Page 55 of The Deadliest Candidate

“Nothing!” Emmeline gave an incredulous laugh. “Really, Raphaël, you amuse me. I wish all men were as imperturbable as you.”

A Santa Velia compliment, thought Fern, for Baudet, it would seem, was the most easily perturbed of them all.

“Someone broke into Sarlet’s office,” Lautric said.

He was sitting in the row below, a little away from the others. His sleeves were pushed back on his forearms, and his elbow was propped on the back of his chair; his gaze was turned up to Fern. His expression was withdrawn, almost despondent, and the shadows beneath his eyes were dark as bruises.

He had spoken quietly, as though his words were intended only for Fern.

“Sarlet’s office?” she said, mind reeling. “When? How?”

She cast her mind back to the previous night when she’d gone to see Sarlet and found her before reaching her office. This had been a little before midnight. Had the break-in already occurred by then? Sarlet had seemed to be on her way somewhere. Or had the break-in occurredaftertheir conversation?

“All very interesting questions, Miss Sullivan,” Emmeline said, pulling on a long strand of red hair and coiling it about her forefinger. “Though a better question, of course, might bewhy.”

“Is it possible that it might not be one of us?” said Srivastav, low and thoughtful.

He was, Fern noticed, losing some of his warmth with every passing day. Not in the sense that it had not been real to begin with and that the illusion was fading, but rather like a fire that was trying to keep burning in the middle of a barren icefield, its flames fighting a losing battle against the cold.

“Oh, it’s one of us alright,” said Baudet darkly. His eyes were on Srivastav when he spoke, but Fern remembered the way he had struck Lautric the night of Vittoria’s attack, his threat and the sincerity of it. She remembered, too, Lautric’s mysterious night-time excursion. “It would seem we have a thief in our midst.”

“Perhaps it’syou, cleric,” Vasili Drei said in a hiss of mocking laughter. “After all, does your god not bless thieving so long as it’s done in his name?”

Fern glanced at Drei. He wasn’t wearing his glasses, and his eyes were curiously dark, almost abyssal. He was the perfect opposite of Baudet. Where Baudet was blond and groomed and dressed exquisitely in azure jacquard and gold brooches, Drei’s long hair was a veilof black cobwebs down his back, and the plain tunic and trousers he wore were both old and shabby, threads coming loose at the neckline and sleeves.

“Remind me—what god is ityouworship, Mr Drei?” Baudet asked with a tight smile.

“The only god one should ever worship,” Drei said. “Myself.”

Though this exchange was interesting for many reasons, it was taking them further away from finding answers, not closer. Fern raised her voice slightly to ask, “Do we know that anything was taken from Sarlet’s office?”

“Why else would the Grand Archivists make such a point of explicitly forbidding thievery?” said Edmund.

Fern frowned. “I thought that might be in reference to whoever stole Josefa’s work.”

She thought, suddenly, of the letter under Josefa’s book—the one she had abstained from reading. Would it still be there after Sarlet’s search of the candidates’ quarters was complete? Fern could only hope so.

“Ifher work was even stolen at all,” Emmeline was saying with a sneer.

“What could she possibly gain from inventing such a thing?” Vittoria Orsini asked, stealing the question from Fern’s own mouth.

“Oh, let me think,” Emmeline tinkled, fluttering her fingers theatrically in front of her face. “Trust and sympathy? Time and attention?Or… a valuable alliance with the only Sumbra scholar amongst us?”

As she spoke, she swept her gaze up Fern in a way that seemed almost salacious. Her eyes were striking, Fern noted, russet and green like a bronze coin oxidisingat the edges. There was something callous in them, an edge of cruelty, as if she was insulting Fern rather than praising her.

Fern held her gaze, forcing herself to consider the alchemist’s words before responding.

Wasit possible that Josefa could have lied about her work and manipulated Fern into an alliance? Of course it was. Fern had slept side by side with Josefa, trusting her in a way she would never have allowed herself to trust any of the other candidates.

“If that were the case, Miss Ferrow,” Fern said slowly, “then where do you think Josefa is now? If her plan was working so well, why is she no longer a candidate?”

“Think of it this way, Miss Sullivan.” Emmeline’s smile was slow and venomous with disdain. “There are only two kinds of candidates amongst us. Those of us whowantto succeed—and those of us who have no choicebutto succeed. Miss Novak, quite simply, was the former, not the latter, and now she’s gone.”

The implication in the alchemist’s words was clear: Josefa did not have what it took to succeed in Carthane. But what Fern heard was the darker truth behind what Emmeline was implying: that there were some candidates here who were willing to doanythingit took to succeed, and now, someone was gone.

There was no moreinformation to be garnered about either the break-in or Josefa. If any of the other candidates knew more, they were keeping it to themselves,and the more Fern observed her colleague-competitors, the more she thought they probably were withholding information. She could not blame them; so was she.

It was only when Edmund finally stood to give his sister his arm that Fern remembered she had a more pressing problem to deal with.

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