Page 107 of Storm of Shadows

“Clare, your friend is still in the clinic,” I say. “They can do what they want.”

Which is why I know my sister’s death was no accident.

Someone killed her. Of that I am certain.

Chapter Forty-Seven

Briony

My sister remains on my mind for the rest of the day and all through lessons over the next two. At lunch break on Wednesday, we find Clare already in the canteen, hunched over a book.

“What are you reading?” I ask Clare, attempting to twist my head around to read the text.

“Oh,” she peers up at us, blinking behind her glasses, “I’m reading up on past trials.”

“The first trial is ages away,” Fly mutters, “and I don’t want to have to think about it until I’m forced to.”

“It’s not ages away. It’s three days,” Clare says. “And I want to be prepared.”

“How can we be?” I say.

Clare marks her page and closes the book. “I figure the academy trials have occurred every year for over five hundred, correct?” We both nod. “By this point, it must be pretty difficult to come up with anything original. I bet all the trials are just a variation on the very first few they devised.”

“How’s that helpful?” Fly says, grimacing as he chews a particularly tough bit of meat.

“If I can work out what the most common types of trials are, I can prepare for them,” she explains.

“That’s … not a bad idea,” I confess.

She nods. “Of course not.”

I stare at Clare and then down at her book, an idea forming in my mind. I push back my chair and stand up.

“Woah,” Fly cries. “What’s the hurry? Lessons don’t start for another twenty minutes.”

“I’m not going to lessons.”

“Right.” He nods. “Did the alcohol from the other night fry your brain? You can’t skip lessons.”

“I can and I am.”

“Well, sure youcan, if you want to face the full force of Madame Bardin’s wrath. I hear she reduced Marcus London – one of the biggest and most hardy of men from Iron Quarter by the way – to tears. And that’s before she doled out his actual punishment for turning up to class ten minutes late.”

“I’m not scared of Madame Bardin.”

“It’s Professor Tudor’s lesson you’ll be missing, though.”

“I doubt he’ll even notice I’m not there.”

“But where are you going to go? What are you going to do? There’s nothing to do around here – especially when everyone else is in lessons.”

“I’m going to the library.”

I leave Fly speechless and gaping into space and hurry out of the canteen.

I haven’t visited the library yet. When I arrive at its twin metal doors, I suspect people rarely do. Inside the place is dark and gloomy, despite the long windows high up near the roof, and the air swirls with a thick mist of dust. It makes my eyes sting and has me coughing almost immediately. The large room itself– almost the same size as the Great Hall – is rammed with stacks of books, lined up like gravestones.

No librarian greets me, but there is a sign pinned to one of the first bookcases which indicates where different genres of books can be located. I run my eyes down the list past Fiction, Nonfiction and academic textbooks. There is nothing specifically about the academy, but I decide the history section may have something.