A Deadly Education (Scholomance #1) - Naomi Novik Page 0,46

out of being assigned. It only gets you out of doing it yourself. Enclavers generally club together in groups of ten and trade all their maintenance shifts to one kid in exchange for the promise that the kid gets to join one of their alliances at graduation time. We call that maintenance track, even though it’s strictly unofficial, and it’s one of the most reliable ways to get into an enclave after graduation. They’re happy to let in anyone who’s willing to literally do the shit work, and maintenance-track kids come out with practical experience in patching up the same kind of infrastructure that the big enclaves use.

But it’s also one of the best ways to die. Maintenance-track kids end up skipping around half their lessons, so they’re always on the razor’s edge of failing dangerously, and they miss out on a lot of theory and advanced spells. More to the point, they’re the ones who have to go into the rooms with the mysterious holes in the walls, the leaking pipes, the burned-out lights; the places where the wards are wobbly and the mals are more likely to wriggle in. And you can’t sign up for maintenance track and then just skip your shifts. If you don’t adequately complete your maintenance shift within the week it’s due, you aren’t allowed into the cafeteria again until it’s done. And if you don’t do someone else’s maintenance shift that you’ve promised to do, they don’t get to go into the cafeteria, so enclavers keep a sharp eye on their little helpers. Most enclavers, anyway.

“Someone else from New York made the arrangements for you, didn’t they, and you don’t even know,” I said. “That’s sad, Lake. At least say thank you once in a while to the poor kid.” Poor kid, ha. I’d have gone for maintenance track myself in a flash: I’ve already got a massive target stuck on my back. But actually the competition for it is quite stiff, and I had to give up in the first fortnight because I couldn’t find an enclaver to hire me. They wouldn’t even talk to me, so I didn’t have much opportunity to suck up to them. To be fair, opportunity clearly wasn’t my only hurdle there.

He flushed. “What are you doing for your shift?”

“Cleaning the labs,” I said. Alchemy lab cleaning shifts are lousy the way any maintenance shift is lousy, but it’s nothing like as bad as trying to patch a hole in a wall or mend a warding spell. Once, I had to fix a fraying ward over an air vent in one of the seminar rooms, close to the shop. The protection had worn so thin that there was literally a pack of scuttlers waiting to come through. They’d pressed the frontmost ones right squish up against it: five or six pairs of round lemur eyes staring at me full of hungry longing, drooling from their mouths full of needle-teeth. I finally got fed up and wasted a bit of mana to physically shove them back into the vent far enough so that I didn’t have to look at them until I had woven the new barrier spell into place.

Cleaning’s not nearly as dangerous, even in the labs. There might be a bit of acid or contact poison or some iffy alchemical substance left behind, but that’s not hard to catch. Most kids don’t bother, they just fill a bucket of soapy water, slap an animation spell on some rags and a mop, shove them in, and keep watch on the process from the door. But unless I’m really knackered, I do it all by hand. In the commune we all did upkeep on a rota, and my mum wouldn’t let me use magic, so I know my way around a mop and bucket. I was aggrieved at the time. Now it means I actually get some mana out of the deal instead of the reverse, and I’ve occasionally found some usable supplies among the leftovers. It’s still not a magical good time, though.

“I’ll come with,” Orion said.

“You’ll what?” I said, and laughed when he wasn’t joking: everyone would really think he was in love. “Don’t let me stop you.”

* * *

HIS HELP MADE short work of my shift, and we spent the rest of the weekend in the library together. I have to admit I took a lot of petty and objectively stupid satisfaction from the way the New York crew all eyed me anxiously