who’d gladly have traded a major combat spell for a decent water calling. Of course, no one else can cast the combat spells I get.
“Geoff Linds,” Orion said unexpectedly. “He’s from New York,” he added when we looked at him.
“Well, if he wants ninety-nine ways to clean his cell in Old English, send him my way,” I said sweetly. Orion frowned at me.
He frowned more through dinner, during which I was excessively nice to him. I even offered him the pudding I’d snagged, a treacle tart—not much loss there, I hate treacle tart—and he obviously wanted to turn it down, but he’s also a sixteen-year-old boy who has to inspect every calorie he can get for potential contamination. All the heroic power in the world won’t save you from dysentery or a charming bit of strychnine in the sauce, and it’s not like he swaps his rescues for anything useful in return, like an extra helping or something. So after a moment he grudgingly said, “Thanks,” and took the tart and ate it without meeting my eyes.
Afterwards he followed close on my heels as we took our trays over to the conveyor belt under the enormous sign saying BUS YOUR TRAYS, which even after three years I still think is a mad phrase that makes no sense. Admittedly, that’s less of a concern than the actual busing process, which involves shoving your dirty tray into one dark slot of a massive metal rack that is slowly rotating while the conveyor belt carries it along. The safest place to do it is towards the far end, as the dishes and trays are all cleaned using jets of mortal flame, which scares off the mals, but it’s almost impossible to find an empty slot at that point, and an extra minute exposed and hunting around the busing area isn’t worth it. I usually aim for just short of the midpoint area, which has the benefit of a shorter line.
Orion considered this a perfect place for private conversation. “Nice try,” he said over my shoulder, “but it’s too late. I’m not going to forget about it just because you started pretending to be friendly. Want to try again telling me what really happened to Luisa?”
He hadn’t even realized that he’d convinced everyone in school that we were dating. I rolled my eyes—metaphorically only; I wasn’t fool enough to look away from the rack for even a moment. “Yes, I’m passionately excited to share more information with you. Your demonstrated sense and good judgment just fill me with confidence.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” he demanded, but right then a six-armed thing vaguely like the offspring of an octopus and an iguana burst off the empty busing rack that had just rotated in, aiming right at the head of a sad-eyed freshman girl, and Orion whipped round and went for it, grabbing a knife off the girl’s tray even as he hurled a spell of engorgement. I saw the writing on the wall, and also an empty slot, so I got rid of my tray and dived clear before the thing swelled up like a bloating corpse and burst all over everyone in range.
I went back to my room unbesmirched, with plans to have breakfast with three kids from the London enclave—they’ve completely ignored me before now—and an offer from Nkoyo to trade Latin spells in language lab tomorrow. Orion slunk off to the showers, wafting a putrid stench. I didn’t feel quite even with him yet, but it was coming on nicely. So when he knocked ten minutes later with the lingering miasma wafting under the door, I felt magnanimous enough to open up and say, “Oh, all right, what will you give me for the information?”
I didn’t get past Oh, though, because it wasn’t Orion: it was Jack, smeared with a handful of the octopus thing’s guts for the smell—clever of him—and he shoved a sharpened table knife right into my gut. He pushed me collapsing backwards onto the floor and slid the door shut behind him, smiling with all his white teeth while I gasped around the shock of agony, yelling stupid stupid stupid at myself in my head. I’d already got ready for bed; I’d hung my mana crystal over the bedpost, where I could reach it in the night and where it was uselessly out of reach right now. He knelt down over me and brushed my hair away from my face with both hands, cupping my cheeks. “Galadriel,” he crooned.
My hands were wrapped around the hilt of the knife, involuntarily, trying to keep it from moving, but I made myself let go with one hand and tried to fumble it towards the other mana crystal, the half-full one I’d been working on this afternoon. It was hanging from the side of my bed right where my head went when I was doing push-ups, a few inches above the floor. If I could just reach it, I could connect to all my stored mana. I’d have absolutely no regret liquefying Jack’s bones.
It was just out of reach. My fingers were straining. I tried to shift my body over just a little, but it hurt a really huge amount, and Jack was stroking my face with his fingertips. It irritated me almost as much as the knife. “Stop that, you colossal dick,” I whispered, my voice thready with effort.
“Why don’t you make me?” he whispered back. “Come on, Galadriel, just do it. You’re so beautiful. You could be so beautiful. I’ll help you, I’ll do anything for you. We’ll have so much fun,” and I found my whole face crumpling like a sheet of cheap tinfoil. I couldn’t bear it. I didn’t want to know that I was going to say no. I didn’t want to know that I was going to refuse, even with this sack of putrescence crawling his fingers down my ribcage towards the knife he’d jammed into my guts so he could get on with butchering me like a hog.
I’d told myself it was just common sense—going maleficer meant dying young, grotesquely. But that still ought to beat dying right now, only it didn’t. It didn’t, and if it wasn’t an option now, it was never going to be an option, and even if I survived this, I wouldn’t survive the next thing, or the one after that. There’d always been a safety valve in the back of my head: I’d always told myself if all else fails, but all else had failed, and I wasn’t going to do it anyway.
“Fuck you, Great-Grandmother,” I whispered, so angry I could have cried, and got ready to shove myself up onto the knife so I could reach the mana crystal. And then I heard the knock on the door. A knock on a school night, with everyone else sane in their own cells and study groups by then—
Talking was difficult. I pointed a finger at the door and thought, Open sesame. A stupid kid spell, but it was my own door, and I hadn’t locked it for the night yet, so it shot open, and Orion was standing in the doorway. Jack whirled round, his hands wet and red with my blood. He’d even smeared some on his mouth to make the finishing gruesome touch.
I laid my head back down and let the mighty hero get on with it.
THE AWKWARDLY APPEALING SMELL of roasted flesh was filling the room when Orion dropped to his knees beside me. “Are you—” he started, and stopped at the obvious negative.
“Tool chest,” I said. “Down the left side. Packet.”
He dug into my tool chest—didn’t even spare a glance to check the innards after he opened it—and got out the white envelope. He ripped it open and pulled out the thin linen patch. Mum had made it for me, beginning to end: she tilled the field, planted the flax, harvested it by hand, spun and wove it herself, and she chanted healing spells into it and over it the whole time. “Wipe up my blood with one side,” I whispered. His face was tight with alarm, but he looked at the floor, doubtfully. “Okay if it gets dirty. Take out the knife, put the other side on th
e wound.”
Thankfully, I sort of blacked out when he pulled the knife, the next ten minutes gone to confusion, and when I surfaced, the patch was on. Jack’s knife hadn’t been long enough to go all the way through me, so there was only the entry wound, and it wasn’t too wide. The healing patch was glowing faintly white, hurting my eyes, but I could feel it working on my abused innards. In ten minutes more, I was ready to let Orion help me move onto the bed.
After Orion settled me there, he heaved Jack’s charred corpse out into the corridor. Then he went to my basin and washed the blood off. When he sat back down on the bed, his hands were shaking. He was staring down at them. “Who—who was that?” He looked more shocky than I felt.
“You haven’t bothered to learn anyone’s names, have you,” I said. “That was Jack Westing. And he’s the one who ate Luisa, if it makes you feel better. You can look in his room and you’ll probably find something left behind if you don’t believe me.”
That brought his head up. “What? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because I was leery of getting shivved by a sociopathic maleficer, as I would think might be obvious under the circumstances,” I said. “Thanks for going round loudly asking questions about Luisa, by the way, that didn’t at all set him off.”
“You know, it’s almost impressive,” he said after a moment, sounding less wobbly. “You’re nearly dead and you’re still the rudest person I’ve ever met. You’re welcome again, by the way.”
“Given that you’re at least half responsible for this situation, I refuse to thank you,” I said. I closed my eyes for a moment, and suddenly the five-minute warning bell was ringing for curfew. It hadn’t felt like that much time had gone by. I put my hands down and touched the patch gently, testing. Sitting up was not going to appeal for a long time. The blood had gone back into me, so I felt much better, but not even Mum’s top work could make a ragged gut wound disappear instantly. I reached out for the mana crystal and hung it back round my neck. I could forget about sleep tonight, and I was going to have to use some real power. Not only hadn’t I given in, Jack was dead, for a net loss of malice in the world. The maleficaria would probably go on a rampage.
