Page 27 of The Ordeals
Keep my pretty head?! I huff indignantly. How dare he. I am no liability. I’ll be damned if I’ll follow hisinstructions. What an arse. A damn good-looking arse, but still. And if he won’t tell me what he knows about poisons, I guess I’ll uncover that knowledge myself.
‘Found anything that’ll help you through it yet?’ Tessa asks,soto voce, as she slides into a seat next to me at lunch in Gantry Hall. She tears into a roll and ladles herself out some roast vegetable soup, sniffing cautiously before dunking in the bread. I guess we’re all still on edge after what happened at the welcome reception.
I sigh. ‘Nothing. Been all over the library, looks like all the books that could have helped have been removed. Whole sections just absent.’ The first Ordeal is at nine tomorrow morning. It’s one in the afternoon, and I have less than twenty-four hours. Anxiety prickles under my skin, my stomach a bag of knots. Right now, I’m walking into the first Ordeal with only my wits and a switchblade. Oh, and my partner, Alden Locke, who wants me to justkeep my pretty head.
Tessa scrunches her nose as a particularly pretty woman with golden hair and watery blue eyes laughs in a breathy, high-pitched way at something Alden says. ‘If someone knocks that one off, I won’t complain.’
All the botanists are sitting together at one table, at least twelve of them crowded around a feast. The woman with golden hair leans towards Alden, whispering something in his ear before laughing again. She’s practically sitting on his lap, and when she touches his hair, then places a hand on his chest, something bitter curls in my stomach. I grip my spoon tighter, shovelling soup into my mouth. Her laugh is like nails down a chalkboard. After stuffing ina few mouthfuls of bread, I say good luck to Tessa and head back to Hope Hall.
Fog has rolled in over lunchtime, shrouding Killmarth in thick, syrupy mist. The steps down to Hope are slippery, the cloud catching in my hair, coating my skin. It smells of stone and brine, the distant gull cry seeming unnervingly close. The sea is watchful, grey and still and endless, almost expectant today. I shrug lower into the folds of my wool coat, turning into Hope before trudging up the staircase.
As I take off my coat and shoes, I can’t help turning over all the ways it could go wrong tomorrow. All I know is that we’re to assemble in the courtyard. Beyond that, I have no idea what this Ordeal will be. If it’s an Ordeal of Poisons, will we have totastepotions? Identify antidotes? I picture Gideon Mallory at the reception dinner, eyes bulging in terror, the animal waft of fear leaching from his pores as his throat closed up. I shudder. It can’t end that way; it just can’t. I have too much to prove, too much to learn.
I cross to the desk, pulling out the chair to sit and dropping my chin into my hands. Staring out the window, all I see is grey. Thick and looming, a foghorn from a passing ship blaring suddenly in the distance. Shuffling around, I pull out every scrap of paper, every item in the drawers. This is what I’ve been trained to do. Find information, adapt to new situations, slink unseen and never,everget caught.
‘I’m missing something …’ I murmur, picking up a few pieces of paper containing everything I know about poisons, botanists and antidotes, as well as Killmarth itself and the Ordeals. But there’s something nagging at me, a sense that I’m getting this all wrong, that I’m not thinking laterally—
A shriek slashes the air.
I gasp, opening the door as a cascade of thumps echo from thespiral staircase, as though a body is tumbling wildly down the stairs below, unable to stop itself.
I move to the staircase, taking the steps as fast as I can as I hear the final few thumps before ringing silence. I grip the handrail, taking the final steps slowly, blood beating in my ears as I round the final spiral before coming to a halt on the bottom step.
Eyes peer up at me.
Dead eyes.
‘Oh, shit.’
‘Broken neck, I reckon,’ a voice says quietly at my back as he rounds the final spiral, coming to a halt behind me. Alden’s voice. ‘Are you all right?’
‘I … what?’ I say, dizzy with the sudden sight of death at my feet. Working for the Collector, I’ve seen my fair share of dead bodies. A few marks, who I followed and collected a month or so before seeing them dead, and … Dolly. Alden places a hand on the small of my back, and I half turn to him, feeling that same jolt of closeness as in the tunnel in the Crucible. All I want to do is lean into him and his comfort because he’s here, he’s real and I need someone. This reminds me too much of Dolly’s final moments. And she was the only someone I ever had.
A short burst of laughter sounds from outside and the main door swings open across the entrance hall. Two hopefuls, Tessa and the gangly-limbed man I recognise from the Crucible, Greg, stutter to a halt and stare at the lifeless body at my feet, then up at me and Alden. He removes his hand quickly from my back and I swallow, snapping back to myself.
The young woman is bent all crooked, her golden hair in disarray around her face. I can still hear her irritating, breathy laugh. At least the ghost of it.
‘I guess that’s one less botanist at the Ordeal tomorrow. And nowwe’re a nice, round number. Fifty,’ Tessa says grimly, as Greg turns and bolts. We all wince at the sound of him retching outside.
‘We should tell someone,’ I say, not even trying to disguise the tremor in my voice. ‘The housekeeper, Parnell, or-or a professor—’
‘You should clear out of here,’ Alden says.
I round on him in disbelief. ‘And what do you mean by that?’
He shrugs. ‘Well, either you shoved her down the stairs, or someone else did. Do you have an alibi?’
‘Doyou?’ I ask.
‘Alden, it seems pretty suspicious that you werejustwith her at lunch, all cosy,’ Tessa says. ‘Too much competition? Or did her voice annoy you too?’
Alden chuckles darkly and shrugs. ‘Fine. Pin this on me, but it won’t make you any safer.’
My gaze cuts to his and all I see is a man as calm as the ocean, depthless and full of secrets. But then aren’t we all? I’m harbouring my fair share.
Greg runs for a professor and the three of us hover there, avoiding eye contact before Parnell arrives, huge eyes in her moon-white face, watching us all. She’s accompanied by a man who takes out a pocket watch, feels for a pulse and declares the hopeful’s time of death.
‘And none of you saw anything?’ Parnell asks as members of the medical staff arrive with a white sheet and a stretcher.
