A Deadly Education (The Scholomance, #1)(15)
When I spotted them at the tables, they were already halfway through breakfast, so I had to wolf down the rest of mine to catch up. “Got to go in five,” I told Aadhya, to give her fair warning. She waved over a couple of her friends from the artificer track who were just coming out with trays: given my report about the shop, she wasn’t in any rush to get to class early, anyway.
I managed to get out of the cafeteria with Cora, who grudgingly let me catch up with her before going through the doors—so generous—and we were outside the doors before Nkoyo did a double-take over my shoulder and I realized Orion was right behind me.
“We’re going to languages!” I hissed at him. He’s in alchemy track. In fact, alchemy track was twice as big as usual in our year, because kids were trying to stick close to him even if they didn’t have an affinity. In my opinion, it wasn’t nearly worth the additional lab time. He did still have language class sometimes, just like we all have to do some alchemy—we do get to ask for schedule changes on the first day of the year, but if you ask for too many easy classes or try to go too single-track, the school will put you in classes other kids have avoided. But only languages-track kids get the language hall first thing on a Monday: it’s one of the big perks, being this high up when you’re a junior and senior.
He looked at me mulishly. “I’m going to the supply room.” We get building materials down in the workshop and alchemy supplies in the labs, but for everything less exotic, like pencils and notebooks, you have to forage in the big stockroom at the far end of the language hall.
“Can we come with you?” Nkoyo asked instantly. Cora and Jowani were both just gawking, but she’s sharp. And it was obviously worth getting to class towards the late end to have a big group for company going for supplies, even leaving aside Orion himself—if only I could have left him aside—so I went along, stewing. I grabbed paper and ink and took some mercury for trading and a hole puncher, and I even found a vast ring binder for my increasing pile of spells. I spotted three eyes peering out at us from a crack in the ceiling, but it was probably just a flinger, and there were too many of us for one of those to make a try.
Afterwards, Orion walked us all back to the nearest language hall, even though there wasn’t any reason. The narrow stairwell next to the stockroom does disappear sometimes—it’s not on the blueprints, it got added belatedly when they realized it was inconvenient to have to go a quarter mile back to the next nearest stair—but today it wasn’t just present, the door was actually standing wide open and the light inside was working.
“What are you doing?” I demanded, taking a risk to stay in the corridor: the others had already dashed in to claim decent booths. “Please tell me you aren’t trying to go out with me.”
It didn’t seem likely: no one ever has. It’s not that I’m ugly; on the contrary, I’ve been growing increasingly beautiful in a tall and alarming way, as befits the terrible dark sorceress I’m meant to be, at least until I presumably collapse into a grotesque crone. Boys often think for about ten seconds that they might want to go out with me, and then they look into my eyes or talk to me and I suppose get the strong impression I’m likely to devour their souls or something. Also, in Orion’s case, I’d been aggressively rude to him and nearly got him killed by mimics.
He snorted. “Want to date a maleficer?”
I had a moment of indignation over that, about to snarl at him yet again that I wasn’t, and then I got it. “You’re keeping an eye on me? In case I start doing evil things and—what, you need to kill me?”
He folded his arms across his chest and regarded me with a cool, righteous expression: enough of an answer. I was violently tempted to kick him in the goolies. One of the things people do believe in at the commune is about seventeen different forms of Westernized martial arts, and though they’re surrounded with a huge pile of mumbo jumbo about your inner center and finding your balance and channeling your spiritual force, the actual kicking and punching gets taught, too. I wasn’t an expert, but I could definitely have made Orion Lake extremely unhappy right then, given the wide-open way he was standing.
But there was a classroom full of kids behind me watching us, most of whom would have been glad for any decent excuse to completely ostracize me, and the first late bell was about to ring, at which point the door would swing shut and leave me stuck in the hallway for the whole class period. Nobody would let me in. So I had to just stalk away from him seething and take one of the empty language booths.
There aren’t any teachers at the Scholomance. The place is filled to capacity with kids; there are two applicants for every spot as it is, and our dorm rooms are less than seven feet across. Anyone who gets in doesn’t need external motivation. Knowing how to make a potion that will heal the lining of your stomach after you’ve accidentally drunk some lyesmoke-infused apple juice is its own reward, really. Even maths becomes pretty necessary for a lot of advanced arcana, and history research brings you loads of useful spells and recipes that you won’t be handed in your other courses.
So in language class, you just go to any one of the eight language halls arranged around the third floor and put yourself into one of the booths. Choose wisely; if you try the ones closest to the loo, or the really good one next to the stairs so you can get to lunch in under ten minutes, you’ll have a harder time getting a decent booth, or a booth at all. Assuming you do get one, you sit inside the soundproofed cocoon, hoping you aren’t missing the footsteps of something coming at your back, and read textbooks or work on exercise sheets while disembodied voices whisper to you in whatever language you’re studying that day. Usually they tell me horrible gory stories or describe my death in loving detail. I had meant to work on my Old English, to try and get more use out of the spells I had learned from the household charms book, but I didn’t make much progress. I just hunched over the same single page of my notebook, boiling with resentment, while my whisper tenderly recited an epic alliterative poem all about how Orion Lake, “hero of the shadowed halls,” was going to murder me in my sleep.