Page 20 of The Deadliest Candidate (The Last Grand Archivist #1)

Chapter twenty

The Toast

Outside, the afternoon was dark, and the sun was descending fast, the colours of sunset suffocated by billows of clouds. It had stopped raining, but the ground was waterlogged and pungent. With each step Fern took, her boots sank into the ground with a burbling squelch.

Fern wrapped her coat around her and breathed deeply, filling her lungs with cold air. She skirted the labyrinths of lawns and hedges surrounding the central building in the direction of the Arboretum.

Protected by the canopies of towering trees, the ground was drier there, the moss and grass scattered with fallen leaves, acorns, and the spiky burrs of chestnuts. Fern passed through the trees, brushing her palms against the trunks, which were surprisingly dry, almost warm despite the encroaching autumn.

When she was a little girl, the Arboretum had been the only outdoor space she could play in; the trees made it impossible for anyone in the library or towers to see her.

She remembered spending long dusk hours crouching in the grass, collecting plump chestnuts into her skirt to take back to the kitchens for the cooks to roast. She remembered her father in the distance, trimming hedges or stooping over a bed of weeds. Sometimes the head groundskeeper, Matthew, would work in determined silence at his side, but Fern would hide every time she saw him to avoid an inevitable telling-off if he caught her outside.

She had been afraid of Matthew, but she remembered the sound of his voice, the deep rumble of it echoing through the kitchens in the evening, when the servants sat to eat and sip cider and tell stories. Those were her favourite times when she was little: sitting perched on one of the counters, taking bites out of a warm muffin and listening to frightening stories the servants told about the Gateways.

Fern stopped in her tracks, blinking away the memories.

She never thought back on those times—another habit learned at the orphanage—but that was more difficult now that she was back.

She looked up.

Her steps, as though of their own volition, had led her to the foot of the Astronomy Tower. It rose so high that it disappeared into the soft-falling shadows of nascent night. Its door was still sealed.

She had half-expected the mound of collapsed rocks that killed her parents to still be there, but it wasn’t. All that remained of the tragedy was the tower, the mossy ground and the indifferent trees of the Arboretum looking on. Nothing else .

If her parents were buried somewhere in the grounds of Carthane, Fern did not know where. In any case, she was back, wasn’t she?

After being forced to leave, after the eight years spent in St Jerome, after building a career worthy of Carthane, she’d done it. She’d made her way back.

She didn’t need to mourn at her parents’ grave; the Astronomy Tower might as well have been their mausoleum. Fern lay a palm over the cold stone of the tower. Unlike the tree trunks she’d touched on her way, it was smooth and slippery and exuded cold like a sepulchral breath.

Fern closed her eyes and tried to think of what she would tell her parents, if she could speak to them.

But nothing came to her head, only the horrible little memory of the Abyssal cross hanging above her narrow cot in the orphanage, and how she had spent her first night there—the night of her parents’ death—staring at it.

Fern opened her eyes, and turned briskly, and left the Arboretum, the darkness of falling night swallowing the Astronomy Tower.

When she arrived at the Mage Tower, it was to the sound of music. A record player was pouring out cheery melodies into the common room, where Fern found the other candidates gathered around a bar cart. Bottles of champagne, wine and liquor glimmered on the glossy shelves, with crystal flutes and glass jars of garnishes nestled around buckets of ice.

“Finally!” Emmeline Ferrow exclaimed, startling Fern as she appeared in front of her. “We’ve been wondering where you’d gone, Miss Sullivan. Champagne?”

She wore a dress of royal blue silk and held two flutes of champagne, one of which she handed Fern. The other candidates were in various states of formal and informal wear: Vittoria Orsini in an ivory-coloured dress and pearls, Edmund and Rapha?l in smoking jackets, Srivastav in a jodhpuri suit of green samite.

Essouadi, who normally favoured trousers and loose tunics, wore a long robe embroidered at the sleeves and collar, bracelets at her wrists. Josefa wore black, her blunt chin-length hair gleaming like satin, and scarlet lipstick made her mouth look like a rose.

Feeling decidedly underdressed, Fern took the cup of champagne Emmeline offered her and drank. Emmeline, watching her, widened her eyes in pleasure and said, “That’s the spirit, my dear Sullivan!”

Fern wasn’t in the mood to celebrate, but the alcohol, like the sugar in her coffee earlier, would work its own chemistry upon her, a spell for softening the edges of her worries and easing the pressure driving like an iron stake through her.

She drained her glass and handed it to Edmund, who seemed only too happy to refill it.

“If you would allow me,” General Srivastav said as she drank, raising his own glass. “I’d like to make a toast. We have all left our homes and those beloved to us behind to come here. We are all competitors, but comrades too, a regiment of a sort. It is in the spirit of companionship I wish to bid you all good fortune upon this first assignment. To us all, and to our health!”

There was a resounding cheer as the candidates—all ten of them gathered for once—clinked their glasses and drank. The twins, placing their cups down, stepped hand-in-hand onto the centre of the room, where the marble tiles formed a pattern of sharp-pointed black stars. Edmund bowed to his sister, laughter in his eyes, and the two launched into an informal waltz.

Their light-heartedness was understandable. Out of all the candidates, this assignment was most suited to them, and they must reign comfortable in the idea that they would be securing the highest marks for it.

Fern could not say the same, and did not feel much like dancing, but she watched as Ravi Srivastav offered Dr Essouadi his hand for a dance, and Baudet drew Vittoria Orsini to him with a gentle arm curled about her wounded middle. Turning, Fern caught Josefa’s dark eyes.

The two women stared at one another for a silent moment, sharing a slow-blossoming smile. Then Fern set her cup down and gave Josefa her elbow, which Josefa took with a little laugh.

They were both poor dancers, both more than a little tired, so they twirled slowly, Fern leading, Josefa following.

“I hope you did well today,” Fern said through the music.

“As well as the circumstances allowed,” Josefa said. “And yourself?”

“As well as I think I was able,” said Fern. She thought of the three symbols that had appeared on her desk, the complex, meticulous spellwork behind them. She hesitated before adding, “Ought I thank you for today?”

Josefa gave a slight frown. “I’m not sure what you mean. Certainly, I ought to thank you. Your research notes helped me tremendously, and your aid rekindled the motivation I had lost. I hope you know how much it means to me.”

It was neither acknowledgement that she was the mysterious helper nor a complete denial. If she had helped Fern, then she did not wish to admit it, at least not here. And if it wasn’t her, then Fern could think of nobody else who might have something to gain from her success.

Just another unanswered question to add to her ever-growing collection of mysteries.

“I can only hope that my notes were good enough for a historian of alchemy.”

“Oh, much more than good enough. Your notes were impressive. Do you have much of an interest in Alchemy?”

Fern was tempted to tell Josefa that she was not an accomplished magic-user due to her small reserves of power, but she held her tongue. It was one thing to allow herself to be friendly with Josefa, it was another altogether to confess to her own limitations.

They were, after all, still rivals.

“Only where Alchemy intersects with Sumbra,” Fern answered, selecting a different truth to tell the dark-haired historian. “My work has been mostly to trace the origin of symbols back to the Gateways and their entities. In that sense, I suppose you could say my knowledge of Alchemy is more akin to yours as a historian than, for example, that of Miss Ferrow and her brother.”

“Practitioners look down on historians and archivists,” Josefa said with a nod, “but what’s the point of knowledge if it’s not safeguarded and studied? We still know so little about the powers we use, sometimes I think—”

She stopped herself to catch her breath, and Fern slowed their dancing, concerned at the young woman’s flushed face. But Josefa seemed more expressive than ever, her eyes glittering with almost child-like excitement.

“You know, Miss Sullivan, I’ve read all your publications on Sumbra influences on alchemical principles.”

“You have?” Fern raised both eyebrows in surprise, then smiled. “I’m afraid I’ve not written many.”

Josefa nodded enthusiastically. “Only three, to be precise, and I referenced them all in a paper of my own based on your research.”

“You did?”

Perhaps it was the warmth of the room, or the excitement of drinking and dancing after the stress and pressure of the assignment, or perhaps it was simply the joy of her work being appreciated, but Fern’s cheeks were flushed with heat.

“Yes,” Josefa said proudly. “ Modern Alchemy and its Debt to Sumbra .”

“I’ll have to make sure I read it as soon as I can.”

“You should do no such thing,” said Josefa, shaking her head with a sigh of a laugh. “After today’s assignment, I’m sure you will not wish to hear so much as the mention of Alchemy ever again.”

Fern laughed. “A third cup of champagne and I won’t remember even the first of the symbols I drew today.”

Fern danced twice with Josefa, once with Edmund Ferrow, once with his sister, and once with Ravi Srivastav, but she only realised that she’d had a little more to drink than she’d ought to when Josefa bid her goodnight and her figure swayed as it walked away.

Fern, standing by the table of canapes she had barely touched, blinked as she watched the historian disappear up the stairs. No, Josefa wasn’t swaying—Fern was tipsy.

Time to follow Josefa’s suit and go to bed.

But before she could follow her, a figure appeared in front of her, too close to sway. Fern blinked, and wished idly that there was a plate of marzipan truffles she could nibble on, and looked up into a pale face strewn with freckles and pretty brown eyes.

“How can I help you, Mr Lautric?”

Like her, he wore the same clothing as he had during the assignment: the black trousers and azure wool. The bruise Baudet had marked his cheek with had faded from his face surprisingly fast, and his hair had grown since she had first met him outside the Carthane gates. Now, the black strands curled lushly against his forehead and around the shell of his ears.

He looked, Fern thought, as exhausted as she felt, though her tiredness was something she envisioned as something sharp and bothersome, and his manifested as something dreamy and soft .

He responded to her abrupt question by raising his hand. “I hoped you might grant me the honour of a dance.”

Fern hesitated. She glanced at his fingers, which were long and stained with ink.

She said, “I’m a poor dancer.”

His smile was amused. “Yes. So am I.”

Remembering what she had witnessed, Fern tried to appeal to Lautric’s preference. She pointed to the beautiful Vittoria Orsini, who was sitting on a couch with Dr Essouadi with her head resting on a cushion.

“Miss Orsini is a fine dancer, I’m sure she would be delighted to dance with you.”

“But Rapha?l won’t stare daggers into my back if I dance with you .”

Fern suppressed a sigh and placed her hand in his fingers. “Very well, Mr Lautric.”

He rested his other hand on her back, his thumb pressed in the dip of her spine, and whirled her lowly onto the star-adorned floor.

“Please,” he said. “Call me Léo.”

With more belligerence than she might have customarily allowed herself to display, Fern said, “I don’t think I will.”

He fixed her with a placid look, which felt frustratingly calm in the face of her open hostility.

“How did you fare in the assignment?” he asked. “Well, I hope?”

“Like everybody else today, I did my very best.” Fern leaned forward. “I should think you would be hoping for your rivals’ failure, not their success? ”

Lautric smiled slightly. His eyes, limpid brown and long-lashed, crinkled with the movement.

“I never said I wished for everyone’s success,” he said. “Only yours, Miss Sullivan.”

“Why?” Fern tightened her fingers on Lautric’s shoulders. “I certainly am not wishing for yours.”

“Why? Because we are rivals? Or have I done something to displease you?”

He knew perfectly well he had done nothing to displease her. Lautric seemed to be, ironically—irksomely—a perfectly pleasing young man. Graceful, handsome, courteous and mild-mannered.

Fern, emboldened by the heady alchemy of alcohol in her bloodstream and little food in her stomach and Lautric’s arms about her, said, “I know your family well.”

Lautric’s smile grew, becoming at once more beautiful and dangerous. He pressed her closer, sweeping her to him by tightening his arm about her waist, and spoke in a voice so low she barely heard him over the music.

“They know you well, too.”