Page 22 of The Deadliest Candidate

Sarlet watched him for a moment, then nodded and turned, crisply resuming the journey back to the Mage Tower. The other candidates followed suit, though every conversation had now fallen into silence.

Fern’s eyes stayed on Drei, and a frown now knit her eyebrows, for she had observed him throughout the banquet.

He had not taken a single sip from his glass of wine.

Back in the MageTower, Fern noted that the candidates were not all inhabiting apartments on the same floor. The Poison Tower twins were on the fourth floor, along with Josefa Novak and General Srivastav. Dr Essouadi and Vittoria Orsini and Vasili Drei were on the fifth floor. Finally, Léo Lautric, Raphaël Baudet, and Fern were on the sixth floor.

As soon as she was back within the safety and privacy of her own room, Fern hurried to the desk, where she had left her books, papers, pens, and the notebook her colleagues at Vestersted had gifted her. Sitting at the desk, she opened the notebook, uncapped a pen, and got to writing.

Inkwell, who had been asleep at the foot of the bed, opened lazy eyes to watch her as she scribbled her notes.

She wrote everything she could remember: candidates’ names, occupations, appearance. Everything she had observed, everything she had overheard. The alliances already forming: the Poison Tower twins and Lautric; Baudet’s attempts at drawing in Vittoria Orsini; the general and the doctor, who were closest in age and shared a profound love for their daughters.

Finally, she noted the incident with Vasili Drei, who had heard or noticed something and then lied about it, as well as the incident before the banquet, the muttered threat.

When she was done, she sat back in her chair, dropping her pen onto her notebook with a sigh.

“Well?” she asked Inkwell. “And what doyoumake of this place?”

Inkwell tilted his head. His tail swished lazily from side to side. With a yawn, he stood, stretched, and curled in on himself to face away from Fern before promptly falling back asleep.

Fern let out a soft, tired laugh. “Goodnight to you too.”

After a quick night-time toilette in the bathroom, Fern undressed, unpinned her hair and climbed into her new bed. It had been a long day, but her mind was too full to allow her easy access to sleep.

Wedging her pillow beneath her head, she let her brain idly file away the events of the day. She was finally on the verge of sleep when a thought occurred to her, perhaps too late.

Ten candidates had been invited to Carthane, herself included. Ten had arrived and introduced themselves at the banquet.

So if the corpse in East Hemwick had not come from the village and did not belong to a candidate—then where had it come from?

Chapter eleven

The Mentor

When Fern entered thesmall dining room the following morning, most of the candidates were already gathered there for breakfast. Fern was generally misanthropic in the mornings—she preferred to begin her days with coffee and silence. But the conversation at the table seemed to revolve around the subject of the soon-to-be-announced mentorships, a topic which did not fail to draw Fern’s interest.

“Lord Battyl and Lady Covington, of course, are the only mentors worth having,” Emmeline Ferrow was saying.

She had a manner of speaking that drew attention to her in the same way the tinkling of silver cutlery on the rim of a crystal cup might. Her incandescence was an affectation, but an affectation so perfectly polished it fit her like a second skin.

“Just because they are the oldest of the lot doesn’t necessarily make them the wisest,” Vittoria Orsinipointed out.

This morning, she wore a shirt of pale blue silk and a long skirt trimmed with lace. There was something movingly Romantic about her, from the soulfulness of her eyes to the mermaid-like gloss of her curls.

Raphaël Baudet, when she spoke, sat up in his chair, though he said nothing in reply. Fern noticed him noticing Vittoria, and she wondered how much of his interest was motivated by Vittoria’s noble surname and how much of it was motivated by her beauty.

“Out of all the Grand Archivists of Carthane,” Dr Essouadi pointed out from her end of the table, “Professor Incera alone has published more research than all her colleagues.”

“Being a talented scholar does not necessarily mean being a good teacher,” Emmeline Ferrow replied with an airy laugh. “Would you not say so, Miss Novak? You are, after all, both those things.”

Josefa Novak had just walked into the busy dining room. She looked up as though surprised to be addressed and shook her head.

“I’m not sure what you’re asking, Miss Ferrow.”

“My sister and I were merely wondering which of the Grand Archivists you covet for a mentor,” Edmund Ferrow said. “Lady Covington, perhaps, or perhaps even Lord Battyl?”

Though his arm was draped around the back of his sister’s chair, his body turned towards her, his eyes were fixed on Josefa, tracking her as she walked down the length of the table to pour herself a cup of tea.

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