Page 51 of The Deadliest Candidate (The Last Grand Archivist #1)

Chapter fifty-one

The Idealist

There were voices, and the screech of birds, and hands touching her face. Fern blinked. She lay facing the pale sky, faces floating above her. Sand and salt were encrusted on her skin, her eyelashes, her clothes. Cold waves lapped at her feet. Mittened hands moved her face, took her arms, propped her up.

“Are you alright, Miss?”

There was a man, his whiskered face burnished by the sun, and a woman with big brown eyes and a grimace of worry. Wide-eyed children stared in silence. An old lady knelt in the sand, shaking her head.

They all spoke, though Fern could barely tell who said what.

“Where has she come from?”

“Who is she?”

“She has the cold-sickness. Take her to the doctor.”

“No.” Fern’s voice was barely more than a croak when she spoke.

Her throat hurt, and every part of her body was pounding with the hammering of a loud, insistent pain. She pushed away the hands that sought to prop her up, shaking her head. Don’t touch me. I’m fine. Get away . She tried to speak, but words failed her.

Voices rang out around her.

“Where has she come from?”

“Somebody threw her to the sea.”

“She comes from the storm.”

“Is she a selkie, Aunt Addie?”

“Hush, you stupid child.”

The old lady leaned over Fern, taking her face in one hand. Her bony fingers dug into Fern’s clammy skin as she forced Fern to look at her. Recognition was a weak spark deep within Fern’s consciousness.

Addie spoke, low and sharp. “Welcome back, girl. Seems the gods have handed you a boon, so listen to me. No doctor will venture to the place you’ve come from. Now I suggest you be quiet and let our good Dr Moad see to you before you follow in the footsteps of the unfortunate souls who precede you.”

Fern nodded. Another body had washed up before hers, had it not? The dim sparks of her thoughts flared in her mind, failing to kindle into a flame. Arms slid around her, and she was suddenly lifted. Her skin was numb with cold, her brain was a vast blank.

The voices continued around her as she was carried from the seastrand and down wooden jetties. She could smell brine and woodsmoke and fresh bread. For a confusing moment, she wondered if she was back in New Copenhagen. She tried to call for Oscar, but no noise emerged from her lips except a hoarse whimper.

But she opened her eyes, and instead of bright facades and gilded signs, the buildings surrounding her were dark and salt-encrusted. She was carried down a narrow alleyway and through a door, and finally laid down upon the brown leather cushions of an examination couch.

Fern blinked. It was warm in this room, but the cold from the ocean seemed to live inside her bones now. She shook violently, her teeth chattering.

She tried to speak, but her throat was too constricted.

A woman stood in front of her. Her black hair was gathered back, and she wore a white coat buttoned at the neck and shoulder. A smattering of dark beauty spots constellated her brown skin, and her thick eyebrows were drawn into a frown.

“Where on earth did she come from?” she was asking.

Addie’s voice responded. “Carthane, somehow.”

“Are you sure?” the doctor asked, glancing over her shoulder at the old lady. “Nobody ever comes back from there.”

“I’m sure,” said Addie. And, “God must favour this one—she’s made it out.”

“Hm.” The doctor sounded tense. “Well, first things first. We need to get her out of those clothes. Addie, do you have anything we might put her in?”

“I’ll fetch some of Erik’s old clothes.”

Addie left, and silence reigned in the room. Fern could hear the crackling of a nearby fire and the faint hiss of gas lamps. She blinked her eyes open to find the doctor sitting on a stool nearby, scribbling notes. She glanced up, meeting Fern’s gaze.

“Hello.”

“Hello,” Fern said .

Her voice sounded as though she hadn’t used it in years. She tried to sit up, but the doctor stood to press a hand to her shoulder.

“Don’t move. I’m Dr Moad. Can you answer some questions?”

Fern nodded.

“Where did you come from?”

“Carthane.”

“They let you leave?”

An odd question. They hadn’t let her leave—but neither had they kept her prisoner, which seemed to be what the doctor was implying. Fern opened her mouth, trying to scramble together an explanation that would not sound nonsensical.

“I fell into the sea.”

The doctor’s eyes narrowed. “Right. Is that how you hurt your leg?”

She motioned, and Fern followed the gesture towards a large tear in her trousers, revealing a deep gash blossoming out over a bed of bruising.

“I hit a rock in the sea.”

“Hm.” Dr Moad made a note, then rolled her stool closer to Fern. “I’m going to conduct a quick check on you. Is that alright?”

Fern nodded. The woman checked her pulse, her temperature, her pupils, making notes as she went. Then a knock came at the door, and Addie returned, carrying a pile of clothing in a basket, which she laid on the examining couch next to Fern.

“Thank you, Addie,” said the doctor. “Will you brew some white willow bark tea? And maybe put on some slices of toast? She looks like she hasn’t eaten in days. ”

Fern tried to point out that she’d been making an effort to eat, but her voice failed to come out. Addie nodded and left through a different door.

Dr Moad gestured towards the clothes and said to Fern, “You need to get out of your wet clothes, and I need to dress your wound. Can you undress?”

Fern heaved herself up, testing her strength. Her arm was stiff with pain, and her entire body felt weak, as though her muscles had been forcefully removed and her flesh left hollow as pitted fruit.

“I’m not sure,” she said.

“Alright.”

With gentle movements, the doctor helped her out of clothes, setting the sodden garments aside with a grimace. If she noticed the bruising on Fern’s arm, she said nothing.

She helped Fern into the clothing the old woman had brought: a thick shirt in a coarse material and a large jumper knit from deep blue yarn. It made Fern think of Lautric, and her chest ached.

Before she could slide on the loose trousers, Dr Moad cleaned and dressed her leg wound. The gash was deep, the bruise surrounding it was mottled purple and blue.

Fern lay back while the doctor quickly stitched the wound shut, and the pain was a drop in an ocean, and that ocean felt very far away from Fern.

Once her leg was bandaged and she was fully dressed, the doctor kindly towelled Fern’s hair dry before handing her the last of the clothing the old woman had brought: a woollen hat. Now that she was no longer mummified in sopping wet clothes, Fern felt much better, the cold slowly melting out of her body .

In its stead, the pain rammed itself back in, making Fern flinch with exhaustion.

Addie came back into the room carrying a tray. On it was a teapot, a cup, a butter tray and a plate piled with brown slices of toast. She laid the tray next to Fern and poured a cup of tea. She heaped a spoon with thick honey and stirred, fragrant steam rising from the cup.

“Drink this first,” she said, handing Fern the cup. “It’s for the fever. Then you should eat.”

“Thank you,” Fern croaked, taking the cup.

The doctor perched on her stool, propping her arms on her legs and linking her fingers.

“You have a fever, but your vitals are, surprisingly, fine. You’re a hardier woman than you look. Treat your fever, get plenty of rest, keep your wound clean and disinfected and you should be fine.”

“I’ll do my best.”

Fern took a sip from her cup, wincing at the combined bitterness of the tea and sickly sweetness of the honey. It was too hot to drink, and Fern had wasted too much time already. She laid the cup down and propped herself up on the examination couch with a wince.

“You should rest,” the doctor pointed out, though she made no move to stop Fern.

“I have to go. I have to… There’s someone there who’s in danger.”

“So will you be,” Addie said darkly, “if you go back.”

“I can look after myself.”

Addie shook her head. She pierced Fern with that sharp gaze Fern remembered from her first time in East Hemwick, when Addie had asked her if her job was worth dying for. Addie spoke quietly this time, without amusement or sarcasm.

“The train comes in an hour,” she said. “Leave while you still can.”

“One hour?” Fern exclaimed. “What time is it?”

“Almost nine.”

One hour left until the start of the second assignment.

Barely enough time to get back to Carthane—and Emmeline had been alone in the sewers all night, and Fern needed to get to Edmund, to tell Sarlet and the Archivists about Emmeline, about someone pushing her into the pit. And then, somehow, she would need to do the assignment, to force herself to use Wild Magic. There was so much to do; she could not waste one more second.

She lurched to her feet. A wave of pain slammed into her skull, darkening her vision, then her entire body, limb by limb. She wavered and stumbled, slumping back against the couch, one hand rising to her head. A powerful emotion washed over her, as though her weakened state had broken a dam within her: she missed home. She missed Vestersted, her librarians, Oscar.

She missed them so much she could have wept, had she the strength to do so.

Eyes clenched closed, she took a second to collect herself.

“I need to go,” she muttered. “Now.”

“If you go back up to the Library,” said Addie, “you might never leave.”

“I should hope not,” Fern said in a rasp. “I’m planning to secure a job there.”

Addie shook her head with an incredulous laugh .

“You know how many of your comrades must have wished for the opportunity you’ve been given here, girl?”

The doctor laid a hand on Addie’s shoulder, but Addie’s eyes stayed on Fern. Fern looked back just as intently.

“I’m not going to turn my back on the bad things happening in Carthane,” Fern said. “I’m going to fix them.”

Addie leaned back with a slow nod, and something in her sharp eyes softened, like the edge of a sword dulled by times of peace. She gave a rueful smile.

“Idealists die quickest,” she said.

“I’m not an idealist,” Fern answered. “I’m a librarian.”

She took the rolls of bandages and small brown bottle Dr Moad handed her, stuffing them into the deep pockets of her borrowed trousers, and limped to the door.

“Thank you for all the kindness you’ve both shown me,” she said. “I’ll have my clothes sent for and those you’ve so generously lent me sent back as soon as I can.”

Addie shook her head in a gesture of amused disbelief. It was clear that she thought Fern was committing some act of madness by going back; she gazed at Fern in much the same way as Oscar had when she’d told him she was leaving for Carthane.

An idea dawned into light through the murk in Fern’s mind. She paused in the doorway and turned back.

“Can I ask you for one more favour before I go?”

“Of course,” said Addie. “It would be bad luck to deny the living dead. Ask.”

“Can I have some paper and a pen? I need to send a letter.”