A private conversation is precisely what she was aiming at. She might, possibly, have a substantial and complicated advantage coming her way and Malak seems like the kind of person you might want to loop in on those, on the right terms. "Yeah," she says cheerily, grabbing her bag. "Nice meeting you all!" to the dinner table, and then off they can go, in a direction that is neither especially Annisa's or Malak's room.

"So I've got a minorly life-or-death secret to share, no resale, and I'm thinking if you're interested we can work out compensation after you know it, secrets can be so hard to negotiate prices on in advance."

She'd tell Annisa for free (or, rather, for goodwill) but she's already done Annisa one kindness for goodwill today and if she does it too much she'll probably look weak or stupid or desperate.

"They really are! But by some lucky contrivance I have one too, no resale," she wouldn't have thought of saying that but it's a good thing to add, "and perhaps we could arrange to pay our secrets in secrets, or settle the difference if there's an obvious one once they're shared."

"There probably is, it'd be a pretty big coincidence if we had secrets of exactly equal value. Mine is that the third food counter from the right is uninteresting to mals looking for a hiding spot. Most likely it'll be clear by dinner tomorrow, maybe breakfast. Still pays to check obviously but probably there'll be more untainted food at that one. It'll probably stay that way until other kids start catching on."

Oh, that's well done. A renewable source of secrets, because Malak can presumably do the same thing again. Annisa likes her wishes to maintain her loose-alliance. 

She nods, seriously. "I'll keep your secret.

Mine might be worth nothing at all, or much more than that. Mine is that a Toronto enclaver told me she intends to try to walk into the void tonight, and that I can keep her stuff, if she succeeds, or fails in a way that leaves her no use for it. She would like me to check on her, tomorrow morning."

"Huh. I imagine you're not just sharing that to brag about all the new stuff you're getting?"

"Well, see, I've been terribly uncertain, really, about what to do if I knock on her door tomorrow and she's actually gone. If she's Void-touched, sure, I got her stuff, fair's fair. But if she's gone, and I were Toronto, I wouldn't take an indie kid's word for it, that she decided to kill herself and leave everything to me."

"I hardly think two indie kids are going to be more convincing than one. I do not have the mana capacity to keep an enclaver's worth of stuff hidden if they go looking for it thoroughly, or if we want to be using any of it in public."

She is not sure whether Annisa was actually offering to split the stuff or just to pay Malak to hide it.

She is also - she likes wants to be allowed to like Annisa but she needs to think long and hard about whether Annisa might be planning to shove this enclaver into the void herself and is just making up the story about suicide. (She knows kids from the big enclaves have it easy but this is an honestly a pretty bizarre amount of fragility even so.) And whether she might later decide to treat potential witnesses the same way.

She tries to keep all of this off her face.

"I know. That wouldn't be a very freshman-sized secret, and it seems wise to trade in those, at our size. I plan to be thoroughly accounted for, this whole evening and tomorrow morning - she is at dinner, I'll point her out - and I want to go check on her after homeroom but before breakfast, when there's plenty of people in the halls. At which point quite possibly she will have gotten over her emotional breakdown, or further quite possible this is an elaborate trap to ...figure out who'll try to murder her with that amount of opportunity?

But if not, I'm going to look at the room, and promptly fetch Toronto and tell them the truth. And probably by the time I get back with Toronto the room'll be ransacked, if I just leave the door open and run tearing down the hall yelling for them, and it'd be fairly ridiculous of them to go hunting down everyone who grabbed things."

"...Yeah it wouldn't be very surprising if a room left open with nobody inside got picked over pretty quickly. If she's just - gibbering - would you run off and leave her alone, or wait 'till you could find someone to keep an eye on her?"

Shrug. "She said that she - intended to give me her stuff, too, if she came out gibbering, and so if she tried to stop me taking it once she came out wrong, it'd have changed her priorities. A science experiment. Maybe I'd have her walk with me to go find her enclave."

"Sounds like it might be easier for you if she wrote a note? I guess that could be faked, Toronto might not trust it."

Wait, curses, did she just - yeah Annisa might totally read that as an offer to forge a suicide note, which is NOT what she meant.

" - I don't want to risk miscommunication here, that was not an offer."

"Understood! You'll notice I haven't told you her room number, lest you get any ideas."

"I did notice that. Though presumably you will at some point and I'm curious how close to the wire that's going to be." If Annisa's planning to her in the morning with enough time after curfew that she could've gone to the enclaver's room and done her in before heading by Malak's dorm that's not a great sign.

"I'll tell you when we're headed there." And, perhaps reading some of Malak's hesitation, "Do you want to come by my room at 6:05 and check on her together before homeroom? That's sooner than I planned, because there won't be many people in the halls, but the whole point here is that I do not end up widely suspected of murder on the second day of school, so if you'd rather cut it right up against curfew I can."

" - Yeah that would be reassuring, unless she's three doors down from you or something. Sorry. It's not that I trust you less than other people, I just don't want to commit to incriminating myself to give you an alibi when I don't know for sure you aren't planning to do it. And - it's not the most plausibly story, not even a big North American enclave is going to be sending people that fragile." Supposedly Shanghai did but Malak is acutely aware that Annisa's the one who told her that and she hasn't had time to check with anyone else yet.

"She's nowhere near me. And I know it's a very implausible story, that's why I've been worrying all day about whether there's anything better to get out of it than 'having been visibly nowhere near it all along'. But enclavers have nice gear, so I think it's worth it, and - if it's a test, I'd damn well better have passed it, I'm going to show up tomorrow morning just like I said and if she's fine I will give her a hug."

"Well."

"You realize we've been here, what, six hours? And what you're suggesting is... not quite as serious as a graduation alliance, but it's up there."

That is - substantially more serious than Annisa meant it, but she can't show that now. "I know," she says instead, quietly. "Very easy to walk away from, if you want to do that. I will cling like a leech to Daria's side - my next door neighbor - tonight, and tomorrow, until the news breaks some other way, probably Toronto going to check on her. It'd be stupid to go ahead without you on board, and it'd be incredibly stupid to try to pull off multiple first day of school murders with two of the five people I have been seen with, and also -" She reaches for Malak's wrist.

Malak... has a wrist? She's not quite sure what Annisa's doing with it.

"I don't think you're going to kill me, I'm just thinking about how if we do this and we get caught - All the big enclaves have an interest in stopping people like us from messing with any of them. And if Toronto figures out we conspired to burgle their soon-to-be-dead friend - "

"I'm under no delusions about my odds of getting out of here but they're not zero and if I piss off every big euroamerican enclave they will be."

Annisa wanted to make the point that she has no mana and, limited to physical force, could maybe murder an eight year old but that's it - strength training was not really a priority. But maybe that point is made. "Yeah. I want an enclave slot. Toronto's a nice one, even. 

If we get caught - Edmund Pevensie, London, tried and failed to talk Toronto girl out of suicide, before she spoke to me. One of his enclave-mates intervened, because he was getting upset. I don't know the second kid's name. I'm still not sure it's worth the risk. But it wouldn't be just our word, unless London decides to lie, and - they haven't got a lot of reason to try to pin a Toronto suicide they tried to dissuade on some nearby indies."

She is as confused as she's been all afternoon. It's nice to be trying to reason through it out loud, though.

"That... honestly that's even weirder because that suggests the other Toronto kids knew. And probably so do their parents. But - if getting caught is not a guaranteed death sentence - "

"Let's... go back to the cafeteria and you can point her out to me and I can try to do some independent verification. And, uh." Well this isn't very nice but now is really not the time to be nice, is it. "I will let you know what I decide at 6:05 tomorrow."

She quirks an eyebrow. "You do that."

And they can head back in. She points out the girl. 

Malak will keep an eye on the Toronto enclaver from a distance before doing any more direct investigation. Does she look like someone planning to walk into the void tonight?

Well she's sniffling quietly over a plate of brussels sprouts, that's a hint.

Well, if she's being obvious about it that's a good sign. After a bit more observation a spot opens up and Malak goes to sit next to her.

"Hey are you... OK?"

She attempts a smile, with mixed success. "Not especially. You don't have to worry about me, though."

"It can be really - "

"This place sucks. I - my brother was a senior, didn't make it through graduation, and then I found out that my sister was killed and - "

"Did you... lose someone? too?"

"...not exactly. It's complicated. I don't really want to talk about it because I talked to one of the Londoners about it and he had a breakdown and I would rather not do that to anyone else."

"...I think the Londoners don't know that bad things happen. Or - they do but - it's so easy for them - I'm not going to have a breakdown is what I'm saying. And, um - I heard people saying that you were going to. You know. Have a breakdown. Leave."

...she nods, hunching guiltily over her brussels sprouts.

"Are you... sure? Because it seems like - it gets..." She pretends to drop the sentence as she realizes that in the Scholomance things do not in fact get better, as if she ever could have forgotten that.

"I mean, sometimes, with time, it doesn't look...as...bad?" even though it totally is as bad. She tentatively pats Chantal on the back.

Oh, awkward.

"Um. I don't... think it's going to get better? I think it is going to stay the same amount of bad until I have to graduate and then I will want to walk into the void anyway because the alternative is graduating. So I might as well not waste time."

"...Oh."

She pretends to think about it for a minute.

"Does - does anyone else know? Like, your neighbors, other people from Oxford... I could - If you're really sure I could loan you my knife. It's - cleaner - than the void. Probably. But. I don't want them to think I did it. Instead of just. helping you."

"I haven't talked to my enclave about it because they would just tell me not to and then I might listen, which sounds terrible. But I gave April all my stuff that was more enclave-stuff than me-stuff, and then she gave me a really awkward hug, so I think she at least suspects. Anyway I want to try for the void specifically because then if I succeed people will know it's possible and I will have Contributed to the Sum of Human Knowledge, which is nice."

"...OK. Um. I'm sorry. May you find peace." and she stands up and flees like someone in distress.

Well that's not an emotional breakdown, so she'll take it.