A Deadly Education (Scholomance #1) - Naomi Novik Page 0,80

a few days after that before you stop being able to move. On the bright side, something else usually finishes you off quickly at that point.

So the very longest anyone usually lets their hair get is shoulder-length; mine only ever gets a couple inches longer than that because no one goes out of their way to let me know when they’ve got hold of good scissors. Even most enclavers won’t bother to grow their hair. Liu’s hair had been a power statement, an announcement of her family’s growing strength for anyone who met her. But without malia, it was probably going to be too much of a liability for her to maintain.

Aadhya threw me a quick look to make sure I was still attending, then broke bathroom silence. “Are you serious?”

“Getting there!” Liu said, letting her arms drop for a rest, panting.

“I’d buy it off you,” Aadhya said. “I could make you something of your choice next term, first quarter.”

“Really?” Liu said.

“Yeah,” Aadhya said. “It’s long enough to string the sirenspider lute I’m making.”

“I’ll think about it,” Liu said, and went back to combing the tangles out of her hair with more enthusiasm. Aadhya went back to watching. She wasn’t entitled to an answer right then: bathroom and table company is important, but it’s not like an alliance. And if Aadhya wanted Liu’s hair, there would be other kids who’d want it. Enclave kids in artifice track, making themselves top-notch weapons for graduation, and some of them with extras or maybe even an alliance slot to offer in trade.

I thought about it hard while I took my turn in the shower. Aadhya was even more clearly my best shot for an alliance at this point. She was the only person who knew what I had going, and she at least wanted me for bathroom company. But I still was a long way from being a good bargain for her. I certainly wouldn’t have picked me in her place: if she pulled off a sirenspider lute during the first half of next term, she was sure to get at least a dozen alliance offers from enclavers. Nobody else in here was going to have a sirenspider instrument: they’re too large to bring inside, except maybe a tiny flute or something, and wind instruments aren’t a great bet for graduation. You need your breath for casting incantations and running and optionally screaming. With a prize like that, she might even get one of those guaranteed placement offers, like the one Todd and his crew had dangled to get the valedictorian. Enclaves favor applications from kids who have been allies with their kids, but they don’t actually take everyone.

I was increasingly sure to get zero alliance offers from enclavers, and apparently I wasn’t going to take them if they did come. I couldn’t even offer Aadhya the strategy of putting together a solid small team that one of the more loserish enclaver kids would pick to get them out. If I wanted her to even think about taking the chance of going with me, I was going to have to score a lot of points between now and New Year’s.

So when we were all done and waiting at the meeting point for two more kids to walk to breakfast, I said casually, “Liu, I was just thinking. Do you need the phase-control spell?”

They both looked at me. Liu said slowly, “My family could really use it, but…” But they weren’t rich enough to put her in the running. She was on her own in here almost as much as we were; she’d got a box of hand-me-downs from an older cousin who graduated six years ago, but that was it, and it had been passed to her through a kid who had graduated in our freshman year, who had agreed to be the go-between in exchange for getting to use the stuff until Liu came in.

“You could bid your hair,” I said. “Aadhya’s running the auction for me, she gets a cut.”

It meant losing out on one of five bids, and on top of it, I’d be making Aadhya an even more appealing target for enclavers to recruit for their own alliances. A sirenspider lute strung with wizard hair would be really powerful. But it was also a chance I couldn’t pass up: Aadhya would owe me for this, and—

“Or you could give it to me,” Aadhya said to Liu, abruptly. “And El could give you the spell. And we’d have