Page 24 of The Deadliest Candidate (The Last Grand Archivist #1)
Chapter twenty-four
The Shadow
Fern spent the rest of her day in the Sumbra Wing gathering books for her research, only realising she had once more missed dinner when she noticed that the room had grown dimmer and night had fallen. She checked her watch. It was already nine o’clock in the evening. She hadn’t even heard the dinnertime bell.
Since she wasn’t hungry yet, she stayed a while longer. She found most of the books on her list with relative ease, but some books were misplaced, and others hard to reach. There seemed to be no archivists in this wing, and whoever was in charge of it had done a poor job. Fern herself would never have allowed such a lack of organisation under her supervision.
It slowed her progress but did not stop it, since she was determined. Eventually, she found all the books on her list but one.
The one book she had come here to find. Unmaking Sumbra .
Just like Symbolism of In-Between Doors— and many other books regarding Sumbra—only one copy existed. Carthane owned that copy, and it had never left, for the book had come from one of Carthane’s own Gateways.
Fern could not begin to imagine what it might have cost to wheedle such a book from an entity of Sumbra.
Except that when she finally reached the place where the book ought to be, she found nothing there. Just rows upon rows of slightly dusty books, not one of them the text she was looking for. It was crucial to her research—it was practically her thesis—so Fern went back to the directory to double-check the location. She had made no mistake.
She noted down the neighbouring books and cross-checked them in the directory. They were all in their correct places. Unmaking Sumbra was simply not amongst them.
A shock of irritation went through Fern. After everything, after waiting so patiently, to come to this impasse was intolerable.
She forced herself to calm down and think rationally. Perhaps somebody had borrowed it. An archivist, maybe even Dr Auden himself. Fern would need to check the book cards and maybe the borrowing directories, but she’d need to request access to those. She could not ask Professor Saffyn, since he had still not returned, and she wondered if she could approach Dr Auden instead.
She checked her watch. It was too late to request a meeting with him, and she wanted to check on Josefa anyway. Her search would have to wait for now; heavens knew it had waited long enough. She could be patient; she had no choice but to be .
With a sigh and a hard pit of disappointment in her stomach, she gathered her things and returned to the Mage Tower.
On her way back to the Mage Tower, her mind shuffled through recent events like cards, presenting them to her in hands.
Her missing book; Lautric and his book of venoms in the Sumbra Wing; Lautric borrowing Sumbra books from Vittoria.
Josefa’s missing work; Edmund Ferrow offering her an alliance in the Palissy Auditorium; Josefa’s locked door.
And the wild cards: the body in East Hemwick; the threat uttered outside Fern’s door on her first evening in Carthane; Fern’s missing mentor; Lautric crossing the atrium in the middle of the night smelling of frost and mud and caraway.
Were any of those things connected?
It was getting more difficult to link all these events. There was only one thing Fern knew for sure: she could not forget to carry her dagger with her everywhere. She could not tell why she felt the instinct to do so, but she knew better than to ignore it.
Back in the Mage Tower, she checked the common room. It was deserted but for Dr Essouadi and Srivastav, who were drinking cups of fragrant tea and chatting amiably by the fireplace. Fern greeted them but did not tarry and went up the stairs to the apartments .
She had just stopped in front of Josefa’s door and raised her hand to knock when she noticed the envelopes in the tray next to the door. She frowned and picked up the letters, flipping them over. They were the same cream envelopes with the seals of golden wax as she had received that very morning.
The assignment results and the invite to the Palissy Auditorium. Both unopened and seemingly untouched.
Fern glanced up and down the corridor. All the other wooden trays, just like hers, were empty. Fern’s stomach twisted. She placed the letters back in their tray and knocked firmly on Josefa’s door. No answer.
She knocked again and waited for several minutes, pacing the corridor, the plush carpet swallowing the sounds of her footsteps. Nothing happened. Josefa was not there. Of course, she might still be in the library somewhere, working on her research, too busy to return to her apartment.
None of it should be particularly worrisome, and yet Fern was full of unease. It was almost midnight, and a candidate had already been attacked by a creature of Sumbra. Nobody would risk being out in the library too late, especially since the second assignment had not yet been announced.
A weight was descending upon Fern’s chest and remained there as she turned her back on Josefa’s door.
Back in her own apartment, she greeted Inkwell and put her things down on the corner of her desk. What could she do? Go back to the library and look for Josefa? It was a poor plan: she of all people knew how impossibly vast Carthane was .
Should she go find Housemistress Sarlet, then? She might be able to tell Fern if she had seen Josefa earlier. Fern checked her watch. It was almost ten o’clock; Inkwell was already settling on his little windowsill cushion. Would Sarlet even still be in her office at such a late hour? There was only one way to find out. Arming herself with her dagger, Fern left the Mage Tower once more.
Housemistress Sarlet wasn’t in her office; Fern bumped into her when she was halfway there. She appeared around a corner, two Sentinels flanking her. She wore her hair in its tight knot, her plain dark clothing and storm-grey sash. Her malachite eyes lacerated Fern with an impatient look.
“It’s late,” she said. “Can I help you, Miss Sullivan?”
Fern had worked with enough cantankerous librarians to remain unfazed by Sarlet’s abrupt tone.
“I was wondering if you’d seen Miss Novak today.”
Sarlet raised an eyebrow. “Miss Novak? Whatever for?”
“She was having some issues with her door yesterday.”
“Her door,” Sarlet repeated, tilting her head sharply. “No. This is the first I’ve heard of this matter. What happened?”
“Her key did not seem to be working, as though the lock had been tampered with. A hermetic spell, perhaps, or— “
“No.” Sarlet’s voice was a knife. “My Sentinels would have sensed a hermetic spell—they are forbidden. Here in Carthane, one must have the key to the lock they wish to open, or else leave it shut.”
She pierced Fern with her eyes, and Fern suddenly got the impression that Sarlet was trying to warn her, or even threaten her.
Did Sarlet suspect Fern of interfering with Josefa’s door?
“Whatever happened to her lock,” Fern said, “Miss Novak was unable to access her room last night and stayed the night in my apartment so that she could come see you in the morning. I haven’t seen her since, and she hasn’t returned to her room yet, so I feared—I thought perhaps you might be able to help—or that it might be a cause for alarm.”
Sarlet looked at both Sentinels. It struck Fern as odd: the Sentinels were constructs of wax and magic, little more than corporeal incantations. They had no eyes for Sarlet to meet, and yet she looked at them the way one might exchange a glance with a colleague. She turned back to Fern.
“You need not concern yourself with this matter, Miss Sullivan. Miss Novak is most likely in the library somewhere. Rest assured my Sentinels will find her. Leave the matter with me and return to the Mage Tower. I’m certain you shall find Miss Novak back in her room come morning.”
Sarlet’s tone was as sharp as usual, but it held a conviction within it that comforted Fern. She was correct, of course: Josefa was probably working somewhere, and the small army of Sarlet’s Sentinels would surely find her.
Without waiting for her to say anything else, Sarlet bid her goodnight and walked away, her footsteps cracking across the marble, the Sentinels flanking her like two black fortresses.
Back in her apartment, Fern decided to run herself a hot bath. She was tired, but too restless and preoccupied to sleep yet. Besides, she was grimy from the dust of the Sumbra Wing. Hopefully, a hot bath would relax her enough that she might get some sleep.
In her bathroom, she set her dagger on the side of the sink, then reached for the bathtub tap and froze mid-motion.
On the stool near the bathtub was the blue towel Josefa had used the night before. Fern frowned and lifted the towel. Underneath it was Josefa’s dark dress, the one she had worn for the post-assignment party. It lay folded neatly; on top of it were small silver bracelets and earrings, lace underthings and a key on a silver chain to which a blue ribbon was attached.
Heart in her mouth, Fern reached for the key.
Why on earth would Josefa have left her key here? If she had indeed gone to the library, why would she not have taken her room key with her? And what about her clothes? She might have borrowed some of Fern’s clothes, of course, but Fern could somehow not imagine the young woman doing so without speaking to her, or at least leaving a note.
All the comfort she had felt after speaking to Sarlet vanished like a weak apparition. No matter how much she tried to explain away what she was seeing, Fern could not help the dread slowly filling her.
Something was wrong. She had suspected so before. Now she was certain of it.
Key in hand, she left her apartment, her bath forgotten. She pushed Josefa’s key into its lock; it slipped in with a quiet click. She twisted. The key turned as smoothly as though she had pushed it into pastry butter.
Inside, the apartment was similar to her own but in shades of violet and old gold, paintings of flowers on the walls. Josefa’s clothes were strewn on the backs of chairs, and her desk was covered with books and stacks of paper.
It only took Fern a moment to confirm what she already knew: Josefa was not here.
Fern made a quick search of the apartment, doing her best to collect clues without violating the historian’s privacy. She found a box of herbs and plants with a small set of alchemy blades in pewter, a volume of Slavic folk tales on the bedside table with a bookmark of red leather. Underneath the book was a letter folded back into its envelope, the top of the envelope looking as though it had been cut hastily open with a blade.
Brushing her fingers over the envelope, Fern hesitated.
If she read the letter, and Josefa returned by morning as Sarlet said she would, would she feel ashamed? Not if she read the letter looking for clues to help Josefa, but would that be her only reason, if she did so? Fern could not deny her own curiosity, and she remembered, not for the first time, that curiosity could be deadly.
Leaving the envelope untouched, Fern settled herself into the velvet chair by Josefa’s window. Sarlet had told her to wait until morning, so she would.
Outside the window, the moon was high and hazy, and a sharp wind whipped at the trees of the Arboretum far below, tearing flocks of leaves from the branches and sending them whirling into the black sky. In the distance, the ocean stretched beneath the cliff, glimmering faintly, as far as the eye could see.
Fern did not realise she had dozed off until her head dropped to her chest, waking her up with a start.
She checked her watch. A few minutes past midnight. She hadn’t even heard the midnight bell. The apartment was still empty, and Fern could not help but think of Josefa’s words, whispered in the darkness of Fern’s bedroom.
As if a dark shadow stalks my steps, inching closer with each passing day.
And as she thought of Josefa’s words, Fern thought, without meaning to, of the narrow cots of St Jerome, of the bony arms and shivering body of one of the younger children pressed to her side. Fern had left the orphanage on the very day she turned eighteen—she’d left all the younger children behind without the courage to say goodbye.
The thing she had felt then was the very thing she felt now: a painful lump in her throat like a tumour threatening to metastasise through her chest and infect her heart. It was as unbearable now as it had been when she was eighteen; Fern seized the book of folk tales from Josefa’s bedside table and read until memories gave way to words in her mind.
She read until she slept, without knowing when the one turned into the other.
The next time she awoke, the apartment was full of the powdery blue pallor of morning light. Fern checked her watch. Almost eight in the morning. Only one hour left until the meeting in the Palissy Auditorium for the announcement of the next assignment.
Josefa had not returned.