The lock screen faded away, and M'yu scrambled back to his stall. He was in. Rotting Caps, he was in. He secured the bathroom lock again and started combing through Ruslan's security.

First up was the locator. A few lines of code disabled that. Next was a lockout alarm, in case someone tried to hack the password. M'yu quickly turned that off too.

That done, M'yu ran through the system's abilities. Like the engineer's card, M'yu could connect it to local buildings and control their lights and security. There was a locked program on the card, but M'yu mentally flicked through his favorite programming book to remember the sequence that would let him get beneath the user-friendly face of the linkcard and into its mathematical guts. He did the calculations in his head, composing dense, machine-level lines of code. His numbers unfroze the system like fire melts snow; everything that had been read-only suddenly shook free, and he navigated back to the interface to see what exactly he was working with.

The previously locked program opened up to show a network of glowing dots moving in real time. As he clicked one dot, his eyes went wide, and he closed that to click another. A low whistle escaped his lips. Each dot represented a linkcard, a person, moving through the area. Their names and photographs displayed in a bubble above as he clicked through each one.

Running a new command from the security application, he made a diagram of door locks and building lights display beneath the people-tracker. There might not be any walls marked, but M'yu had been studying security displays like these for a long time. It might look like a mess of data to most people, but to M'yu?

To M'yu, it looked like the perfect map.

His breath shook, and he steadied his hands against his knees. He could break into the Prav'sudja with this. Aevryn's hover could get him through the gates, Ruslan's linkcard could give him a real-time map, and he could knock out locks and sensors as he pleased. It was ridiculous, dangerous, deadly—but he could.

If he just knew what he was looking for.

M'yu tucked Ruslan's card back into the hidden pocket. He only had so much time until Ruslan realized it was missing, and only so much more before the boy figured out a way to blame M'yu. The linkcard shuffle he'd played with the other students would help—it had always confused the Magnate's goons before, at least—but it wouldn't last forever.

All it has to last is today, he promised himself. Today, and it'll never be on my person at school again.

His hands still shook, and he couldn't figure out why. His stomach growled, but he'd gone without eating for longer. Weariness weighed at his frame, but he pushed out of the bathroom, splashing his face with water. He could make it through the day. He could be the perfect student no one would ever dare accuse. He could wear a lie with a smile and bow and scrape to Ruslan.

He could do whatever it took so long as everything went down in flames at the end.

Drying his face, he pushed out of the bathroom and forced himself to face the rest of the day. Ruslan spotted him as soon as he entered the cafeteria and beckoned. Head down, both to play his part and to hide his smirk, he made his way through the circle of lesser tables to stop at the Mercury House's. Its surface was made of glass, a silver resin beneath. As M'yu stared at it, though, the resin swirled and moved. Quicksilver, he realized. Moving just beneath the surface, so subtle that if you weren't careful, you would assume nothing was changing at all. If that glass ever cracked, though, the liquid mercury would be a tide spreading all over the floor, and there'd be no stopping it. And so as Ruslan paraded M'yu around to the older housemates as 'his student,' he kept his head down.

"This is the boy from the streets?" one of the older boys scoffed. "He looks more like a puppet." The boy got in M'yu's face. "Hello, puppet! Do they talk where you're from?"

No one had to see him. No one had to respect him. Let them think I'm broken, and they'll never see me break out until it's too late.

Behind M'yu, Ruslan put his hands on either one of his shoulders. "Oh, he talks alright. He just knows better than to get mouthy." Ruslan leaned around M'yu's shoulder. "Isn't that right?"

M'yu swallowed, throat dry, hands tight. "Yes."

"Pardon, I couldn't hear you. What did you say?"

M'yu nodded, forcing his eyes to stay down. "Yes, sir."

The Mercury House broke out laughing. One of them clapped Ruslan on the shoulder, and when he interjected into the tail-ends of their conversations, some of them even glanced his way. M'yu bit his lip. He was just a lever to Ruslan, a tool to earn these upper-years' respect, and if he wasn't careful, he was about to be leveraged. Hard.

Ruslan had a seat at the far end of the table, and he had M'yu to hover at the table's bottom, where there wasn't any chair. When M'yu pulled out his ice-pail, Ruslan declared the best items—the beet pudding, the pigeon meat wrapped in fresh lettuce, the salted carrot chips—to be outside of M'yu's best interest and took them for himself. M'yu probed the inside of his mouth, using the pain to tell himself he wasn't really all that hungry as he nibbled on the leftover mushroom cakes, best eaten as filler for the more tasteful items.

They tasted like dirt, like long weeks of hunger broken by crumbs bought from the Nightsale when there wasn't any money on the family's linkcard. It tasted like death, like the night M'yu's adopted uncle finally succumbed to the fever and passed in the night. It tasted like rotten flesh, where the black rot had popped pustules on his uncle's hands. The puss had oozed out over him and Karsya's gloves as they carried the man to the trash heap on the industrial side of town. It tasted like grief stuck in a throat, when you couldn't cry because you had a job to do, when you refused to cry because the younger kids were watching. It tasted like bitter ash, the way the house smelled when they didn't have the money to buy good wood and so they gathered up wet bits of sticks and the neighbor's trash and burned it to stay warm. M'yu gagged on the memories and closed up his lunch box.

"You'll need your strength," Ruslan said, but M'yu just shook his head.

"I'm not hungry." And he really wasn't anymore. He hadn't been for weeks after his uncle had died, and everytime hunger had threatened, that Cap would come down from the Magnate's row and flirt with his mother at market as she tried to sell little homemade goods that no one bought but for charity. She'd knitted M'yu's beanie that way. It would have sold on the market—good quality, she'd paid for the good wool—but she'd given it to him instead just a week before his uncle died. And then this Cap pecked his way into their life, like a bird trying to widen a fissure. The Vulture was what M'yu had always called him, but when he heard his mother pleading with the man to let her be, she'd called him Vestir. M'yu had always wondered what that name tasted like in a mouth, and so refused to say it. Vestir. It was worse than spoiled mushroom cakes, worse than dirt, worse than ash, worse than death. It was a name that didn't deserve to be said.

"No, truly." Ruslan unzipped M'yu's pack, a wolfish grin on his face. "Eat up."

M'yu's hands shook, and he wiped them against his pant legs. He'd forgotten what these things tasted like. He'd refused to buy them for his group whenever they hit a score, even though they were cheap, even though they took a long time to go bad. He couldn't. He just couldn't do it.

M'yu shook his head. "Really. I'm not hungry."

Ruslan scoffed. "Don't lie. It's not becoming." He shoved the box at M'yu, and now the others were watching, elbowing each other and whispering, waiting, pretending they weren't interested even though they were. Ruslan's eye flicked to them, and his grin widened. "Go on. It's for your health. Scrollschool can take a lot out of you."

Living in a place like this, I bet it can take a lot out of you, the Vulture would say to her. Let me give something back to you. But he didn't want to give anything; he only wanted to take. He never bought any of her wares; he just looked over her table, ran his hands over the things she'd spent so long making, looked over her like she might have a price tag as well. It wasn't so bad when Uncle had been alive. Sometimes, on his off days, he would go to market with M'yu's mother, and a stern look from him was enough to quiet the man for a week. Uncle had been a strapping, healthy man, with muscles on top of his muscles. Mushroom farmers always were, with all the digging and the hauling they did. They were so healthy, you never expected it when they get a hole worn in their gloves, their clothes, their hat, and the witchcandy fields got a hold of them to make a home on their body.

Once witchcandy started eating at you, it didn't stop.

A pang rang through the side of M'yu's mouth, and he pressed his hand to his cheek. The pain flared through his ear, down his jaw, down even to the tip of his spine. It was like a hot knife, like hot blood, like the blood that had run over M'yu's hand after he hit and hit and hit that man—

"Mykta! Weren't you listening?" Ruslan said. "You need to eat."

The Mercury table's attention was starting to drift away, and Ruslan shoved the ice pail toward M'yu again. He pressed a fork into the boy's hand, curled his fingers around the metal with a friendly pat. "You're so distracted. See, you need to recover your strength. It'll do you good for the next classes."

Some of the other boys snickered, and some of them nodded encouragingly. Ruslan's eyes beared down on M'yu, a promise and a threat. I won't offer you mercy a second time.

Ruslan's linkcard weighed heavy in M'yu's pocket. He tried to smile at Ruslan; his lips tightened. He spun the fork in his hand, and stabbed another bite—

M'yu stabbed, blood pouring and mingling with the dark of the night. The house was dark, so dark it would never be light again, and M'yu went after this animal of a man with everything he had, because he would never be allowed to hurt his mother again, never, never, never—

"And now it goes in your mouth," Ruslan coached, drawing a few chuckles from the table.

M'yu forced the mushroom cake past his lips. It tasted like blood. It tasted like the scream of his mother. It tasted like the lights coming on and finding everyone you'd ever loved staring at you like you had the Rot and were going to give it to all of them too. It tasted like stumbling out into the cold with everything you own on your back, never to return again, and shivering, shivering so hard your whole body shook in your boots and you couldn't move, so you crumple to the icy sidewalk and sob—

"He's crying!" one of them laughed.

M'yu blinked up past blurry eyes to see the whole gaggle in an uproar, nudging one another, hitting the table, wiping away their own tears.

"I suppose the little boy can't make a happy plate today," one of them snickered, and they all collapsed into fits.

M'yu spat the mushroom cake out into a napkin and left the table. Their laughs chased him until he shoved through the doors, out into the quiet of the stone halls. This whole school was dark, just as twilit as the Gloam, except where the Gloam had no choice, its sunlight blocked by the towering mountains, these Cap hypocrites hid in the dark because they liked it. M'yu punched the wall, knuckles relishing the pain. He focused on the ache in his hand; it made other things hurt less.

He looked around the empty hall. He had no idea what time it was and no idea where today's next class was held. He pushed off against the stone floors, moving faster and faster just to get somewhere. If you move forward, then you can't be stuck here. That's what he'd always told himself, ever since he'd left home. Just move forward. We'll find where we're going tomorrow. But the hall to the cafeteria was long, and every step he took didn't seem to move him at all.

"Hero-boy!" Sviya called out behind him. He didn't turn, but the large cafeteria doors swooshed closed, and her high heels tapped a staccato beat across the ground. "Are you going to make me run to chase you?"

"Go back inside."

Sviya half-scoffed, half-panted as she tried to catch up to him. "What, you think to give me orders now? Unlikely."

"Sviya—"

"If you would just hold still, we could have a proper conversation!"

He stopped, shoving his hands in his pockets. "Not really in the conversating mood."

"Conversing," she corrected.

He turned and glared at her.

"What?" She shrugged innocently, finally coming to a stop beside him. "You need all the help you can get."

"I'm doing fine."

"Oh, yes, you looked fine in there with the Mercury House laughing you out of the room."

"You don't know what you're talking about."

She sighed. "Right, I forgot you were the one who had been at the school for a term and I was the newcomer who had no idea how things worked." She looked at him with her head tilted, face softening. "What did they say to you anyways?"

"It doesn't matter." M'yu scrubbed away the salt trails so no one else could give him that doe-eyed look.

"Well, whatever it was, pay it no mind. These people, they want to see you rattled. They spend their life crafting their words into knives and then finding the perfect spot to stab you with them."

"They?" M'yu scoffed.

"Just because I dress like them and talk like them doesn't mean I think like them."

He eyed her. "You seemed to fit in well enough at dinner."

Her lips curled down, and there was something soft and far-away in the expression. "My aunt trained me not to let them get a blow in. And I trained me not to become them." She turned back to him with a tight smile. "So, do you want my words of wisdom, or...?"

M'yu fiddled with the hem of his pocket. "Hit me with it."

She nodded briskly. "You don't have to sit at Ruslan's table. In fact, you're not even supposed to. Technically, you should be at the Gold House's table since you're Duke z'Daras's apprentice, but you're the only one from his House. You can sit alone like a weirdling if you want, but if you'd like some company—" She raised her chin, imperial, like a cat watching over its alley. "You could sit at my table, with the other Houseless nobles."

M'yu's nose wrinkled. "I thought you were part of the Magnate's House."

Sviya put her fingers to the bridge of her nose. "You really know nothing."

"So you're not part of the Magnate's House?"

"The Magnate doesn't have a House. He is a prominent merchant, and he's been given charter over the Gloam, but he has no noble lineage. He did adopt me, so I bear his guardianship and last name, but no. I'm not part of his House."

"So then you'd have to marry to join one, wouldn't you?"

Sviya screwed up her face. "Why would you go and say a thing like that? I'm never engaging you, you idiot."

"I didn't mean—"

She sashayed forward, finger flaring in the air. "And if you think I'm marrying anyone"—her finger underscored her point—"from this school just because of some dumb title they have, then you would be sorely mistaken, just like every other lovestruck idiot who chases after the trim of my dress. I'm here to be the best law student in my class, to pass the Right to Speak with flying colors, and to blow every other legal pretender in this town out of the water. And not you, nor the Magnate, nor any of those other politicking puppy dogs are going to get in my way. Now, if you'll excuse me."

She turned on her heel, dress whirling behind her, and sauntered down the hall.

"Sviya."

"Not interested," she called back.

"I would be honored to sit at your table."

Her footsteps paused. She glanced over her shoulder. "Oh. Well. I suppose I'll accept that, then." She sniffed. "We best not go back in now, though, or we'll cause a stir. To the library."

She turned back and bypassed him. Lip bit, he let her lead him along. This was trouble, he knew it would be, but it wasn't like Ruslan was ever going to get the girl anyway. She didn't seem to be anybody's—not even her uncle's.

At the library, he searched again for more programming books, straying out from the section Sviya had shown him to search for anywhere it might have been misplaced. Coming up empty again, though, he snagged one of the repeat books and found solace in the window seat.

Sviya turned crinkling pages and hummed occasionally, her finger running over passages. More than reading, he somehow found himself leaning past the sill and glancing at her. Her back was to him, and her black curls swayed as she read. The soft noises were comforting. It reminded him of when he and Karsya were little and would go sit up on rooftops to watch the world work beneath them. A day like that was when she'd handed him the necklace she'd polished. The Houses can't take anything from us we don't let them. A shy, mischievous smile had crept onto both of their faces. The sky had been blue that day, the day somehow brighter even though the mountain blocked out half the sky. Someday, M'yu had said dreamily, laying back against the roof, we'll take back our light too. His eyes had drifted closed laying there, just as they did now, and before he knew it, he'd slipped into a gentle sleep.