Page 29 of The Deadliest Candidate (The Last Grand Archivist #1)

Chapter twenty-nine

The Arboretum

Before Fern could utter a sound, arms closed around her waist, pulling her against a hard body. She was swept up and back where she came from, then all but hurled through a door. She cried out, but a gloved hand closed over her mouth.

Trapped between the door and her captor’s body, she could barely breathe. She tried to focus her mind, to reach for her dagger where it was strapped to her waist. She was tired and afraid, her hands weak with tremors. She tried to speak, but the hand tightened on her mouth.

“Fern,” a voice murmured in her ear, “be quiet. Please. Sentinel nearby.”

She instantly recognised the voice. Her eyes widened, her vision slowly adjusting to the darkened room.

Lautric’s pale face emerged from the darkness, his tired eyes sunken in shadows. He was far stronger than he appeared; he looked so exhausted all the time, she had not expected him to be so robust.

Now that he was so close, and that she sensed the strength of his body—and with the awareness of the card bearing his house symbols burning in her pocket—a fresh wave of fear washed over her.

She placed her palms against his chest and pushed. He moved away without protest, gently removing his hand from her mouth.

She breathed, air hissing through her throat as her panic receded. The smell of frost, mud and blood filled her lungs, then the underlying sweetness. She opened her mouth to speak but a wave of vertigo sent her vision spinning.

She slumped forward; Lautric rushed forward to catch her.

She squeezed her eyes closed, waiting for the spinning to stop. His arms held her steady, his body was disarmingly warm. She was tempted for one blind moment to rest against him, but she fought the urge. Leaning on him when she was vulnerable was much like sinking into an abyss to catch one’s breath. She pushed him off her once again. He let her go slowly, almost reluctantly.

“Are you alright?” he asked in a hush.

“Where the fuck did you come from?” she asked, her voice too hoarse to carry past the room.

Lautric’s pretty eyes narrowed. He tilted his head.

“I think the question might be: where did you come from? There’s no door at the end of that corridor.”

He was so close she could feel the soft caress of his breath on her face, the heat radiating from his skin. She felt weak, dizzy, disoriented. She had the mad urge to kiss him, fuelled by adrenaline and impulsion, like the recoil effect of her repressed anger and fear from the past week .

She stumbled back with a shocked gasp of laughter. Had she not made enough mistakes already?

Lautric frowned, stepping forward and taking her face in his hands.

“Are you alright?” he asked again.

The concern in his voice was sincere. His touch was gentle, his thumbs brushed over her cheeks. Fern took his wrists and moved his hands away. She didn’t need to kiss Lautric, she needed to get away from him—and they both needed to get away from here.

“We need to get back to the Mage Tower,” she said. “Now.”

“I was on my way there, but something happened that set all the Sentinels on this floor in motion.” Lautric paused and stared at Fern through the thick veil of darkness. “What on earth did you do?”

Fern threw him an incredulous look. He spoke as if he wasn’t lurking around at night, hooded, carrying the heavy pack she had seen him with that night in the atrium, with the long cylindrical object secured through it, as though he didn’t smell of frost and blood, and she hadn’t just found a threat in her mentor’s office sent from his house.

“You’re in no position to ask questions, Lautric.”

“Please,” he murmured. “Call me Léo.”

Fern ignored him, turned and cracked the door open, peering into the corridor. There was no Sentinel in sight. Good. Time to go. Except that now she had a companion; she would be unable to take the secret passageways.

She turned back towards Lautric. “Do you know the fastest way back to the Mage Tower?”

“Yes. ”

“Then let’s go.”

He stopped her with a hand on her elbow. “Are you sure? We might need to run, and you seem—“

“I’m fine.”

She opened the door, letting Lautric through. He darted out, and she followed. His steps were long and a little graceless, and like the time she had seen him cross the atrium, each footstep sounded heavy and metallic.

He led her down several vaulted corridors and to the large marble landing of the central staircase. Lamps shone from the lower pillars, held aloft by statues of seraphim. When they reached the stairs, Lautric turned and said, “Will you be alright with the steps?”

“Yes. I—” Fern clapped her hand on her mouth. “Your face!”

It was her first time seeing his face properly, lit by the staircase lamps. Lautric turned away quickly and shrugged.

“It’s nothing,” he threw over his shoulder, descending the steps.

It was far from nothing. His face was mottled with bruising, and a cut crossed his mouth from his Cupid’s bow to his jaw. The purple shadows under his eyes were livid, and one of his eyelids was slightly swollen and bright pink.

“What happened?” Fern asked, following him down the steps and through the atrium of the second floor, trying to catch up with him to get a better look at his face. “Where did you go? Who did this to you?”

“I can’t tell you—I wish I could, but—”

In the distance, a long, wailing cry resounded.

Lautric jerked around, casting Fern a shocked look. This wasn’t a Sentinel, it was something else. A tremor traversed Fern, shaking loose a distant memory. Had she heard this sound before?

“Outside,” she said.

He nodded and set off, running towards the nearest window. They both peered through the glass: outside, a virescent moon glowed dimly from beneath a shroud of misty clouds. In the distance, the waves of the ocean rose and fell, indifferent. Far below the windows, the gardens of Carthane stretched, hedges shaking as the wind passed through them on its way to tear waning leaves from the trees of the Arboretum and send them spiralling towards the sea.

“There!” Fern exclaimed.

A light flickered in the Arboretum, disappearing and reappearing underneath the decaying canopy of trees. The voice came again, a keening, desperate scream, rising then snatched away by the wind.

“There’s someone down there,” Fern said, aghast.

Her mind flung up a handful of memories at her like a volley of daggers to the heart. The children of St Jerome; Vittoria’s blood-drenched gown; the quiet whine of Inkwell when she first found him in a corner of the collapsed French monastery; her parents, calling her name from the end of a long black corridor; Josefa’s small, frightened voice in the darkness of her bedroom.

“We have to go down,” Fern said, voice hoarse with panic, “we have to help.”

Lautric nodded solemnly. “Let’s go. I know a quick way down. Follow me. ”

He set off on a run, and Fern followed as best she could, reeling from the shock of his reaction. She had expected him to refuse, to hesitate at least, but—

She crashed into him for the second time that night. He had stopped, bending in half against a tapestried wall.

Fern righted herself and reached for his arm. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” he murmured. “We have to hurry.”

He set off again, and Fern realised what was wrong. He was running with a limp. It was barely perceptible, and he was obviously taking great pains to hide it.

Fern’s heart hammered. Lautric was hurt, that was clear, but someone was out there, someone who needed help. Her mind screamed at her that it could be Josefa, that she was still here in Carthane, that Fern must save her, but her gut told her that something was wrong with Lautric—that he, too, might need saving.

And they were still so far from the Arboretum, and there was so little time. She wished she wasn’t so tired, so dizzy. She would know what to do then, she would fix everything.

They reached a narrow spiral staircase tucked into a corner turret and descended. Lautric was almost halfway down the stairs when his legs buckled beneath him. Fern cried out, reaching out to grab his flailing arm and succeeding only in tripping into him.

“Fuck,” he breathed.

Fern righted her balance and hurried past him. She knelt at his feet and glared up to him.

“Stop,” she commanded. “Stay still. ”

Even in the faint light of the single lamp set high above the staircase door, she could see that his face was deathly pale beneath its bruises, a sheen of sweat gleaming over his forehead.

“Tell me what’s wrong.”

Lautric brushed a hand over his brow, pushing away the hair that fell there in sodden strands. “My leg.”

“Show me.”

She reached for his leg, but he took her wrist in one hand. “We don’t have time, there’s someone out there and they need help, we should—”

Fern gritted her teeth and bit out, “ Show me .”

He swallowed audibly; he was nervous. He stuck his leg out. Above his black boots, his trousers were torn and streaked with mud. Fern pushed back the dirty fabric.

Angry red scratches marred his pale skin, the flesh around the cuts swollen, glossy and tinged purple and blue. The wounds were fresh, but the bruising was deep; the surrounding veins had darkened.

Fern’s heart dropped. “You’re poisoned.”

How? Her first thought was the peace garden, where poisonous plants grew. Her second thought was of the Santa Velia twins.

Lautric nodded, looking far calmer than he ought to. “I know.”

Most poisons in small doses wouldn’t kill their victim. Fern knew this; she always tipped her dagger with distilled elmslock, which could paralyse without causing death or permanent damage. But whatever poison this was, deadly or not, it had penetrated the skin from so many scratches that Fern doubted the dose could have been small.

“You need to draw out the poison,” she said. “Now.”

“I can’t,” he said.

“ Why? ”

He hesitated. “I’m not good with… with poisons. It’s not deadly, anyway. It’ll paralyse my leg, then bleed out. I can walk.”

Fern was beginning to understand why Lautric constantly seemed on the verge of exhaustion and total collapse. His cavalier attitude in the face of this situation betrayed a shocking disregard for his own health and wellbeing. It was the last thing Fern expected from a Lautric, but then, this was becoming a pattern of sorts.

“We need to find Dr Essouadi—” She hesitated. “Or the Ferrows.”

Lautric shook his head. “Too far. No time.”

Fern let out a hiss of exasperation. What could she do? Unbidden, the image of the blood purgation symbol she’d chosen for the first assignment appeared in her mind. It was complex magic—even if she remembered the symbol, she wouldn’t have anywhere near enough energy to use it. Alchemy was too demanding an art, a magic of trade that never gave an ounce more than it received.

Not to even mention the fact that Blood Alchemy was morally reprehensible.

She looked up at Lautric. He watched her silently; his gaze had become glassy and glittering. Though he said nothing, it was clear that he was in considerable pain. And if Josefa was in the Arboretum, if something was happening to her, then they needed to be quick. Fern’s hesitation was already costing them precious minutes .

“I know how to get rid of the poison,” Fern said. “But I don’t have the… I can’t do it right now.”

Lautric studied her, then his eyes narrowed. He tilted his head, speaking thoughtfully. “You used a spell. Earlier. You used a spell—that’s what drew the Sentinels.”

Fern narrowed her eyes. Was he judging her? “I had my reasons.”

“I’m not saying you didn’t. I’m saying I can help.”

He bit the fingertip of his right glove and yanked, pulling it off. “Give me your hand.”

Fern drew back. “No—why?”

“I have something to give you.”

She hesitated, then gave him her hand. To her surprise, he took it in his, lacing his fingers through hers. A flame of heat rose to her face.

“What are you doing?”

“Shh. Trust me, Fern, now if ever. Here.”

He gazed at her, his eyes hooded, his lips parting. Even with the cut running through them, they were still pink and pretty as a woman’s. Agony looked beautiful on him; it moved Fern like a tragedy. She swallowed. His thumb caressed the inside of her wrist, feather-light.

And then it happened. A plume of something enormous and powerful rose through Fern, filling her up. It was nothing she had felt before: like the sky-filling light of dawn, or the overwhelming rush of a tidal wave.

Lautric smiled. She yanked her hand free from his, eyes wide.

“What did you do?”

“Try your spell.”

Fern hesitated, then began to trace out the blood purgation symbol on the stone floor at her feet. Power, raw and incandescent, glowed inside her. Her eyes widened—she did not even need the symbol. It appeared, rising in the air as though written in faint light, shaping itself to her thoughts.

She placed her palm over Lautric’s leg, close enough that she felt the heat of his skin but not close enough to touch. She gazed at the circle, its wheels and lines and triangles, its symbols: blood and iron, acceleration, purification, caput mortuum .

The powers inside her rose to obey the command she’d written, and the symbols shimmered silver as they channelled her will. She drew the poison like pulling out dead weeds from a garden bed. It seeped out of the wounds, rose, curled blackly and fell in a dribble of brackish muck, nothing more, now, than a useless substance, alchemical waste.

The symbol disappeared in a powder of shimmer, and Lautric sagged back with a half-moan. Fern raised an eyebrow. “Better?”

“Much better. If only you could treat all my wounds like this.”

“I probably could. I’ve never felt this much power in my life. What did you do?”

Lautric shook his head. “Not now.” He stood, testing the strength of his leg. “We need to go or we’ll be too late.”

Fern swallowed back the torrent of questions pouring through her and followed Lautric as he set off once more. Lautric had not lied about knowing a shortcut to the grounds; they soon emerged from a side door into the peace garden .

The moon, with its cataract of clouds, cast a milky pallor over the junipers, climbing roses and winter jasmines. A low mist clung to the grass in a pale mire. Hedges, evergreens and cedars towered like waiting guardians, blocking out the horizon.

Lautric paused and looked around while Fern caught her breath and wiped the sweat from her forehead. She touched his arm. “Follow me.”

The way to the Arboretum was instinctive. Heart pounding, she ran through the maze of hedges, past the moss-ridden fountains and underneath the arch of a skyway dripping with ivy and moonflowers. Lautric, pale but determined, limped behind her, doing his best to keep up.

When they arrived under the canopy of the Arboretum, they confirmed what the silence had already told them: whoever had been there earlier was long gone now. Fern’s heart sank. She threw her head back with a sigh of repressed frustration.

“We’re too late.”

Lautric nodded but kept on walking, his eyes roving the ground. In whatever faint light managed to filter down through the branches, he was unlikely to find anything. Fern jumped when he called out, “Over here!”

She ran through the underbrush, shoving aside low branches and tangles of bramble. Lautric stood between two trees, pointing at the ground.

Snapped twigs, footsteps imprinted deep into the mud and porous moss, and long grooves flattening the grass. Something heavy had been dragged through the Arboretum .

They followed the tracks through the trees. Based on the footsteps, there must have been at least three people in the Arboretum earlier.

But who? And why? What had they been carrying, and who had called out?

The tracks came to a sudden end in a pool of shadows, forcing Fern to stop. She looked up, chest tight. They were at the bottom of the Astronomy Tower.