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