Page 26 of The Deadliest Candidate (The Last Grand Archivist #1)
Chapter twenty-six
The Colleague
Back inside the Palissy Auditorium, a barrage of voices greeted Fern.
“Whichever one of you did it, you’ve caused the rest of us nothing but grief,” Baudet was saying.
“How hasty you are to put blame on others, cleric,” Drei sneered. “Does your holy book not instruct all but the sinless to avoid casting stones?”
“The sinless!” Emmeline’s lazy laughter rasped in the air like the shimmering smoke of a powerful potion. “None of us are sinless, my dear Vasili—why else would we be here?”
“None of us might be sinless, but some of us have sinned more than others of late,” Vittoria said, shaking her head, her arm resting protectively on the place where she’d been wounded. Fern wondered how much it still hurt her, and could not help but admire the young woman’s resilience.
“You mistake sinning with sheer stupidity,” drawled Edmund. “Sarlet’s office—really. I could almost admire the audacity. ”
This brought Fern’s attention firmly back on the conversation.
“Thieves are never deserving of admiration,” said Baudet, “no matter how ambitious they may be.”
“Unless they are sanctified by the church, yes?” Drei said with a smirk.
“Sarlet’s office?” Fern said aloud to herself.
She drew closer to the rest of the candidates, ascending the steps. Most of them were still sitting, some had come closer, forming a circle scattered over the different degrees of the room. Fern walked up to the twins, leaning against the backs of the chairs of the row below so she could face them.
“What is this about Sarlet’s office?”
“Nothing, really,” said Baudet, “what do we care if—”
“Nothing!” Emmeline gave an incredulous laugh. “Really, Rapha?l, you amuse me. I wish all men were as imperturbable as you.”
A Santa Velia compliment, thought Fern, for Baudet, it would seem, was the most easily perturbed of them all.
“Someone broke into Sarlet’s office,” Lautric said.
He was sitting in the row below, a little away from the others. His sleeves were pushed back on his forearms, and his elbow was propped on the back of his chair; his gaze was turned up to Fern. His expression was withdrawn, almost despondent, and the shadows beneath his eyes were dark as bruises.
He had spoken quietly, as though his words were intended only for Fern.
“Sarlet’s office?” she said, mind reeling. “When? How? ”
She cast her mind back to the previous night when she’d gone to see Sarlet and found her before reaching her office. This had been a little before midnight. Had the break-in already occurred by then? Sarlet had seemed to be on her way somewhere. Or had the break-in occurred after their conversation?
“All very interesting questions, Miss Sullivan,” Emmeline said, pulling on a long strand of red hair and coiling it about her forefinger. “Though a better question, of course, might be why .”
“Is it possible that it might not be one of us?” said Srivastav, low and thoughtful.
He was, Fern noticed, losing some of his warmth with every passing day. Not in the sense that it had not been real to begin with and that the illusion was fading, but rather like a fire that was trying to keep burning in the middle of a barren icefield, its flames fighting a losing battle against the cold.
“Oh, it’s one of us alright,” said Baudet darkly. His eyes were on Srivastav when he spoke, but Fern remembered the way he had struck Lautric the night of Vittoria’s attack, his threat and the sincerity of it. She remembered, too, Lautric’s mysterious night-time excursion. “It would seem we have a thief in our midst.”
“Perhaps it’s you , cleric,” Vasili Drei said in a hiss of mocking laughter. “After all, does your god not bless thieving so long as it’s done in his name?”
Fern glanced at Drei. He wasn’t wearing his glasses, and his eyes were curiously dark, almost abyssal. He was the perfect opposite of Baudet. Where Baudet was blond and groomed and dressed exquisitely in azure jacquard and gold brooches, Drei’s long hair was a veil of black cobwebs down his back, and the plain tunic and trousers he wore were both old and shabby, threads coming loose at the neckline and sleeves.
“Remind me—what god is it you worship, Mr Drei?” Baudet asked with a tight smile.
“The only god one should ever worship,” Drei said. “Myself.”
Though this exchange was interesting for many reasons, it was taking them further away from finding answers, not closer. Fern raised her voice slightly to ask, “Do we know that anything was taken from Sarlet’s office?”
“Why else would the Grand Archivists make such a point of explicitly forbidding thievery?” said Edmund.
Fern frowned. “I thought that might be in reference to whoever stole Josefa’s work.”
She thought, suddenly, of the letter under Josefa’s book—the one she had abstained from reading. Would it still be there after Sarlet’s search of the candidates’ quarters was complete? Fern could only hope so.
“ If her work was even stolen at all,” Emmeline was saying with a sneer.
“What could she possibly gain from inventing such a thing?” Vittoria Orsini asked, stealing the question from Fern’s own mouth.
“Oh, let me think,” Emmeline tinkled, fluttering her fingers theatrically in front of her face. “Trust and sympathy? Time and attention? Or … a valuable alliance with the only Sumbra scholar amongst us?”
As she spoke, she swept her gaze up Fern in a way that seemed almost salacious. Her eyes were striking, Fern noted, russet and green like a bronze coin oxidising at the edges. There was something callous in them, an edge of cruelty, as if she was insulting Fern rather than praising her.
Fern held her gaze, forcing herself to consider the alchemist’s words before responding.
Was it possible that Josefa could have lied about her work and manipulated Fern into an alliance? Of course it was. Fern had slept side by side with Josefa, trusting her in a way she would never have allowed herself to trust any of the other candidates.
“If that were the case, Miss Ferrow,” Fern said slowly, “then where do you think Josefa is now? If her plan was working so well, why is she no longer a candidate?”
“Think of it this way, Miss Sullivan.” Emmeline’s smile was slow and venomous with disdain. “There are only two kinds of candidates amongst us. Those of us who want to succeed—and those of us who have no choice but to succeed. Miss Novak, quite simply, was the former, not the latter, and now she’s gone.”
The implication in the alchemist’s words was clear: Josefa did not have what it took to succeed in Carthane. But what Fern heard was the darker truth behind what Emmeline was implying: that there were some candidates here who were willing to do anything it took to succeed, and now, someone was gone.
There was no more information to be garnered about either the break-in or Josefa. If any of the other candidates knew more, they were keeping it to themselves, and the more Fern observed her colleague-competitors, the more she thought they probably were withholding information. She could not blame them; so was she.
It was only when Edmund finally stood to give his sister his arm that Fern remembered she had a more pressing problem to deal with.
“Well, my dear Emmy,” Edmund said, “shall we get started on this assignment of ours?”
Emmeline stood and took her brother’s arm with an adoring smile. She seemed genuinely pleased to be working with her brother, as though there might even have been a doubt that the twins would choose one another for this assignment. The serenity with which the twins left the Palissy Auditorium did nothing but remind Fern of how much she was dreading this task.
She turned swiftly to Dr Essouadi, who was also readying herself to leave. “Dr Essouadi, I was wondering if you might consider working with me for this assignment?”
The doctor turned and took Fern’s elbow in her hand, shaking her head.
“Ah, a kind offer, Miss Sullivan, and I’m so sorry, but I’ll be working with Ravi.”
The pyromancer had beaten her to the doctor; she should have predicted it.
The two were closest in age and experience, and beyond that, they would make an impressive pair, pooling together an extraordinary amount of talent and knowledge. Fern hastily thanked the doctor, and turned her head to sweep the room with a look, wishing desperately Josefa was still here .
She caught sight of Vittoria Orsini preceding Baudet out of the auditorium, her long skirts trailing behind her, Baudet’s eyes on her like a worshipper gazing up at a saint. Fern could not help but wonder if it was mere infatuation she was witnessing, or simply Baudet’s clever opportunism and naked ambition.
Whether Orsini was flattered by his attention, or whether she felt safer with someone who was willing to get his hand bloodied in her defence, or whether she wished to draw deep from the Reformed Vatican’s well of knowledge, that was much harder to tell. Fern supposed it did not matter, in a way.
She felt a hand at her side, a gentle touch, almost hesitant. The air was perfumed with the almond sweetness of marzipan. She turned, already knowing that it was not Vasili Drei who stood behind her, for he had been first to leave after the twins.
“Mr Lautric…”
“Miss Sullivan. I was hoping you and I might work together on this assignment.”
With a vague gesture towards the door, Fern hazarded, “I’m sure I saw Mr Drei leaving alone, perhaps he’s still looking for a partner…?”
“Mr Drei will be working with Emmeline and Edmund.”
Fern smiled, the kind of stiff, polite smile she reserved for matters of petty bureaucracy. “I’m sure he could be persuaded.”
Lautric answered her smile with one of his, and that smile was slow and amused and almost tender.
“I’d rather persuade you instead. ”
“You should know that I am an orphan,” Fern said, more out of strategy than impulse. “My name is without renown; my parents were of humble origins. My only friend is a librarian. I don’t have an ounce of influence at my disposal.”
“But you are capable, hard-working and knowledgeable,” said Lautric. “Exactly all the things one would wish for in a partner.”
The word partner in his pretty mouth seemed to hold a different meaning. The subtle manipulation again, that strange feeling that she was being almost seduced. This conversation would not go the way she needed it to. Lautric would not allow it to.
Retreating behind the reliable fortress of her professionalism, Fern stuck out her hand.
“Colleagues, then. For this assignment at least.”
Lautric took her hand with a soft laugh. “I look forward to our partnership.”
His fingers were warm; Fern pulled her hand away from his as soon as politeness allowed.