Page 54 of The Deadliest Candidate (The Last Grand Archivist #1)

Chapter fifty-four

The Curse

Fern was aware of the hard ground beneath her and a warm body above her. She blinked into blinding light. The air was an inferno. Above her, the body moved with a rasp of pain.

Lautric had thrown them both to the ground, protecting Fern’s body with his. Above them, Edmund had formed a crystal shield around him; it glittered like ice and cracked.

And Ravi Srivastav, the great general of the Jathvi Empire, the prodigy pyromancer, stood in a whirlpool of fire, and his arms glowed white with power, and a jet of fire streamed from him. Fern’s heart sank; he was going to kill Edmund Ferrow.

Edmund fought with all his might.

Another alchemical symbol formed in the air, slower than before, because Edmund was tired now, and under duress. It gleamed green and flashed. His shield splintered, and the silver turned acid-green and exploded towards Ravi Srivastav like poison shrapnel.

Srivastav didn’t so much as flinch.

This, Fern saw, was his element. His reputation was not formed of air. He was a true soldier and a mage: violence and magic were his art. He swept his arms through the air, an incantation like a song ringing from his throat and mouth. He manipulated the fire like it was a handful of ribbons.

The flames rose like a tidal wave, and the green poison thrown by Edmund sizzled and disintegrated in the flames.

Edmund stepped back. It was only a small step, and in the mad coruscation of pyromancy and alchemy, Fern saw the darkening of his eyes, that fraction of a second, and the emotion there.

Fear.

Edmund threw up a new shield, and Srivastav, almost simultaneously, sent up a whorl of fire that lapped the length of the room. It curled in on itself like a great serpent and sank down upon Edmund on all sides.

The shield held, gleamed, then cracked. Edmund’s body shuddered from the force of the impact. Fern saw the sweat on his forehead, and the tears on his cheeks, and she turned, and she saw the grim, heavy sadness of Srivastav’s dark eyes. She felt sick to her stomach, utterly helpless. The fire coiled, seared from red to purple, and then blasted Edmund’s shield with deadly intent.

Edmund’s clever alchemy would simply not be enough to outmatch the sheer force and talent of the world’s greatest pyromancer. Srivastav was going to kill Edmund just as he had killed Emmeline Ferrow, who had killed Josefa Novak. Had she killed Vittoria, too? Did it matter, in the end? Fern, who had saved nobody at all and made mistake after mistake, was going to become the helpless witness to yet another death.

No.

She scrambled out from under Lautric, who slumped in pain with a groan. The clothes had been scorched clean off his back, which was raw and crimson with burn marks. Her heart ached, but Fern forced herself to stand up, to raise both arms. Srivastav was blasting the full force of his fire upon Edmund, whose shield was fracturing now, turning purple.

Fern could not fight the general, nor did she want to, but she remembered the first part of the fire channelling incantation—the part which absorbed and redirected fire.

She closed her eyes, her fear giving way to a great, icy calm. Her thoughts and emotions were muted.

For what she was about to do, emotion was not a luxury she could afford.

Wild Magic loved emotion; it fed off fear and passion and desire. She must be barren of them all if she wished to use it without harming herself. Fern was well read; she knew all too well the stories of those who had died using Wild Magic, those whose sanity or bodies had been consumed by the feral source of power.

But she had no other recourse, and she would not allow anybody else to die.

Like last time, the source was easy to find. Fern pulled on a trickle of it, and it immediately coursed through her, already quicker than she intended. She closed her eyes, stilling herself, striving to control the power she drew in .

Her incantation was on the tip of her tongue, branded into her mouth. She began to recite the incantation, and the trickle of Wild Magic she had drawn became a pouring cascade. She had opened a tap she could not quite close, and the magic filled her fit to burst, making her insides burn and her skin itch.

Fern opened her mouth, and now she bellowed the incantation.

First, the seeking incantation, for finding the fire, which was all around her. Then the summoning words, for pulling the fire into her. The Wild Magic, hungry and greedy, tore the fire from the air, Srivastav’s flames coiling and curling away from him and into Fern, searing her.

Her body blared alarms, screaming fire and agony. But Edmund had stumbled back, and his shield shimmered as he fortified it. Fern forced herself to carry on. The flames filled her, and the Wild Magic stoked and whipped the flames. The pain was excruciating, and the Wild Magic answered the pain in a sort of explosion of delight.

Tears streamed down Fern’s cheeks, and she saw Srivastav’s face only in a blur as he turned to look at her.

“Sullivan, stop!” he cried, his voice hoarse with fear.

Fern wanted to stop; she wanted nothing more. But the Wild Magic felt free and fast, and it fed on the fire like a hungry child, and Fern was being consumed. She threw her arms out towards the sewer pit, desperate to let go of the flames eating her alive.

Flames burst out from her hands, her arms. They streamed into the pit in great leaping ribbons of flame. Fern smelled the fire, the heat of it and the burning of her hair as the flames singed the tips of it, and she smelled the burning of her flesh as the flames devoured her fingers, her hands, her arms.

As long as Srivastav kept trying to kill Edmund, Fern would not be able to let go; this truth was undeniable now. The Wild Magic she’d called forth both fed the fire and fed from it. The fire would consume her if she did not stop.

She looked down; her arms shimmered, turning bright violet, cracking like dry earth. Fern pulled herself from the source of Wild Magic, but it fought her, clinging on. She realised, almost with elation, that she could no longer stop the flow of fire. Her death, after all, would not be the suffocation void of water, but the scorching blare of fire.

Was it worth it, she wondered, quite distantly. To die here, in Carthane? To die so close to her parents? Would they be waiting for her?

If there was a place for waiting, then, yes, her parents would be waiting for her. It would not be so bad, she thought, if only she didn’t have so many regrets. If only she hadn’t made so many mistakes.

The fire stopped.

The flames swirled, rose, dissipated in a cloud of sparks and dancing embers. Srivastav’s incantation no longer rang through the air.

Fern stood, shaking violently. Her hands were red-raw and blotched, as though she had just plunged her arms up to the elbows in scalding water. The pain was instant and searing, replacing the space inside her the Wild Magic had filled moments ago. She looked up through sweat-drenched strands of hair .

Lautric stood behind Ravi Srivastav. He had not used magic, but he held a dagger in his fist, and the blade was pushed against Srivastav’s throat.

Further away, Edmund had crumpled to the ground. There was no shield left: either Srivastav had destroyed it, or Edmund’s spell had ended. He lay motionless. Fern longed to let herself fall, to let her agonised consciousness slip away, if but for a moment of respite.

“Why should it be you, Lautric?” Srivastav said dully. “You and I are in the same position—neither of us were sent here to fail. Your life is worth no more than my wife’s or my daughter’s. You’ve the blackest heart of us all, so why should it be you who dispenses justice?”

“I’m not dispensing justice,” Lautric replied hoarsely. “And I don’t want to hurt you. But I can’t let you kill her. You must know that.”

Fern was aware, only distantly, that he was talking about her.

The pain of the fire was a scream that drowned out everything. She fell forward onto her knees and blinked through a veil of tears.

Josefa was dead. Emmeline was dead. Edmund was probably dead, she had probably failed to save him, too. And Vittoria—where was Vittoria in all this? And now Lautric would kill Srivastav, and Srivastav’s wife and daughter, somewhere in the world, hostages to Srivastav’s Emperor, might die, too, and all for what?

“I never intended to harm her,” Srivastav was saying. “But whatever her life is worth to you, my wife’s and daughter’s lives are worth a thousandfold to me.”

“You’re not going to hurt Fern again,” Lautric said, and his voice was low and full of authority and sorrow, and Fern rose her damaged arms to stop him, and knew that she could not, and she was weak, now, and sick of death, and she was so very tired.

“That’ll do, Mr Lautric.”

Fern turned sluggishly. Housemistress Sarlet, hands clasped in front of her, emerged into the chamber. Too late , thought Fern in a blaze of sudden fury. Entirely, despicably, unforgivably too late . Two Sentinels flanked Sarlet. And beyond the Sentinels, the Grand Archivists had—finally—arrived into the chamber.

All seven of them, solemn-faced and chests crossed with black satin, and Fern almost failed to notice the subtle, powerful ward that trembled like a heat haze around them as they entered.

Fern’s eyes moved back to Lautric. He gazed at the Grand Archivists with some strange, dark emotion. When he spoke, his voice was calm, though his dagger was still at Srivastav’s throat.

“Mr Srivastav attacked Miss Sullivan and tried to trap her down there. He did the same thing to Emmeline. Emmeline is gone now, probably dead, and her brother might be dead too. Emmeline probably killed Josefa Novak.”

“Thank you, Mr Lautric, you may step away now,” Sarlet said. She gave a nod, and the Sentinels stepped forward to seize Srivastav by his arms. The pyromancer did not speak. He looked tired, now, as tired as Fern felt. “This has become a criminal matter: the Reformed Vatican will be informed, and legal proceedings will be put in place to deal with everything that has happened here. You will all be required to write witness statements, and volunteer any information you have. For now I must ask you both to leave, with thanks for your intervention but a stern reminder that the undercroft is forbidden to candidates.”

Before Fern could even think of a retort, Lautric spoke up, though it was not Sarlet he addressed, but Srivastav.

“For what it’s worth,” he said, low and almost regretful. “I’m sorry about your family.”

For a moment, Srivastav made no reply, and there was only the sound of the water gushing out of the pipes. The circling flames from earlier had all but faded now. The Grand Archivists watched from behind their ward, silent witnesses.

Srivastav’s voice, when he finally spoke, was a dull knell.

“May the Gods curse your house.”

Lautric nodded, and answered, “They already have.”