"We'll see. Here's the ink, I'll know if you use it, I can hand the notes back after school tomorrow."

"You better," she says, and gets her notes out.

She's not actually sure that ink is sufficiently irreplaceable to work as collateral, now that she thinks of it, but she'll look like such an idiot if she backs out in the middle of getting her notes out. It's probably fine. Not because she thinks she can trust him, but because he hasn't had the chance to make any friends yet, and so if one of them needs to gather a posse to break the other's kneecaps, she's going to have the advantage there, and he's not stupid enough not to know it.

Well, Julian really didn't expect that to work. It'd hurt to lose the ink, but it'd hurt Tallandria worse to lose her notes; he doesn't think she'll try anything. As for the other part of the bargain – well, if she's willing to accept help from him, she must be really desperate. 

Once he's got the notes, he runs all the way home. He has one night and he doesn't expect to get much sleep. 

Korva feels... worse... about her decisions, by the time she gets home. Her mother would hit her for them, if she found out, and not the normal almost friendly kind of hitting that she does all the time. 

The problem, she's pieced together, by the time she gets home, is that she doesn't know anything about Julien's parents. Maybe they're like hers, barely able to scrape together enough for any extra ink at all, and all too willing to beat her if she messes up in a way that wastes it. Or maybe they're incredibly rich and will just buy him more. The ink costs money, not effort, and when you're a kid these are not the same thing at all. 

So... she just has to hope that it works out. And that if it doesn't, that she can get together some kids to break his kneecaps. Or... whatever part of other kids you're supposed to break, for this offense. They might refuse to help her if they think she's been an idiot? She can just tell them that he stole her notes, though, and then they'll be more likely to unite against a guy who's acting crazy and needs to be cut down a peg and taught how things work here. They'll be more willing to believe her than him; she's not crazy, and they can't know that he isn't.



Hopefully it doesn't come to that. She really doesn't want to deal with all of that.

Julien has the notes all copied by the next morning. It took longer than he'd hoped. Jean-Louis is going through one of those phases where he needs something every five godsdamn minutes, and hitting him doesn't even help since then he just cries, even though he's more than old enough to know better. Julien never made such trouble when he was six. 

He's going to be exhausted in school the next day, and there's an assessment, but it's fine, he'll be fine, he just has to not be the worst, he can manage that. As long as he can keep his eyes open. 

Korva has a mildly miserable night worrying about this, but her parents are none the wiser in the morning. She stops him before classes start; she can't remember whether they agreed on before or after, and she figures that school will be awful today if she has to be in suspense about this the whole time.

"Do you have them?"