Sviya's skirts swooshed as she turned, marched inside the classrom, and took a seat in the front row. M'yu followed her in, scanning for a secure seat in the back. With those desks already filled, though, he grimaced and slid into the seat next to Sviya. The back of his neck tingled, all too aware he was open to attack here. But this isn't the streets, he reminded himself. No one's trying to stab you in the back—at least not physically.

He glanced over to find Sviya staring at him open-mouthed. "You cannot be serious," she hissed. "I told you to leave me alone. I don't have any more crumbs for you. Shoo."

M'yu opened his mouth to reply when a pair of hands landed on his desk. "There you are," Ruslan said, glaring down at him with a tight smile. "Thanks for saving my seat. You can leave now."

"You can both leave," Sviya said.

Ruslan turned to Sviya, and M'yu began unpacking the writing utensils Aevryn had bought him.

"Svi, come on," Ruslan said. "We're friends, aren't—"

A figure appeared in the doorway, and the crosstalk died. Ruslan shot another glare at M'yu, hissing, "Move." When M'yu sat still, Ruslan scowled, glanced over his shoulder, and pushed past him into one of the few empty seats left. The door closed with a thud. The professor eyed the silent room, his black robes fluttering behind his ankles like gathering stormclouds. He walked to the desk, set his briefcase on the table, and clicked it open.

Sviya set her pen neatly beside her notebook and flattened the pages out attentively. The edge of the book tapped the pen. It rolled gently. Her eyes widened as she reached to grab it but missed. It tipped off the edge of the desk, clattered to the floor, and came to a halt with a tap against M'yu's ankle. She stared at the pen with horror, as though it was an impossible distance away rather than three feet to her left. M'yu reached down to pick it up.

The professor's eyes snapped to him. "Nobility carry themselves with poise, child."

M'yu froze, halfway leaned to the ground.

"Does that position speak of poise?"

M'yu reached with long slender fingers and snatched the pen up, straightening as he placed it on the edge of his desk closest to Sviya.

"It was not a rhetorical question."

M'yu drew himself up. The other students sat stiff as corpses, but M'yu didn't understand why. This man, with his thin frame and thinning grey hair, looked more like a dressed-up beggar than a brute with a baton. There was no reason to fear his strike. "It may or may not be poised," he said in Rightspeak. "But it was polite, I should think."

"Yes, you should think, preferably before you speak and certainly before you act. Class, what sin has our new student committed?"

In scary unison, they recited, "Compromise."

M'yu looked around him. Sviya sat just as rod straight as the rest of them. She hadn't even retrieved her pen from the edge of his desk yet.

The professor strode across the floor, his shining shoes rapping hard with each step. "Now, this is your first day, so I will show you the mercy of explaining again what everyone here already knows. It is not a mercy you will be shown often, so be grateful." The man leaned forward, shadow flowing over M'yu. "Scrollschool does not accept compromise. We produce perfection. Your House's money may have placed you here, but you will only remain here on your own merit. Should it be found you have none—" The man turned sharply, rapping his way back behind his desk. "Then you will be expelled, and no money in all the Capital can buy your place back in." He drew a piece of chalk and wrote his name up on the board. "Well, then class. It is the start of a new semester. I hope you have studied over break; if you haven't, you'd best start with your tutors forthwith because you are already behind." Beneath 'Master Drakswit', he scribed in neat curlicue 'ETHICS AND ETIQUETTE'. "Are we ready to begin?"

Though his earlier questions hadn't been rhetorical, this one was apparently because it was only answered by the uncapping of pens and the flapping of paper. M'yu popped the lid on his own pen, and when Master Drakswit's back was turned, Sviya stole hers from his desk.

By the time lecture was over, M'yu's hand was cramping and covered in ink and his head swam with too many words and principles. It felt like learning a new language, except instead of words, he was learning life all over again from the ground up. Life in their world, at least. In the real world, no one cared where you placed your napkin or how you bowed to someone of higher station or what was appropriate to wear to a party. In the real world, people cared about surviving, about not finding petty reasons to destroy each other. Master Drakswit droned on and on about how these rules were the basis for society, for respect, for kindness. But M'yu knew the only thing they formed the basis for was destruction. One day, M'yu would show them all that, and then these hypocrites would be bowing and scraping to his people, begging them for the crumbs they never gave themselves.

If he could just survive school long enough to make that happen.

After Ethics and Etiquette was maths, which M'yu expected to be boringly easy—he had always out-tested everyone in the Gloamer school—but they were doing things he had never even heard of before. This teacher was a woman, but just as severe as the man before, and called on people rapid-fire style. M'yu was able to secure a seat in the back for this class at least, so he kept his head down and didn't reveal his total lack of understanding. He scribbled down notes furiously, determined to go find a book later that could decode the nonsense for him.

Other subjects flew by in just as much of an overwhelming daze. He was disappointed to find that he didn't have a programming class. He wondered if that was for third-years too, and sucked on his sore angrily. How am I ever going to work on that virus if I can't find any more resources?

At lunch, M'yu slunk around the edges of a cavernous room large enough to hold his entire childhood neighborhood. The sense that the rock walls rose up just to swallow them in darkness was stiltedly held at bay by crystal chandeliers. M'yu pressed his back into an alcove as everyone else took their seats at the tables. There were thirteen of them, arranged in a strange circular pattern. At the very center was a table made of gold, which no one sat at. Encircling the empty table were three more: a dark red table, a bronze table, and a shimmering grey table. Ruslan's sat among the horde of those surrounding the grey table; a whole swirl of people congregated there, as if that was supposed to have been the center of the room, and the gold table got shoved in the middle by mistake.

Ruslan glanced around, eyes narrowed, and M'yu quickly looked away, not wanting to draw the boy's ire. Sviya sat at a table on the outside of the circle, farthest away from the center. It was made of plain light wood, drab in contrast to the metallic tables. Girls in three-tier dresses buzzed around her, laughing and chatting. M'yu rolled his eyes. She didn't look too busy to deal with people now. His stomach grumbled, and his eyes flicked up to other students' boxes of food. Everyone else had brought their lunch or gone home for the thirty minute break, but somehow he'd showed up without anything. He half-thought of nicking something, but when Ruslan's eyes swept the room again, he ducked out of sight and out of the room.

More classes swallowed the afternoon: kinetics and literature and economics and civics. The last class of the day was history, and by then, M'yu was so wiped, half the professor's words buzzed past his ears. He hoped Aevryn was on time to pick him up. He hoped dinner was warm tonight; his stomach growled angrily. Speaking of angry—

His eyes flicked to Ruslan. He hoped he got out of the building without the boy bothering him. M'yu might have hidden during lunch, but hiding wasn't going to work forever. The two of them were going to have to work something out, and he didn't think Aevryn would be too happy with him if that working out ended with Ruslan wearing a tapestry of bruises.

At six, the buzzer for the last class of the day went off. M'yu scooped up his papers and heap of new assigned books and hurried out of the building. The sun was setting behind the city, the buildings gleaming in the light like diamonds. M'yu froze as the students rushed past him. One day, his people would live here, where the shadow of the mountain didn't loom over their whole lives, where even the night was bright, where no one skulked in fear. One day, his people would laugh and chat like these students, would climb into these hovers, and would go home somewhere warm where food was waiting for them and they didn't worry that tonight might be the night someone broke in and destroyed everything they held dear.

Someone bumped M'yu's shoulder, and he stumbled, books spilling to the ground. "Oh, here," Ruslan said, crouching. "Let me help you pick those up."

"I've got it," M'yu muttered, scrambling to grab everything. He reached to take what was in Ruslan's hand, but Ruslan caught his wrist.

"Tomorrow morning," the boy hissed. "Meet me at the bathrooms, or live to regret it."

M'yu twisted out of his grasp. Ruslan's lips twisted into a smile. Grabbing his things, M'yu rose and hurried into the crowd.

"Have a great night," Ruslan called. "I look forward to seeing you tomorrow."