Page 23 of The Deadliest Candidate (The Last Grand Archivist #1)
Chapter twenty-three
The Cynic
Fern’s first thought was that Josefa must have left before she’d awoken. Perhaps the young woman had felt embarrassed by her display of emotions the previous night, or perhaps she had gone to find Housemistress Sarlet about her door. Fern did not see her in the dining room for breakfast, but most of the candidates were absent that morning, probably resting after the assignment or nursing hangovers.
When Fern returned to her room, bearing a small bowl of cream for Inkwell, she found three envelopes in the wooden tray by her door.
She set the bowl down quickly inside, bid Inkwell a polite goodbye, and returned to the tray to pick up the envelopes. All bore the seal of gold wax and the image of the eye with a candle for a pupil. Fern had only written to Oscar recently; he probably hadn’t even received her letter yet, but disappointment still surged through her chest.
She opened the envelopes. The first contained a brief letter congratulating her on the completion of her first assignment and informing her she had achieved a score of eighty-seven out of a possible one hundred.
A modest score, though of course she would not know its true significance unless she learned what the other candidates got. And in any case, it did not matter if she’d achieved the very lowest score, it could not be changed now.
The second envelope held a short invitation to attend the Palissy Auditorium the following morning, Fern guessed for the announcement of the second assignment.
She opened the third envelope, and her heart skipped a beat.
Dear Miss Sullivan,
In light of Professor Saffyn’s continued absence, we would like to extend our apologies for any inconvenience this may have caused. Please find enclosed our written permission to access the Sumbra Wing of the Carthane Athenaeum. We wish you luck with your thesis research and the rest of your candidacy .
Fern thought of her notes, in their hiding place—years’ worth of work—all that reading, so many books hunted down, and all this patience required of her, especially now she was here.
She clutched the third envelope and closed her eyes in a sigh.
Finally .
With only one day until the next assignment, there was no time to waste, so Fern made her way straight to the Sumbra Wing, located at the very back of the topmost floor.
When she arrived, she faltered in her steps. Two Sentinels stood at the end of the vaulted corridor. They neither moved nor reacted to her; they stood like statues of living wax in the shadow of an alcove. Facing them across the corridor was the Sumbra Wing.
The stone archway of its entrance gaped open like a waiting mouth.
Fern hurried past the Sentinels and through the entrance. Carthane seemed older here: heavy arches of rough-hewn stone supported the high ceilings, and there were too few windows to illuminate the labyrinth of towering bookshelves.
Instead, spindly floor candelabras stood like rusty skeletons, sallow candlelight revealing the thick spines of ancient tomes. In the centre of the room was a narrow line of desks, the lamps there unlit and covered with a fine layer of dust.
Fern had come to Carthane knowing exactly what her research topic was. After so many years studying Sumbra, everyone expected her to be interested in Gateways. Their history, their creation—hundreds of years of blood sacrifices, atrocious acts committed for the sake of knowledge.
It was easy enough to give in to Sumbra, the call of its entities and all the power and knowledge they offered. But years of studying Sumbra had taught Fern only one thing .
That it was time humankind learned how to close Gateways.
It was a controversial topic. Gateways could be abandoned by their entities and become dormant, but they could never be closed. They were, inherently, damage made to the world, a rip in the fabric of existence. Such damage could not easily be mended.
Many had tried, and failed. Fern had collected and studied those attempts, every last one of them, painstakingly, over years. And now she had reached the crux of her project, and it was time to find a solution: a way to close Gateways.
There was only one book on the subject. And it was right here in Carthane, in this very wing she now stood in.
She set her things down on a desk, turning on the lamp so as to easily find her way back. Each wing in Carthane held a directory; she glanced around until she spotted it.
At the end of the room, standing beneath a cupola of dull stone, a statue of a winged creature held a tablet of stone. Upon that tablet rested an enormous book—the directory.
From afar, the statue appeared almost like that of an angel. It wasn’t. It was a towering figure stooping, five wings rising from its back. It was headless, crooked bones protruding from inside its neck like a collar of thorns. Its arms were almost human, roped with muscles, but its chest gaped wide, the bones of the ribcage jutting out like teeth to reveal a straining, bulging eye.
A cold shudder jolted Fern.
This was a statue of a Sumbral being—not one of the petty beasts from the realms beyond the Gateways, but one of the cosmic entities that kept that Gateway itself. Though the sculptor had well captured the features, the sharp bones and deformities of the entity, the statue was inaccurate in one aspect: the real entity would have dwarfed the statue ten times over.
Fern’s footsteps slowed. Though she could tell that the statue was nothing more than stone, she could not help the instinctive fear slithering through her. An unexpected wave of nausea roiled in her stomach as a dull sound hummed in her ear, taking the shape of her parents’ voices.
A figure detached itself from the shadows of a nearby bookshelf.
Fern started. Her hand darted to her waist, finding nothing. Her dagger, of course, was still hidden in her room. After the attack on Vittoria, she had vowed to carry it with her everywhere—she had been too distracted to remember.
The figure emerged into the faint light cast by a distant window.
“Oh. Miss Sullivan.”
Léo Lautric raised a hand and brushed the hair from his forehead, the gesture oddly self-conscious. Though he had been drinking at the party the previous night, he seemed completely untouched by the headache that lingered in Fern’s skull.
He wore black this time, the pallor of his face almost spectral in the faint daylight from the window. The bruises under his eyes were livid, far worse than Fern remembered them looking when she’d danced with him. He looked as though he hadn’t slept in days .
Fern’s fear dissolved, thickened, boiled into irritation. What the devil was he doing here, lurking like some ominous creature? And why the Sumbral Wing?
“My apologies. I didn’t see you,” she said stiffly.
She glanced down; the book in his hands was a slim volume on Sumbra venoms. Fern thought of the attack on Vittoria, Vasili Drei’s warning that the wound should be purged before being stitched. Surely Lautric was too late—Vittoria seemed to have recovered already. Perhaps she appeared to fare better than she did?
“I didn’t know you were researching Sumbra,” Fern added, glancing away from the book.
“Ah,” he said, tapping his fingers on the book’s cover. His sleeves were so long his hands were covered to the knuckles. “I am not.”
Fern narrowed her eyes, scrutinising him. He did not look as though he were trying to hide anything from her; he simply looked exhausted and a little awkward, disarmingly boyish.
Before Fern could say anything else, Lautric volunteered, “My area of research is Wild Magic.”
Fern hesitated. She had not expected him to tell her about his research, and certainly she had not expected him to be researching Wild Magic.
It was a notoriously difficult subject, because of its unknowable, unpredictable nature. Wild Magic was simply a form of energy, omnipresent and almost impossible to control, even when using formal spellcraft and incantations.
Anyone could call upon Wild Magic as their source of energy, only the source was too wild, with a will of its own, and most who tried using it died trying .
As a result, hands-on research was nigh impossible, and theoretical research was often nothing more than just that.
It still failed to explain what Lautric was doing in this particular part of the library, but Fern did not dare press him too openly for answers. Especially since he seemed so willing to volunteer information, perhaps as a result of her attempt to reset the boundaries of their relationship the previous night.
“You’ve set yourself up for quite the challenge, then,” Fern said finally, smiling politely.
He laughed, a gentle, molten sound.
“You’re right. But it’s worthwhile work. Wild Magic is the future.”
Fern frowned, taken aback. “Not spellcraft?”
“Spellcraft?” Lautric’s tone was earnest. “Knowledge wheedled from trans-dimensional entities who humour us for reasons we are blind to, kept under the control of librarians that wish to keep it secret and politicians that wish to abuse it? At least Wild Magic is free.”
He had drawn closer, stepping out of the dim ray of daylight and into the shadows that pressed in around Fern. She read sincerity in his mien, and although she agreed with the first part of what he said, she couldn’t help but scoff at his proposed solution.
“Wild Magic is free, yes, and easy to use,” she said, “and impossible to control, and deadly.”
“Not impossible,” said Lautric.
Fern suppressed the urge to roll her eyes. “ Almost impossible.”
“If scholars spent half as much time studying Wild Magic as they did concerning themselves with Gateways and bartering with Sumbral creatures, we might have already discovered a way to control it.”
Fern opened her mouth to make a reply but stopped herself. She stared into Lautric’s face, his eyes. His gaze was direct; his expression was open, unemotional, almost sincere. He appeared to mean what he was saying.
But of course, he was lying. The Lautrics relied heavily on spellcraft. Like all born with powers, theirs was only ever a source of energy for them to draw upon. They could do nothing with that power without spellcraft and incantations.
It was the reason they were so obsessed with gaining control of libraries, the reason they were so deeply involved in the illegal trade of stolen books. The very reason Fern had never recovered a single missing or stolen book without having the Lautrics send men to intercept her.
So why was he lying, this young scion of the most powerful arcane house?
Was he trying to get a reaction out of her? If so, to what end? Was he trying to draw her out? To manipulate her into endangering herself by using Wild Magic? Perhaps even insult her? His implications seemed to make clear his disdain for Sumbra scholars—and yet he was standing here, in the Sumbra Wing, in the heart of Carthane itself.
“Perhaps you will be the one to usher in a new era,” Fern said with a cold smile. “A herald to a new dawn of free magic: powers for all. A hero to the arcane population of the world. ”
Lautric tilted his head. “You mock me.” There was a softening in his eyes, something akin to disappointment. “I did not take you for a cynic.”
It stung Fern more than she wanted it to.
“It’s not cynicism to view the world exactly as it is,” she said.
“But it is foolish to view the world as it could be?” he said.
There was gentle remonstration in his tone, and Fern opened her mouth to contest him before realisation dawned. She was having a debate with Léo Lautric—whatever his true agenda was, it was not intellectual progress and the betterment of the world.
This was another one of his subtle, troubling manipulations, like the gentleness of his arm around her while they danced or his murmured invitation to escort her back to her rooms.
She stepped back, putting distance between them both physical and metaphorical, saying, “I’m merely a little surprised to find a scholar and advocate of Wild Magic in the Sumbra Wing of the Carthane Athenaeum, that’s all.”
“I’m here for the same reason you are, Miss Sullivan.” Lautric smiled sweetly. “To read.”
Fern thought of the books she had come to seek—the books for her research thesis—and she thought of the books Vittoria had given Lautric that night, and she glanced at the volume in his arms.
She did not trust Lautric any more than she might trust a flame-cast shadow, but part of her enjoyed this conversation. The mystery of him, lies within lies, was something she wanted to unravel until the truth of his nature was laid bare.
Curiosity was a noble thing, but it famously killed cats, and Fern did not have nine lives to spare. She bowed her head.
“Please forgive the intrusion,” she said. “I won’t distract you from your reading for one more second.”
“There is nothing to forgive,” Lautric said. “You may intrude upon me at your heart’s leisure, Miss Sullivan.”
Fern’s heart did nothing out of leisure, and hearing itself mentioned, it lurched in her chest.
“If you’ll excuse me,” she said, “I should get back to my own work.”
“Yes,” he said.
Fern turned away and marched briskly to the directory. The eye in the statue’s ribcage seemed to examine her as she flipped through the heavy pages, her heart beating with uncomfortable speed. She forced herself to concentrate on the lists of titles and writers she’d come to find, doing her best to ignore both the statue and Lautric.
When she was done, she turned away from the statue and sighed with relief to find Lautric gone.