by Naomi Novik
“Do you want another one?” he said, a little tentatively. “I’ve got spares.”
Our conversation had made clear that he didn’t need the slightest encouragement, but caution warred with my fairly desperate longing for another T-shirt, which even the one glimpse I’d had into his room had been enough for me to say with perfect authority he had far too many of for his own good. “Yeah, all right,” I said, with an inward sigh. At least the whole school was already completely certain we were dating.
* * *
I WAS ABSOLUTELY RIGHT about Orion needing no encouragement: the shirt he brought me had the Manhattan skyline on it in silver glitter, a single spot marked out roughly halfway along the island with a rising swirl of colored glitter, presumably the enclave location: not at all meaningful or claim-staking in any way. I’d have thwapped him across the head with it, except it was clean, and in fact smelled faintly of washing powder: he’d probably had it wrapped up somewhere in a drawer waiting for his senior year. At least it gave me the excuse to abandon him for the girls’ bathroom instantly so I could put it on, a clean top over clean showered skin: bliss.
He had waited for me outside, and we collected Aadhya and Liu from her room. I peeked into the big tank she had the mice in. Aadhya’s was already marked with a bright-pink dot that she’d put on with a highlighter. “You can pick yours tonight,” Liu said.
The stairs felt odd when we started up because they weren’t moving anymore: like getting off a ship after you’ve been on the water for a long time. The gears had all settled back into place, and there was only the faint ticking of the minor machinery, more or less just keeping time until the end of next year. Everyone was going upstairs in a big tidal flow together, so it didn’t even take long to climb to the cafeteria and join the waiting crowd.
The food line hadn’t opened yet, and about half the tables were folded up against the walls to leave a big open space cleared in the middle, with wide aisles leading to it from each of the stair landings. Up above was the brand-new res hall, same as the old res hall, more or less literally, just waiting for the brand-new shivering freshmen to be dropped inside.
We’d cut it a little fine. Induction started moments after we got there: we could feel the faint ear-popping sensation of so many bodies displacing volumes of air, one after another, and it was followed almost immediately by the loud clanging and scraping of doors being slid open, up on the freshman dorm level. Unless you’re one of the monstrously unlucky few like Luisa, you’ve been told over and over what to do the second you arrive, no matter how vomitous or shell-shocked you are: you get out of your room and run straight down to the cafeteria. The freshmen came streaming in through all four doors, a few of them holding paper bags that they were throwing up into even as they kept staggering along. Induction is about as much fun as a yanker, and it takes longer.
In ten minutes or so, they were all shaking and huddled in the middle of the cafeteria. They looked so tiny. I hadn’t been one of the tallest kids when we came in, but I couldn’t remember ever being that short myself. We had all gathered around them, keeping an eye on the ceilings and the drains, pouring them glasses of water carefully. Even the worst people will come out to protect the new inductees. Selfishly, if for no other reason; as soon as the freshmen calmed down and drank some water, they started calling out our names: they had letters from the other side, especially if they were enclave kids.
I knew there wouldn’t be one for me. We weren’t close to any other families with wizard kids: the couple of times Mum tried to arrange for us to play together when I was little didn’t go amazingly well. And she wouldn’t have been able to pay someone to give up some of their allotment to bring me a letter. The only thing she had to barter that would be worth as much as a gram’s allowance to another wizard would’ve been her healing, and she doesn’t charge for healing. She told me she wasn’t sure she’d be able to get me anything, and I’d told her it was all right.
But even knowing, I would have been there anyway, and this time I even got to enjoy it vicariously. Aadhya was given a letter by a black girl with her hair in a million braids—each one with a tiny enchanted protection bead at the end, really clever idea. Liu brought over her cousins to introduce them to me, two carbon-copy boys with bowl cuts who bowed really politely like I was a grown-up, and I suppose I was, to them: they were a head and a half shorter than me, with soft round-cheeked faces. Their parents had probably been all but force-feeding them like geese in preparation.
And then a boy with a voice that hadn’t quite finished breaking called, uncertainly, “I’ve got a note from Gwen Higgins?” I didn’t hear it the first time, but there was a little lull after, as people heard it, and he said it again.
Aadhya had come over, bringing both her letter and the black girl, from Newark, whose name was Pamyla—one of the reasons parents will have their kids spend a tiny bit of their precious weight allowance on a letter is that they know they’ll get an automatic older friend on the other side in return. “Do you think it’s that Gwen Higgins? Does she have a kid in here?” Pamyla said to Aadhya, sounding hopeful.
Aadhya just made a shrugging expression. Liu was shaking her head. “If she does, they’re keeping quiet; everyone would be on them for healing magic, I guess.”
Then the boy said, “For her daughter Galadriel?” and both of them—along with the handful of other people around who’d been paying enough attention to hear him—gave me a double take, and then Aadhya shoved me in the shoulder, indignantly. Several other people were having a furtive look around the cafeteria like they thought maybe there was some other girl named Galadriel in the place. I gritted my teeth and went over. Even the kid looked doubtfully up at me.
“I’m Galadriel,” I said shortly, and held out my hand: he put a tiny little thing almost like a shelled hazelnut into my palm, probably not even the weight of a single gram. “What’s your name?”
“I’m Aaron?” he said, like he wasn’t completely sure. “I’m from Manchester?”
“Well, come on,” I said, and gave him a jerk of my head, leading him back past a bunch of staring faces. There wasn’t really an escape from them, though: Aadhya and Liu were eyeing me themselves, Aadhya with a narrowed look that suggested I was in for another good long lecture as soon as she got me alone. I introduced Aaron to the others a bit grudgingly, and he and the other three freshmen started talking; Liu’s cousins both spoke English without the slightest hitch, and as fluently as either he or Pamyla did. Aadhya had a small sheet of enchanted gold leaf in her letter: she showed it to us gleefully. “I’ll put this round the argonet-tooth pegs, on the lute.”
Liu had an almost flat postage-stamp-sized tin crammed full of a fragrant balm that she let us each use a tiny touch of, dipping the tips of our pinkie fingers in and rubbing it on the bottom edge of our lower lip. “It’s my grandmother’s poison catcher,” she said. “It lasts a month or so if you’re careful about brushing your teeth. If you feel your lip tingle when you start to put something in your mouth, don’t eat it.”
And all of that was what induction meant to everyone. A tiny infusion of hope, of love and care; a reminder that there’s something on the other side of this, a whole world on the other side. Where your friends share whatever has come to them, and you share back. Only that had never been induction for me. It was the first time I’d ever been on the inside of it, and my eyes were prickling. I had to fight not to put my tongue out and lick the balm over and over.
Orion joined us with his own mail already in his hand, a fat envelope and a small bag, and whispered to me in a cheerful singsong under his breath, “Busted,” slinging his arm around my neck and grinning at me. I made a face at him, but I couldn’t help smiling a little myself as I carefully unrolled my very own letter—a single tiny strip of onion skin so thin it was translucent, which had been rolled up into a bead not much bigger than the ones Pamyla had on the ends of her hair. It
had faint folding lines scored along the length, one every inch: marks for tearing the sheet into pieces to eat. When I held it to my mouth and breathed in, I got the smell of honey and elderflower: Mum’s spell for refreshment of the spirit. Even just that one breath of it was good; I swallowed down a hard lump of happiness that warmed my belly as I brought the strip down again to squint through it. Mum’s writing on it was so small and faint that it took me a second to puzzle out the single line.
My darling girl, I love you, have courage, my mother wrote, and keep far away from Orion Lake.
For lim, a bringer of light in dark place
Acknowledgments
I owe endless debts to Sally McGrath and Francesca Coppa: allies in the graduation hall.
Thanks also to the many other beta readers who cheered me on, especially to Monica Barraclough, and to Seah Levy, Merry Lynne, and Margie Gillis, who also put me up through the frantic homestretch run of writing. Katherine Arden wrote alongside me and let me lose myself in her own work when I needed to step out of the Scholomance now and again.
And to my tireless agent, Cynthia Manson, and my editor, Anne Groell, for telling me who this book was for (PS: Anne, I still don’t believe they’re in their thirties), her associate editor, Alex Larned, and the entire wonderful team at Del Rey Books, the best partners that an author could hope for, including in particular David Moench, Mary Moates, Julie Leung, and Ashleigh Heaton, and with special thanks for so many years of enthusiasm and support from Scott Shannon, Keith Clayton, and Tricia Narwani.
I am also so grateful to the PRH rights team, especially Rachel Kind and Donna Duverglas and Denise Cronin, and the many brilliant editors abroad that I’ve had the good fortune to work with thanks to their efforts, and in particular on this one to Ben Brusey and Sam Bradbury in Penguin Random House UK.
The Scholomance posed some unique visual challenges to the imagination, and I’m so lucky to have had help realizing the details of my world from David Stevenson at Del Rey, and the work of several brilliant artists, including Elwira Pawlikowska, my own assistant Van Hong, and Miranda Meeks, as well as Sally McGrath’s brilliant work on the Scholomance website.
And finally and always and most to Charles and Evidence: thank you for loving me, for being proud of me, for holding me and holding me up.
BY NAOMI NOVIK
Uprooted
Spinning Silver
THE TEMERAIRE SERIES
His Majesty’s Dragon
Throne of Jade
Black Powder War
Empire of Ivory
Victory of Eagles
Tongues of Serpents
Crucible of Gold
Blood of Tyrants
League of Dragons
About the Author
NAOMI NOVIK is the acclaimed author of the Temeraire series and the award-winning novels Uprooted and Spinning Silver. She is a founder of the Organization for Transformative Works and the Archive of Our Own. She lives in New York City with her family and six computers.
naominovik.com
Facebook.com/naominovik
Twitter: @naominovik
Instagram: @naominovik
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