Despite Benji’s help, Nella had continued to miss an alarming number of classes. She did her best to make it to plantworking, but had now been absent from metalworking at least four times. Enough for even Mason to notice, which was saying quite a lot for a man who frequently mistook hot air filled with flying metal for an enriching classroom environment. When Nella did miss plantworking, Matilde’s recriminations became more severe, and more public. When she was in class, Matilde was short with her, or laid on sarcastic praise for doing the bare minimum.

  “Have you told her you’re struggling?” Benji asked Nella during one of their brief overlaps in the corridor outside class. “I’m sure she’d understand if she knew you were overwhelmed.”

  “And if she asks why? I’m not a good liar.”

  “You don’t have to lie—you can omit.”

  “I’m not a good omitter either.”

  This characterization didn’t make Benji overly confident about the success of their shared enterprise.

  One afternoon, Simon and Lucy were sitting on the base of Varai’s statue in the courtyard at the center of campus. They conferred excitedly as something moved between them over the flat surface. Benji approached, both out of curiosity and because he hadn’t yet managed to wrest the fibbett attracter from the twins’ grasp.

  When he saw what they were doing, he wondered if he’d ever be getting the attracter back.

  They sat with legs splayed, six feet apart, creating a half-enclosed area between them. Fibbetts ran back and forth. There were eight of them, far more individually identifiable than when they’d formed a single mass in the teashop. Their movements were also much more purposeful. Indeed, as they looped back and forth between the twins, they formed a near-perfect ellipse flowing continuously counterclockwise.

  Despite Lucy’s intense focus on the fibetts, she was aware enough of Benji’s arrival that she already had a sheaf of papers in her hand, ready to pass it to him.

  “Your corrected notes from the past week of languageworking class,” Lucy said. “We revised your factual inaccuracies.”

  “There were a lot,” Simon said, guiding a fibbett back on course with a finger. “Do you actually attend classes, or do you just guess what the professor will say?”

  “You stole my notes?”

  “We fixed them,” Lucy said.

  Benji looked down at the notes with dismay. They were nearly half overwritten with red pencil. It was like receiving a failing exam back from a professor. Which is likely what would have happened if Benji didn’t have the two blonde monsters looking out for him.

  “Dare I ask what’s happening here?” Benji asked as he returned his notes to his bookbag.

  “What you see is what you get,” Simon said. “Which is sort of a miracle when it comes to fibbetts. They’re sneaky devils.”

  Benji watched the chittering insects, finding their orderly movements bizarrely mesmerizing.

  “You’re probably here for this,” Simon said, holding up the attracter. The fibbetts’ route compressed ever so slightly as he raised it.

  “It’s past due,” Benji said. “I have to get it back to OPMI.”

  “Let me ask you a question, though,” Lucy said. “You acknowledge that we’ve made significant progress.”

  Benji could anticipate the entirety of Lucy’s argument before she said another word. How she would guilt him into saying they’d made impressive progress, to admit that the attracter was vital to their research, to confess that he’d be lost without their languageworking assistance, and wasn’t it worth it for the sake of both progress and his continued academic survival to return the item a bit late to OPMI? The fact that he could predict all of it in advance only made it more annoying. Even more annoying, he knew it would probably work.

  When she had laid her argument out more or less as Benji had predicted, Lucy added, “Does OPMI charge late fees?”

  “It’s really more of an honor code system. That is, until Reena sends her goons to smash in your elbows.”

  “But the goons don’t come right away.” One of the fibbetts had run up Simon’s arm in response to an invisible command. It looped its insectoid way around his shoulders.

  “Usually not. There’s an indeterminate grace period before the violence.”

  “How long is ‘indeterminate’?”

  “I’d really prefer not to test it.”

  “Let’s say three more days,” Simon said.

  “That’s really such a small amount of days,” Lucy added.

  “And if you think about it, each day isn’t really that long, either,” Simon said. “I’m always surprised how one day flew by. What’s three of those?”

  Benji ground his fingers into his temples.

  “What are you going to do in three days?”

  Simon’s smile was disconcertingly pointy. “Watch us.”

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  Benji didn’t get a chance to press further. Matilde had appeared around the other side of the statue, making her way toward him with brisk strides. There was sadly both nowhere to hide, and no one else in the nearly empty square she could be here to see.

  “Professor, hi,” was all he managed.

  “Hello Benji. Have you eaten yet?”

  “Not yet—”

  “Good, you’ll be joining me in the faculty dining room. Come now.”

  Although she didn’t physically drag him toward the dining hall, the effect was the same. Benji waved meekly back at the twins, who had begun chanting in unison. It didn’t sound like any magic taught at the university.

  Walking behind Matilde, Benji found himself noticing that her intricately shaped hair didn’t so much as ripple as she walked. The world appeared to move around her rather than her moving through it. She led him into the main dining room, and then immediately to the left, away from the kitchens. The faculty dining room was strangely peaceful for being adjacent to the room where every student took their meals. Several different workings blocked the rumble of noise from the dining hall. Benji found it stifling. Fifteen to twenty professors sat in comfortable wooden chairs with leather cushions, at tables covered by blue and orange tablecloths. Two servers ferried plates back and forth from the kitchen.

  “You don’t have to eat from the buffet?” Benji asked to break the silence.

  “One of the perks of the position,” Matilde said, leading them to a table in the back corner. “It’s the same food, I understand, albeit better presented than when a third-year slops it onto a plate with a crusty serving spoon.”

  One of the servers, who turned out to be a fifth-year, set a cup of tea in front of Matilde without her asking, before inquiring if Benji wanted anything to drink.

  “Is there anything served in here that isn’t in the student dining hall?”

  “Well, Nathan always gets sherry after dinner,” the server said. “I wouldn’t recommend it with lunch. It’s rather rich.”

  “I’ll have water.”

  Matilde didn’t look amused at, or even appear to recognize, Benji’s discomfort. He supposed one person not finding it funny when he was caught on the back foot was something, even if Matilde’s serious expression portended a conversation he’d rather have avoided.

  As the server left to collect his water and their food, Matilde’s gaze ensnared Benji.

  “You’ve done quite well in my class,” Matilde said. “It’s always gratifying when a senior first-year demonstrates natural aptitude in a discipline.”

  “I got lucky with plantworking. Metalworking to a lesser extent. I’m hopeless in most everything else.”

  “I was intrigued by your story,” Matilde said. “You’re one of the minor subplots of this academic year for the entire faculty.”

  Benji certainly didn’t know how to feel about that.

  “Always nice to be talked about, I guess. Even if it’s just surprise that I’m not completely worthless.”

  Matilde took an imperious sip of her tea. “There are a variety of perspectives among the faculty. Many subscribe to the view that natural talent is most important, and our role as professors is less to teach, and more to allow natural flourishing.”

  Benji took a sip of his water as soon as the server set it down. The server had remembered that Matilde preferred raw vegetables, and had returned to ask if lightly braised asparagus was acceptable. “Some of us require a bit more help flourishing than others.”

  “Any plantworker could tell you that different types of plants require different care to grow to their full potential. Treat every plant the same, and some will thrive while others die.”

  “I can’t imagine you’ve killed a plant in a long time.”

  “Not unintentionally.” Something cold and a bit wild pushed its way into Matilde’s expression. For all her poise and professorial concern for her students’ achievements, she had still chosen to live among the wild things of the world. As with Nella, her chosen field seemed to imply a value judgement, perhaps some refutation of the superiority of the human. “We kill plants frequently in order to run experiments. We don’t do that kind of intentional experimentation with students.”

  Benji sucked his teeth. He still felt disquieted by Matilde’s invitation to lunch, especially with no place to hide from her intense stare.

  “In any case, I’m glad you’re doing well. I always concern myself with how everyone is doing in my classes. Which is why it’s especially alarming when my classroom assistant, who’s always done well, suddenly becomes unreliable.”

  Benji had been too bewildered to have any expectations coming into this conversation. For some reason he hadn’t once considered that Matilde would question him about Nella.

  “I did notice that Nella’s been out of our plantworking class a few times,” he said.

  “And metalworking. She’s your partner in that class, right?”

  The imagined wall between Benji’s curricular disciplines came crashing down. He’d always felt his work in one class had no bearing on any other, as if they were separate worlds, hermetically sealed by some academic code of secrecy. Maybe professors actually just gossiped about their students all the time.

  “She’s missed a few of those, yes.”

  “And does that worry you?”

  Before Benji could respond, she said, “It worries me. It worries me quite a lot, Benji.”

  “Have you talked to her about this?” Benji asked. The server had come back with a plate of meat and roasted potatoes slathered in a garlic aioli sauce that wasn’t available to students. If it had been, Benji would’ve eaten it by the vat. The server had also brought a massive plate of raw asparagus, which Matilde ate with delicate crunching bites.

  “I have broached the subject,” she said. “She can be quite evasive.”

  “I’ve heard she prefers talking to the plants.”

  “Funny.” There was no humor in Matilde’s tone. “If you know anything that the faculty needs to know, I hope you will feel it your duty to report it.”

  “Of course. I wish I knew anything. I truly do.”

  Benji took a large bite of the rare meat, largely for an excuse not to talk for a while. He was doing better than he’d expected at lying to a professor’s face, which still wasn’t very well at all. Matilde’s reproachful look confirmed this.

  “I know you worked hard to get here. Nella has worked even harder. I hope neither of you will do anything to jeopardize all that hard work.”

  Benji nodded gravely as he chewed. Even his mounting fear couldn’t prevent him from appreciating how delicious the garlic aioli was on the seared meat.

  Matilde sat back in her chair and drank more of her tea, seeming to relax a bit now that she’d gotten her point across. Professors’ low conversations buzzed around them.

  Her relaxed attitude made it all the more disconcerting when she leaned forward and said, “I was interested to hear from the librarian that you’ve been taking out a lot of books about the caverns beneath Thelspoint.”

  “Caverns?”

  “Catacombs, secret passages, that sort of thing? Most students are content to tell dubious tales of exploits in those tunnels. I’m sure your interest is purely academic.”

  “I’ve always been interested in what’s below the city. I grew up here, you know? You hear a lot of stories”

  “I’m well aware. I do wonder, however, whether your time might be better spent researching subjects related to your coursework. Not even a professor would have much reason to seek out the network of tunnels beneath the university. Not unless there was something they needed to hide there.”

  “It’s purely an academic interest.” Benji sounded unconvincing, even to himself.

  Matilde looked far from satisfied.