The Right to Die | ✓ Amby Winner 2023

11. Compromise

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?"