It took a few increasingly frantic hours, all the new contributors coming inside one after another down the central lane to get their paving stones and then go line up in the other two lanes, waiting huddled together. Ibrahim came away with a polished green disk barely the size of a pound coin—he hadn’t had enough time out of school to save up anything, but he’d obviously been let in for services rendered in bringing me in, and I couldn’t help but be glad for him. His brother and sister-in-law, who’d both been working for the enclave for years, were there, too, that narrow uneven bargain they’d made suddenly paying off in spades. His parents hadn’t any other children who had escaped the grinding teeth of maleficaria, but his aunt and uncle had come with their ten-year-old daughter and their six-year-old son, who’d never have to go to the Scholomance just for the thin hope of survival. His family had collectively scrounged up all the mana they could, hurriedly selling off a few magical heirlooms and mortgaging years of their work, to get together the two years of mana that the most vulnerable members of their family had to pay to get in.
It was an absurdly low price for an enclave place. Almost any wizard could pull together that much. Of course, there was one other significant price: having to come inside a condemned building. Everyone knew about the warning. The pressure built with every other person coming nervously inside to make their paving stones, then going to line up in the alleyways and wait, tensed and watching the walls around them for the first sign of cracking, for the storm to come rolling in, all of us together in a race we were running against a rival we couldn’t see.
But any wizard would still take the chance at the price, because it was a price they could pay, a reward that would be given, if we all made it to the other side. It wasn’t a lifetime of drudgery and constant fear with nothing but a thin scrap of hope to help you along the way. And to give them this much credit, the enclave could have made more of a bidding war of it, thrown the call open worldwide and driven up the price. Instead they’d come down on the side of letting in people they’d already vetted: all their workers, all the Scholomance allies the recent graduates could ring up, whoever could make it quick enough.
I spotted Ibrahim and Jamaal’s ally Nadia in one of the queues, and before the process had finished, Cora arrived too, fresh from the airport without even a bag, running to hug Nadia and Ibrahim and Jamaal fiercely, wiping tears away, before she got in the queue; and then she saw me and after a moment got out of the queue and came to me. I waited there like a block wondering what she wanted even straight up to the moment when she put her arms round me, too. I managed to behave like a human being and hug her back, my throat tight.
Ibrahim kept watching the last trickle of people streaming in through the central lane while pretending he wasn’t, turning his green stone over and over in his hands, and then he put it away in his pocket and turned his back as the stragglers brought up the end, the last of the enclavers coming back in from outside, the oldest wizards and mums with small kids, going one after another to put a handful of dust into the baking ovens, even the babies bringing out pea-sized pebbles with their mums’ hands cupped round theirs. The houses were thickening up, gaining a sense of solidity as the last of the borrowed space eased back in with them, from all those conference rooms and empty offices.
I looked at Ibrahim, who’d stayed with me by the ruined tower the whole time. “I’ll wait.”
Ibrahim didn’t look up. “I don’t know if he’s even got the message.” His voice was a little ragged, thready, and then Nadia gave a cry, “Ibi!” and he turned and was running down the alleyway, dodging people left and right: Yaakov was coming in with the very last three people. A frail ancient man, bent almost double, was creeping precariously balanced between Yaakov’s arm and a spindly walking stick whose carved inscriptions weren’t powerful enough to keep him upright alone. An only ordinarily old woman with exhausted eyes was on his other side, carrying a small child limply asleep on her shoulder. Ibrahim stopped just short of them all, and then Yaakov reached out his free arm and they had buried their faces against each other’s necks, standing together.
For just a moment: everyone was impatient with fear, longing to hurry them up. I couldn’t help but feel it too: the old man’s every creaking step stretched out agonizingly long, even with Ibrahim helping on his other side now, and I had rotten sinkhole ground beneath my feet and the weight of a thousand innocent lives on my shoulders, all the people who’d come here because I’d told the enclavers to let them in. I could see Jamaal’s grandfather glancing at me, wanting to tell me to go ahead and get on with it, wondering if I’d do it, and before he could ask so I’d have to find out, I went to the almost gone heap of tower bits and grabbed a chunk and started dragging it on the ground round the iron disk, making chalky circles like places to stand, as if I were getting ready for a casting, even though it wasn’t necessary, while Yaakov and his family got their paving stones.