Page 41 of The Deadliest Candidate

Three perfect illustrations. Though she could not remember them mere moments ago, she recognised the symbols instantly now: reverse putrefaction, blood purgation and blood cibation.

Someone had drawn these for her and placed them on her desk.

Not with a brush and ink, nor a pen. Someone had used subtle, clever magic to draw the illustrations into the paper. The ink did not appear fresh, and the lines were precise.

Summoning words and images was a specific type of Invocation that required complex spellcraft and detailed knowledge of the composition of paper, ink, and, of course, the symbols illustrated. Whoever had done this had spent precious time and energy on this spell.

But who? And why?

Fern swept the room with a searching gaze. Her first guess was Josefa, who had just passed her desk and wasthe closest thing to an ally Fern had in Carthane. She had gladly accepted Fern’s offer to share her research notes—was it possible that this was her way of repaying Fern? It made the most sense. But why would Josefa give one of her rivals an advantage when she herself was working at a disadvantage?

Fern narrowed her eyes, peering closer at the illustrations. They were accurate. She knew that beyond a doubt.

What if this was not an act of kindness but a trap? This was cheating. Although the Grand Archivists had only specified verbal and written communication as being forbidden, magic was surely forbidden as a matter of course?

What could she do? She was reluctant to keep the illustrations—but it was too late to ignore them altogether.

She picked up her brush, set aside the symbols, and redrew them on fresh pieces of paper. Now, they were truly her own. It pained her a little to know that she had not remembered them herself, but she would deal with the matter of the secret helper later on. For now, there was simply too much work to do.

She finished writing her justifications with only fifteen minutes to spare. Barely enough time to proofread, organise her symbols, keys and annotations, number the pages of her essay and double-check her bibliography.

When the clock finally chimed the end of the assignment, Fern had just placed her heavy sheaf of papers inside the green leather folder inscribed with her name. The gold lettering ofF. E. Sullivanreminded her painfully of the three illustrations that hadn’t been hers.

“Candidates, your time has come to an end,” Professor Farouk announced from the top of the room. “Please, make sure you have placed all your work in your folder. You may leave.”

Fern exited the hall swiftly, darting past the other candidates, desperate to clear her head and get rid of the bittersweet taste her mysterious helper had left in her mouth.

Chapter twenty

The Toast

Outside, the afternoon wasdark, and the sun was descending fast, the colours of sunset suffocated by billows of clouds. It had stopped raining, but the ground was waterlogged and pungent. With each step Fern took, her boots sank into the ground with a burbling squelch.

Fern wrapped her coat around her and breathed deeply, filling her lungs with cold air. She skirted the labyrinths of lawns and hedges surrounding the central building in the direction of the Arboretum.

Protected by the canopies of towering trees, the ground was drier there, the moss and grass scattered with fallen leaves, acorns, and the spiky burrs of chestnuts. Fern passed through the trees, brushing her palms against the trunks, which were surprisingly dry, almost warm despite the encroaching autumn.

When she was a little girl, the Arboretum had been the only outdoor space she could play in; the trees made it impossible for anyone in the library or towers to see her.

She remembered spending long dusk hours crouching in the grass, collecting plump chestnuts into her skirtto take back to the kitchens for the cooks to roast. She remembered her father in the distance, trimming hedges or stooping over a bed of weeds. Sometimes the head groundskeeper, Matthew, would work in determined silence at his side, but Fern would hide every time she saw him to avoid an inevitable telling-off if he caught her outside.

She had been afraid of Matthew, but she remembered the sound of his voice, the deep rumble of it echoing through the kitchens in the evening, when the servants sat to eat and sip cider and tell stories. Those were her favourite times when she was little: sitting perched on one of the counters, taking bites out of a warm muffin and listening to frightening stories the servants told about the Gateways.

Fern stopped in her tracks, blinking away the memories.

She never thought back on those times—another habit learned at the orphanage—but that was more difficult now that she was back.

She looked up.

Her steps, as though of their own volition, had led her to the foot of the Astronomy Tower. It rose so high that it disappeared into the soft-falling shadows of nascent night. Its door was still sealed.

She had half-expected the mound of collapsed rocks that killed her parents to still be there, but it wasn’t. All that remained of the tragedy was the tower, the mossy ground and the indifferent trees of the Arboretum looking on. Nothing else.

If her parents were buried somewhere in the grounds of Carthane, Fern did not know where. In any case, she was back, wasn’t she?

After being forced to leave, after the eight years spent in St Jerome, after building a career worthy of Carthane, she’d done it. She’d made her way back.

She didn’t need to mourn at her parents’ grave; the Astronomy Tower might as well have been their mausoleum. Fern lay a palm over the cold stone of the tower. Unlike the tree trunks she’d touched on her way, it was smooth and slippery and exuded cold like a sepulchral breath.

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