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“Ah, I’m not sure anymore. I’m not sure what I think, or how…”

He trailed off. He seemed completely drained, swaying with exhaustion. In the dim lamplight, his injuries stood out shockingly, and Fern’s eyes kept falling back to the long cut marring his mouth.

“Are you alright?” Fern said. She had the urge to reach for him, to brush her fingertips over the raised cut, to push the hair back from his forehead. But that urge was similar to the urge she sometimes felt to hold Inkwell, and Lautric seemed like the kind of creature she ought to leave well alone. She pulled away from him. “You should rest—we both should. We have so much work to do tomorrow.”

“You’re right,” he said, but instead of opening his door, he stepped towards Fern, closing the distance she had just created. “I… wanted to thank you for your help earlier.”

He spoke so softly his words were almost whispers. Fern’s chest felt suddenly tight, her heart struggling inside the narrow cage of her ribs.

“No need to thank me,” she mumbled. “It was the correct thing to do. And I’m sure you’ve plenty of injuries left to take care of. Will you be alright?”

“I will.” He gave a half-smile. “I wish that every time I bumped into something in the dark, it could be you.”

He was close enough that she stood in the heat radiating from his body; he leaned forward and pressed a lightkiss to her cheek. It was a chaste touch, more affection than passion, and Fern did not pull away.

She sensed a shift between them, like the changing colours of the sky at dawn or a slow winter melting into spring. It surprised and troubled her. She thought of the note in her pocket, the symbols of his house like the black runes of a curse, and she thought of his injuries, his poisoned leg. She knew nothing more about him than she did before. Had she been more careless than she intended?

“Perhaps you ought to try not to bump into anything in the dark,” she said in a husky whisper. “Goodnight, Mr Lautric.”

He pulled away slowly.

“Yes, I’ll try to be more careful with my…” He stopped, giving her a half-smile full of melancholy. “Goodnight, Fern.”

She turned and walked calmly back to her apartment, though every part of her was a storm.

Chapter thirty-one

The Dream

Despite her exhaustion, sleepeluded Fern. She tossed and turned in her bed, disturbing Inkwell so many times that he eventually hopped off the bed to curl up on the windowsill instead, knocking a cup off the side-table on his way.

Fern tidied up after him, too distracted to chide him. So much had happened, and yet Fern had more questions and fewer answers than ever before. Her mind whirled, information flying like pieces of paper caught in a tornado.

Fern grabbed her pen and notebook from her desk and dropped to her knees on the floor, snapping pages out of the notebook. It was time to do what she did best: study.

She began by setting out her suspects, writing out their names on each piece of paper.

Edmund Ferrow: alchemist, had offered Josefa an alliance, which she rejected publicly, then been accused of stealing her work. Josefa had wounded both his pride and his professional reputation.

Emmeline Ferrow: alchemist, fiercely loyal to her brother. Whatever crime her brother might not have committed, she might have—for him.

The twins might have even worked together to take down their main rival. Fern remembered the conversation she had overheard in East Hemwick.

What do we do? What we must.

Fern hesitated, then wrote the name of the next suspect.

Léo Lautric: he had been outwardly kind to Josefa, but he must know what all the candidates did: that Josefa was their greatest rival thus far. He had admitted to Fern both that he had achieved a low score in the first assignment and that Josefa had achieved one of the highest. He had also been about the library on the night her work had gone missing.

But of course, if Josefa was one of the best candidates thus far, that meant that any of the candidates had cause to get rid of her. Perhaps the twins might have been in danger, were they not attached at the hip.

Next, Fern set out the questions that needed answering: where was Josefa? What had happened to her work, and who had locked her out of her room? Where had Lautric been that night when Fern had seen him in the atrium? Where had he come from tonight? Who was it they heard in the Arboretum and what had happened to them?

Then, she laid out her new questions. Where was Professor Saffyn and what happened to him? The money in his drawer and the threat on the card made it clear the Lautrics were somehow involved with his disappearance.

After all, the Lautrics were notorious for keeping spies in great institutions. Carthane was an exception and stood as a paragon amongst other libraries and universities, choosing always to prioritise the sanctity of its knowledge over wealth and status.

It was one of the reasons Fern admired it so much. Even Vestersted Library had often been the recipient of generous “donations” from the Lautric House.