Page 30 of The Deadliest Candidate (The Last Grand Archivist #1)

Chapter thirty

The Storm

Frustration and fear choked Fern as she watched Lautric walk up to the tower, skirting it with one hand against the ancient stone.

“There’s no way in,” she called out to him.

He turned with a frown, the wind whipping his hair into his eyes. “How do you know?”

“This is the Astronomy Tower. Housemistress Sarlet told us it was closed due to internal structural damage.”

Lautric shook his head, looking between Fern and the Astronomy Tower. “The tracks stop right here, though. There must be a way in.”

He had to be right, of course, but even if they found a way in, it was unlikely they would find anything within. The tower was dangerous enough to have killed two people, so why would the Grand Archivists keep it shut but accessible? It made no sense. None of it made any sense.

Fern couldn’t tell Lautric what she knew without betraying her secret, so she said, “ Alright. Let’s look.”

They circled the tower several times, trudging over the high grass and fallen leaves. On the north face of the tower there was an entrance that was completely walled up, and a narrow door at the back, but it was locked tight.

“Should we risk an unlocking spell?” Lautric asked, hovering a hand over the door’s handle.

Fern cast a glance back towards Carthane. “The Sentinels can sense hermetic spells.”

Lautric gazed at her and was silent for a moment. Earlier, he’d realised it was Fern who had set the Sentinels on them. Was he figuring out that she had done so by using a hermetic spell?

If he did, he kept it to himself.

“We’re probably far enough from the central building to risk it,” he said. “There might still be time to help whoever we heard.”

Fern was not so sure anymore, but she drew closer, standing next to him in front of the narrow door, her shoulder almost touching his.

“I’ll do it,” she said.

She drew on the source of energy that still filled her to the brim and murmured the incantation she knew so well, the same incantation that had allowed her to gain access to Professor Saffyn’s drawers what felt like so long ago already. Except that this time, nothing happened.

The spell flared, pushed against air, finding nothing to touch, nothing to fight, and faded uselessly.

Lautric frowned at Fern’s expression. “What is it?”

“It’s not working. ”

“Your incantation?”

Fern shook her head, eyes fixed on the door. “No, not my incantation. The door. It’s as though… as though there isn’t a lock at all.”

“Could the door be walled up from the inside?”

Fern turned slowly away, thinking back on what Josefa had said about her apartment door and the way her key had failed to work.

“Either way,” she said, “it won’t open. There’s no way in. Whatever this looks like, whatever it is—it’s not a door.”

Lautric said nothing. He gazed up at the tower; the muscles in his jaws twitched. What was he thinking? Did he know who it was they heard? Did he know more than he was letting on?

“What should we do?” he said in a dull murmur.

“What can we do?“ Fern said, throat tight.

He was silent. They both were, staring up at the tower, the ghost of the scream stretching between them.

“We’d better get back,” he said finally. “In case Sentinels are on the way.”

He turned his back on the tower and set off through the Arboretum. Fern cast the ancient tower one more look. The black column of stone jutted out towards the sky, blocking out the moonlight.

They might not have been able to gain access to it, but she knew something Lautric didn’t: that the passageways branched out towards each tower like subterranean spider’s legs. Fern was already growing more familiar with the passageways, expanding on her map.

If there was a way in, she would find it. If Josefa was in there, Fern would save her.

Fern watched Lautric as they made their way back to the Mage Tower. His limp, his shoulders slumped with exhaustion, his heavy backpack and the cloth-bound cylindrical object slung through it, his pale neck and shock of choppy black hair. Though she was silent, a thousand questions crowded on her tongue.

Where had he been? Who had injured his face? What had poisoned him? What did he know about the events of the Arboretum? About the other events? Josefa, the break-in?

He’d told her he was distracted during the first assignment; he’d been telling the truth. She’d been too busy defending herself to think properly on it—this distraction of his. But now, her mind focused on the question. What was it that was distracting Lautric enough that he was risking failure here, in Carthane, when his family had coveted a way in for so long?

And perhaps that was the most important question of all. Why had he come to Carthane?

They passed the Sentinels on the way back into the Mage Tower, and Fern’s steps faltered, remembering the one in Saffyn’s office. Had it seen her, and would these Sentinels know her?

But the two shadowy silhouettes made no movements; their bodies stood motionless in their dark alcoves like corpses propped up in open coffins. Whether they were asleep or unconcerned by Fern’s and Lautric’ s presence, it was difficult to tell. Lautric held the heavy door open, letting Fern pass through.

Inside, he followed her past the shadowy atrium, where two pale busts faced each other from across the chessboard tiles of the floor, then up the broad spiral staircase. Lautric was the first to break the ponderous silence that stretched between them.

“Who do you think it was?”

Fern stopped in her tracks in the darkness of the staircase and stared up at him. “Do you have no idea?”

He turned with a frown. The light from the corridor lamps above softly framed his face; the combination of his handsome features and tired eyes always lent his expressions a disconcerting sincerity. It made it difficult for Fern to remember how dangerous his house was, how unwise it would be to trust him when she had a threat bearing his house symbols in her pocket.

“I’m not sure what I think or believe anymore,” he breathed.

There was a tone in his voice she had not expected: exhaustion mingled with despair. It had been a long and tiring night for both of them. Fern would never trust the Lautric House, and she still disliked being partnered with him for their assignment, but she could not deny that, for this night at least, she and Léo Lautric had become allies.

“I think something happened to Josefa Novak.”

Lautric’s eyebrows rose. “Josefa? But the Grand Archivists said…” He trailed off, frowning as he thought. “They said she was no longer a candidate. I suppose they did not say why. ”

“She disappeared after the first assignment. She spent the night with me and was gone when I awoke. She left her key in my room.”

Now that she was sharing all of these things with Lautric, Fern felt as though she had just let go of a terrible weight she’d been carrying. She almost sighed from the relief of it.

And as if the weight had transferred from her to him, Lautric’s shoulders slumped. A haunted expression drew his features into a grimace of worry. “I thought she might have left because of Edmund and Emmeline.”

“Because she refused their alliance?”

“And because she accused Edmund of stealing her work. I understand why she believed they might have, but part of me fears she might have dealt them a blow without intending to.”

Fern hesitated, then asked, “Do you think they stole her work?”

“No.” Lautric’s answer was immediate and certain. “Edmund and Emmeline are talented and proud. If they ever sought to seek an unfair advantage, it would not be by stealing someone else’s work.”

“Do you think they would seek an unfair advantage?“ Fern asked.

This time, it was Lautric who hesitated.

“I’m not sure. I don’t think failure is an option for them, and Josefa was their only true rival in the first assignment. My mentor confirmed it: Josefa was the only one to achieve a score anywhere close to theirs.”

Fern had been about to ask him more about the twins, but her mouth almost dropped open in disbelief. “Your mentor told you the scores of the other candidates?”

“Yes.” Lautric sighed, rubbed his face as though he hoped to wipe the tiredness away from his eyes. “I think Dr Auden hoped it would motivate me to do better for the next assignment.” He glanced at Fern. “It’s partly why I hoped to work with you, since Dr Auden—since you…” He stopped himself. “Ah, I’m sorry, I’m tired, I’m losing my thread of thought. Are you saying you think it was Josefa we heard tonight?”

“Who else?” said Fern, but now she was also losing the thread of her thought, picking up his, wishing he had finished his sentence. He hoped to work with her. Why? Because she cared about nothing else but her work? Because she could be manipulated into helping him the way she had helped Josefa? Because she was—what had he said in the Palissy Auditorium? Clever and hard-working, the perfect partner?

She did not press him for those answers. There were more important questions anyway, and Lautric was silent for so long that Fern slowly began ascending the stairs again. They’d just reached the landing of their corridor when he took her elbow, drawing closer to her to speak in a low, urgent voice.

“You’re right, she wouldn’t willingly leave, not when she worked so hard and did so well. The Grand Archivists were impressed by her, Dr Auden himself told me so. Why would she leave if that was the case?”

“On the night after the assignment, somebody interfered with her apartment door. A locking spell or some sort of ward, a spell to keep her out of her room.”

Lautric narrowed his eyes. “Who would do such a thing? The Ferrows? ”

“Josefa thought it might just be some childish jest. She never told me who, though I’m sure she had her suspicions. It wouldn’t be the first time somebody tried to sabotage her.”

Lautric shook his head. “No, that’s not what I mean. Even if one wished to sabotage Josefa, they would not have been able to ward her door. Let me show you.”

They had almost reached the end of the corridor, their footsteps swallowed by the blue carpet. Lautric stopped in front of a door where a brass plate spelt out L. Lautric in elegant lettering. He turned towards Fern, pointing at the door handle.

“Here, try it,” he said. “Try warding it against me.”

Fern only knew common wards: wards to keep books from being opened, or to keep her purse safe when she was travelling in crowded, disreputable places. And normally, even the smallest of those wards used up enough energy to tire her out for an hour or two.

But the pool of energy inside her was deep enough that she could easily dip into the source. She murmured an incantation; nothing happened. Lautric was right: here, her warding incantation was nothing more than softly chanted words.

“See?” he said.

She widened her eyes, turning her head to look at Lautric. “How did you know this?”

“I tried to place a simple ward on my door when we first arrived. That’s how I found out.”

Fern sighed. “How is it possible, then? Something kept her out of her room. If not magic, then what?”

“I don’t know.” Lautric shook his head. “But I believe you, Fern—that something might have happened to Josefa, and perhaps even that something might… That other candidates will… This place, you see, is…”

“This place is—what?”

“Ah, I’m not sure anymore. I’m not sure what I think, or how…”

He trailed off. He seemed completely drained, swaying with exhaustion. In the dim lamplight, his injuries stood out shockingly, and Fern’s eyes kept falling back to the long cut marring his mouth.

“Are you alright?” Fern said. She had the urge to reach for him, to brush her fingertips over the raised cut, to push the hair back from his forehead. But that urge was similar to the urge she sometimes felt to hold Inkwell, and Lautric seemed like the kind of creature she ought to leave well alone. She pulled away from him. “You should rest—we both should. We have so much work to do tomorrow.”

“You’re right,” he said, but instead of opening his door, he stepped towards Fern, closing the distance she had just created. “I… wanted to thank you for your help earlier.”

He spoke so softly his words were almost whispers. Fern’s chest felt suddenly tight, her heart struggling inside the narrow cage of her ribs.

“No need to thank me,” she mumbled. “It was the correct thing to do. And I’m sure you’ve plenty of injuries left to take care of. Will you be alright?”

“I will.” He gave a half-smile. “I wish that every time I bumped into something in the dark, it could be you.”

He was close enough that she stood in the heat radiating from his body; he leaned forward and pressed a light kiss to her cheek. It was a chaste touch, more affection than passion, and Fern did not pull away.

She sensed a shift between them, like the changing colours of the sky at dawn or a slow winter melting into spring. It surprised and troubled her. She thought of the note in her pocket, the symbols of his house like the black runes of a curse, and she thought of his injuries, his poisoned leg. She knew nothing more about him than she did before. Had she been more careless than she intended?

“Perhaps you ought to try not to bump into anything in the dark,” she said in a husky whisper. “Goodnight, Mr Lautric.”

He pulled away slowly.

“Yes, I’ll try to be more careful with my…” He stopped, giving her a half-smile full of melancholy. “Goodnight, Fern.”

She turned and walked calmly back to her apartment, though every part of her was a storm.