Breakfast wasn’t stuffed crêpes or anything, but there was unburnt French toast and griddled sardines and pickled vegetables and enough of it for everyone: the school giving us all one nice final meal. The freshmen were still wolfing down theirs when Liesel got up and climbed onto her table with the large mindphone she’d talked some artificer into making for her—the school had apparently counted that as helping, too, although I questioned its value. “It is time now to review the final order of departure,” she announced—the message reached my head mostly in English, with a few scattered words of German sneaking in and a whispery echo underneath in Marathi flavored with bits of Sanskrit and Hindi—and began to read off numbers and names as if everyone in the room wasn’t already carrying the information inscribed on their brains in letters of flame.
I wasn’t paying attention, as I really didn’t need to: I knew when my turn was. After everyone else had gone, and I’d pitched Orion through, and I’d ripped up the school’s foundations and it was teetering away into the void like a sequoia getting ready to come down. Then I’d—hopefully—have just enough time to jump before the tidal wave of mals reached me. On paper I would, assuming Orion hadn’t been overwhelmed some time before then—not a remotely safe assumption—and also assuming that Liesel hadn’t fudged the numbers or, less likely, made a mistake.
So I didn’t notice Myrthe Christopher getting up on her own table until she cast her own more straightforward amplification spell and said, “Excuse me!” so loudly she managed to drown out the mindphone even inside my head. “I’m so sorry, excuse me!” I knew her only by osmosis: she’d always ranked as one of the more important enclavers, since her parents were something high up in one of the American enclaves, but it was Santa Barbara, one of the California enclaves that aren’t quite satisfied having New York rule the roost. My uncomfortably acquired circle of enclavers didn’t overlap much with hers, and she’d never stopped by the planning sessions, either.
She waited smilingly until Liesel had lowered her clipboard, then said, “I’m so sorry, I don’t want to be rude,” in a syrupy way that suggested she’d been studying to be rude for weeks. “But, like—we’re not actually doing this?”
“Excuse me?” Liesel said, with a razor-sharp edge that translated into a prickling sensation along the bottom of my skull. It landed into total silence; even the freshmen with any breakfast left on their trays had stopped eating. My own had turned into a strange cold lump in my stomach.
Myrthe cast a wincing smile around, showing how pained she was to have this awkward yet necessary conversation. “I know it’s been really weird this whole year, and we’ve all been freaking out, but, reality check—this plan is literally insane?” She pointed down at the floor. “The graduation hall is empty right now. Empty. And you want us to go wait in line behind all the other kids, the freshmen, everybody,” hilarious, nonsense, “and hand over all our mana, so Queen Galadriel here can summon a billion mals to fill it back up and eat us?” She gave a gurgle of laughter out loud at the absurdity. “No? Just—no? I get it, we had to work on something and make it look good, or else the school was going to screw us, but it’s half an hour to graduation, so I think we’re good at this point. Please don’t get me wrong, I wish we could keep it this good for everybody. We should totally give the other kids all the stuff we can spare, extra mana,” the depths of her generosity, really, “but come on.”
She wasn’t using a mindphone, but she didn’t really need to. If there was anyone who hadn’t followed, they were getting a translation right now, and after all, surely most of them had thought of it. Surely most of them hadn’t been stupid enough to take the idea seriously, had at some point thought to themselves, We’re just killing time until we can leave, aren’t we? I was surprised Liesel hadn’t announced it herself, really; she wasn’t stupid. Seduced by her own spreadsheets, probably.
And I couldn’t even blame them, because the first thing that came into my head was, I couldn’t do it alone. Without all the seniors helping, actively channeling me their mana, I wouldn’t be able to keep the summoning spell running the whole time and break the school away at the end. That was why the seniors had to wait until last to go. So if they quit, if only all the seniors quit, if they refused to help and headed downstairs and out—there wouldn’t be anything for me to do, after all. I’d just have to walk out of the empty hall, and Orion would, too. In half an hour, I’d be hugging Mum, and this time tomorrow he’d be on a plane coming to Wales, and I’d have the whole rest of my life ahead of me, full of good work, and I wouldn’t even have to feel guilty.