Page 85 of The Deadliest Candidate

A small, plain object, and yet she saw it for what it was. Not just an entreaty, but something else. A token, a symbol of trust, given freely, with nothing being offered in exchange.

Fern finally opened her door, withdrawing to her apartment, and when she shut it, she hoped her heart and all of its thorny tangle of emotions would stay firmly on the other side.

Chapter forty

The Veneer

There were only twodays until the announcement of the third and final assignment. Fern, desperate to re-establish order in her life and heart, forced herself to resist the urge to hide in the confines of her room, with Inkwell keeping watch at the foot of her bed.

Instead, she got up at nine both mornings, forced herself to eat breakfast, then spent her days in the Sumbra Wing conducting a thorough search of her missing book,Unmaking Sumbra, which she would need as soon as the third assignment was over.

Her search was fruitless, but it did keep her away from the other candidates. With Josefa and Vittoria now gone, and the circumstances of their leaving so murky, Fern could not help but retreat inwards. First, to avoid any more unwise attachments. Second, to avoid any potential danger posed by her fellow candidates—Lautric, with his key hidden away in the velvet casket of Fern’s dagger, the most dangerous of all. And third and last, because she was still determined to solve the mystery of what had happened to the young women.

Fern trusted the Grand Archivists were telling the truth. Josefa and Vittoria were gone. But the Grand Archivists had not given any more information than that, and it was in the absence of their explanations that Fern guessed dark truths lurked.

But was it not the Grand Archivists themselves, after all, who had told her and Lautric that Carthane was, above all, a place for knowledge?

So Fern would pursue that knowledge, no matter what. And to do so, she would have to find a way into the Astronomy Tower.

The candidates were summonedto the Palissy Auditorium on Monday morning. Fern, carrying with her a cup of coffee and a letter from the Grand Archivists telling her she’d achieved a score of ninety-one for the Conjuration assignment, entered the auditorium full of determination.

She was careful to sit at the end of the front row, away from the others. Her arm was still recovering, half-concealed beneath the folds of a large green woollen scarf; she was doing her best to avoid questions. Fortunately, nobody questioned her scarf. Carthane was growing colder as the days advanced into autumn, storms carried in from the sea, battering the east-facing windows.

And besides, the other candidates all had other things to concern themselves with other than her arm or her scarf.

The candidacy, it would seem, was beginning to take its toll on everyone. Srivastav, normally full of warmth and conviviality, was withdrawn and uneasy. At his side, Dr Essouadi looked more fragile than she ever had. Baudet sat staring into nothing; even the ornate cross on his chest seemed to have grown dull. Lautric, whom Fern could no longer glance at without her heartbeat quickening uncomfortably, seemed as exhausted and distracted as ever, flipping through his notebook with nervous flicks of his thumb.

The twins were last to arrive, interrupting Fern’s observations. They entered arm in arm, backs straight, eyes blazing. Emmeline wore a gown of draped satin, malachite green. Her brother wore black trousers and a shirt in the same colour and fabric as her dress. The green of their clothing made their skin appear pale as marble, their hair red as burning lithium.

“What gloomy faces,” Edmund said, amusement tinged with cruelty as he swept the auditorium with a gaze. “Brighten up, you lot. The Elemency assignment! Ravi, your time has come.”

The general nodded, though the smile he mustered was devoid of its customary warmth. “I’m sure we shall all do our best.”

“Some more than others,” said Edmund. “Baudet, Lautric—how will you two fare without beautiful women to lean on?”

Baudet turned his head abruptly, as though he’d come to life in a jolt of electricity.

“I’m not in the mood, Edmund.”

“Men are always in the mood,” Emmeline said in a drawl.

The laughing twins ascended the steps to sit themselves in the very centre of the room. Fern, observing their cheer and ostentatious antagonism, could find no other emotion within herself other than pity.

She knew almost nothing about Santa Velia alchemists other than the fact that they were bred from infancy into alchemists. She herself had known the cold, impersonal cruelty of a state orphanage—she imagined the twins had endured much worse, and from a much earlier age. She imagined how they must have often felt as though nobody else in the world cared for them apart from one another, and in time, how they must have come to feel as though nobody else mattered.

She could not begin to imagine what the separation of the twins would feel like to them. If they were cheerful now, it could only be due to one of two reasons.

Either they believed they could both somehow still succeed in Carthane, or neither intended to stay.

Or perhaps they had decided not to think on it at all, and bury all their dark worries underneath this bright, polished veneer of theirs.

“I’m shocked that you’re still here at all,” Baudet said, venom in his tone. “Since your success cannot happen without your separation.”

“I’m sure you all hoped so,” said Emmeline with an airy laugh. “How easy would a chess match be if your opponent’s pieces simply magicked themselves off the board!”

“You will continue separately?” General Srivastav asked with genuine surprise.

“We will continue as we began: together. We will succeed the same way too.” Supreme serenity was inEdmund’s voice as he spoke. “Carthane is testing us, nothing more. Every clever alchemist knows the crucible must be at its highest heat to test the strongest elements. But there is no test my sister and I have failed yet.”

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