A Deadly Education (Scholomance #1) - Naomi Novik Page 0,69
us reached out and tapped me on the shoulder and handed me a carton of milk for him.
The conversation at our table was completely dead at first; with Orion right there, nobody wanted to talk about the only thing anybody wanted to talk about. Aadhya was the one who got things moving; she finished drinking the milk from the bottom of her cereal bowl—in here that’s standard, not bad manners—and wiped her mouth and said, “Any of you doing Sanskrit? You’re not going to believe what El got. El, you’ve got to show them,” and I was even more grateful that I’d petted my book so much and put it in the special sling, because I’d forgotten about it completely for a few seconds, and if I’d had it in my bookbag, I am absolutely sure it would have vanished on me.
“Baghdad enclave!” Ibrahim and two others yelped instantly, the second I pulled it out—all the kids who know Arabic can spot books from the Baghdad enclave three shelves away—and since they couldn’t talk about the real news, mine did for second-best.
I had languages after breakfast, and Orion had alchemy. He put the rubbish from his piecemeal breakfast on my tray and bused it for me, and then just as we were going out the door, he said quietly, “Thanks. But I know you didn’t mean it.”
“I did too mean it,” I said, irritated, because now I had to work out why I did. “Someone’s always got to pay, but why should Homicidal Todd get a leg up on anyone else? You’re stupid for letting down your side, but you’re the one who wants it to be fair. Go to your lesson and stop looking for a cwtch.” It irritated me even more that he actually shot me a grateful look before he headed for the stairs.
Predictably, an Arabic worksheet appeared on my desk the instant I sat down that morning. There wasn’t a single word of English on it; the school didn’t even give me a dictionary. And judging by the cheery cartoonish illustrations next to the lines—most notably a man in a car about to mow down a couple of hapless pedestrians—I had the strong suspicion that it was modern Arabic, too. I should’ve got a book on Classical Arabic out of the library before going to class. When you’ve been exposed to a language you didn’t really mean to start, you’re better off giving in and just establishing some boundaries. I’d just been a bit busy yesterday.
I’d already been resigned to my fate, though, and a Saudi girl who’d been at Ibrahim’s table that morning had a booth near me; she lent me her dictionary in exchange for a promise to proofread her English-language final paper. I copied out the alphabet into my notebook first and then started slogging away on the worksheet, copying out every word I looked up. And for a silver lining, I also couldn’t understand a single word of the venomous tirade that the booth voice poured into my ears in between grudgingly telling me how to pronounce and . I imagine it was full of particularly juicy horrors.
There was a lot of other non-magical whispering going on around me the rest of the day, among the other kids. It occurred to me, much too belatedly, that I’d just graduated from pathologically rude bitch to enclave-hater. It’s not that we don’t all know that it’s unfair, but nobody says so, because if you say so, enclavers don’t invite you to join them on the better side of the unfair. Orion’s shine might have gone off, too, if enough enclave kids had decided that Todd was right. Maybe the two of us would end up sitting alone. That would be epic. My unpopularity massive enough to drag down Orion Lake himself.
It didn’t look good when I first got to the cafeteria at lunchtime. None of the enclavers who’d been making up to me lately said a word; no more study group invites from Sarah today. But as I came off the food line, Aadhya got there from shop with three other artificer-track kids and waved to me on her way into the line. “Save us seats, El?” she called across the room. Nkoyo and her pals, who were a few kids behind me, heard her; I don’t know if that made the difference or not, but she said, “I’ll get us water if you do a perimeter,” and though Jowani and