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Lautric gave a wan, tired smile. “It’s nothing, Edmund. Go, help Emmeline and the doctor. I’ll be fine.”

Edmund patted Lautric’s arm and hastened after the others. Lautric straightened himself, turning slowly. His eyes caught Fern’s as he did. His hand, as if of its own volition, rose to his bruised cheek, fingertips brushing over it. And then his hand fell away, then his eyes, and he turned, and was gone.

Chapter sixteen

The Threads

Fern barely slept thatnight, and though she would have liked to spend some of that time mapping out the passageways, she was too nervous to risk it. Vittoria had said Sarlet and the Sentinels had handled the creature, but it had still managed to hurt her in the first place; Fern simply had too much to do to afford being set back by an injury.

She tried to get some work done but was too restless and tired to focus. In the end, she sat by the window, where Inkwell slept on a small blue cushion on the windowsill. Placing herself as close to Inkwell as she could without disturbing him, Fern leaned her cheek against her folded arms and gazed outside.

A high moon shone through a thin veil of mist, casting a bone-white pallor over the towers and trees of Carthane. Everything was silent aside from the distant crackling of her fireplace and the wind murmuring outside the windows.

Fern’s mind worked through the recent events, filing them tidily away.

Lautric borrowing Sumbra books from Vittoria. Edmund offering Josefa an alliance, Josefa turning him down. The creature breaching one of the Gateways, the attack on Vittoria. Vasili Drei’s strange questions, his confident knowledge of Sumbra. Baudet blaming Lautric for what happened to Vittoria, his threat should she not survive.

And with those things, the others, too. Fern’s missing mentor. The muttered threat outside her door the night of her arrival. East Hemwick, the body and the ostary.

Related or not, those things were all linked to one another by Carthane, and through Carthane, to Fern.

Is this the legacy she would inherit, she wondered, when she succeeded in her candidacy? She had always thought of Carthane as its library, but that library did not exist in isolation. It was connected, like the threading network of veins, to all the parts of it Fern was coming to discover. Its Grand Archivists, its neighbouring town, its visitors. Its books and Gateways, the sea it crouched above.

By becoming part of Carthane, would Fern find herself connected to all those things, too?

The prospect was uneasy. Fern blinked at Inkwell, who sat so close to her without touching her. Inkwell was her closest companion, but she could only be close to himbecausethere was only so close she could get to the little black creature. It was how she preferred her connections: always at an arm’s length, always remote enough that she could extricate herself from any relationship without pain.

Another lesson she had learned at St Jerome’s, and another lesson she would not soon forget.

Breakfast the following morningwas tense. Everyone ate in silence. Emmeline and Edmund alone conversed, Emmeline reclining against the back of her chair while Edmund spread jam over her toast and spooned sugar into her coffee. Emmeline was pale—paler than normal, with her long hair a shock of red—and Fern wondered if she had overstretched herself trying to purge the poison from Vittoria’s blood the previous night.

When her brother handed her a slice of toast, she pushed his hand away. Edmund shook his head.

“Emmy. You must eat.”

“No. I feel nauseous.”

“I know,” her brother murmured. “I’m sorry. You should have let me do it instead of you.”

Emmeline gave her brother a curving, indolent smile. “But thenyouwould feel ill, and I’m altogether too impatient to look after you.”

She reached for her brother’s face, brushed two fingers down his cheek, over his jaw. The expression in her eyes was one of such complete and utter adoration, it made Fern’s stomach drop to witness it.

She herself was not a naturally affectionate person, and though she valued honesty in all things, even love, she could not imagine ever looking at anyone the way Emmeline looked at her brother. Let alone so openly, in front of so many strangers.

But the twins did not seem remotely concerned about their surroundings. In fact, they seemed to not evenbe aware that they were not alone in the dining room. Edmund handed his sister the toast, which she ate reluctantly, and he kissed the back of her hand when she finished an entire slice.

This affectionate scene unfolded in stark contrast to the rest of the table. Josefa ate her breakfast stooped over her books. Dr Essouadi looked as though she had barely slept—no wonder. Baudet, in an ornate blue suit, had come only to fetch some food to bring to the recovering Vittoria. General Srivastav, normally so warm and friendly, seemed distracted and anxious as he finished his food, excusing himself and leaving the table without waiting for Dr Essouadi, which he normally did.

Vasili Drei, eschewing food, had taken his coffee with him in a paper cup. And as for Lautric, seemingly always last to rise, Fern left the dining room before he had even arrived.

She tried not to concern herself with the other candidates as she worked that day. She could tell Baudet was deeply concerned about Vittoria; she guessed he liked her rather more than as just an ally. Baudet disliked Lautric, despite working together. The twins cared deeply for one another; Josefa seemed keen to avoid both of them.

All Fern saw was the threads, the network of veins she had imagined the previous night, spreading between the candidates.

Those veins would only become thicker, stronger, until the candidates became inextricably tied to one another in a thorny tangle of love and hate. It would make the candidacy not only difficult but complicated. Personal.

It was not a mistake Fern would make. She would remain focused, level-headed, and above all things,professional.