Ember tilted her head back, looking up at the gargantuan fir tree that housed Corax’s study. It was early morning, and a shining layer of dew blanketed the trees and the clover growing along the path. Though it was Friday, nearly all of the students had gone home in the interim between the spring and summer semesters, so she had seen only a handful of Linnaeans on the walk from the reptile dormitory.
She skirted the tree, stopping at the door embedded into its base. It was unlocked, and she let herself into the narrow, musty stairwell shaped between the trunk’s layers. There were no windows, so she climbed the stairs in the dark, her mind preoccupied with thoughts of Corax. She could sense that their relationship was at a turning point, its nature to be determined by their conversation. As much as I want to remain outside of his control, I hope we won’t become adversaries, either.
The stairs spat her into the treehouse’s short hallway, and she paused to let her eyes re-adjust to the light filtering in from a small window and the gaps between the wooden planks. Other than the noises of the forest wakening outside, it was almost eerily quiet, and Ember’s tongue flicked over the points of her fangs—freshly regrown and recapped since the fight with the humans—before she reminded herself that she was unlikely to encounter a threat in the headmaster’s office.
She had been inside Corax’s study on two previous occasions: on the first, she had learned her species, and on the second she had unsuccessfully inquired about her mother. Both times, she had been too anxious to look around properly, so she was determined to glean all the information she could now. She walked slowly down the hall, running her hand across the panels in search of a secret compartment and examining the portraits for anyone she might recognize. She was surprised to see one of Mr. Ernold in his younger days, unsmiling with hands clasped below his strong jaw.
When she had completed her examination of the hallway, she raised the door knocker, listening as the sound reverberated through the treehouse. There was no response, and she knocked twice more with the same result. Frowning, she tried the handle, finding it locked.
She sighed, tapping her foot. It was still early, though she had gotten the impression that a man like Corax would eat and sleep in his study if he slept at all. Regardless, with spring courses over and Ophelia’s training canceled, she could afford to wait, so she turned and slid to the ground with her back against the door.
It took her an hour to exhaust the muscle isolation exercises for her infrared and venom control, a routine she’d created with the help of Marcus and Amir. When the calm the task awarded her dissipated, she opened her eyes and rose to her feet with a groan of frustration. Should I come back another time?
As she paced in front of the door, worrying her thumbnail between her teeth, a seed of a thought began to take root in her mind. In the past, Corax had intimately involved himself in everything: he’d greeted her when she’d first arrived in Mendel, rushed to the scene of her fight with the margay, visited her in the infirmary, and killed the priest’s guard during the events of the solstice festival. It made his absence during the most recent attack—in which students had actually been killed—especially conspicuous. The only evidence Ember had seen of his famously impenetrable surveillance had been a single dead crow, and the strangest of all was that Ophelia, who was directly under his supervision as headmaster, had been dismissed by someone else.
Is it possible that Corax isn’t in Mendel right now?
The thought was so jarring that she stopped pacing. She had read all of the announcements thoroughly since Gunther’s funeral, and there had been no mention of Corax’s absence, something that she could have overlooked if he was simply headmaster of the university and not also the leader of Mendel’s strongest unit of fighters. It was impossible to deny its merit, though—the official response to the disaster, including Ophelia’s termination, had not once struck her as the crow’s strategic work.
So, if Corax isn’t here, either he—or someone else with significant influence—doesn’t want the public to know.
Ember gritted her teeth, recognizing that she was at an impasse. She could walk away and wait for Corax’s return (assuming that he was returning) or she could launch an investigation of her own. In the end, it was a quick decision: she owed it to Ophelia and her dead peers to figure out what was afoot.
Across the hall, there was a small window about four feet up from the floor. She said a brief mental apology to Naz and Carn, who would undoubtedly disapprove, and with steady movements she undid the latch and slid open the pane. It was a little more difficult to pull herself up to the sill and wriggle through, but eventually, she stood on the outside of the treehouse with feet braced on the base of the wooden planks.
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The ground lay at least thirty feet below, and leaves rustled around her, helping to conceal her body from anyone who might happen to look overhead. From her perch, she could see how the treehouse coiled around the fir and climbed into its crown like a dragon protecting its treasure hoard. The tree’s importance had not stopped it from becoming the home of all a manner of creatures: long-legged yellow spiders, red-headed woodpeckers, big-belled frogs, and a family of hours who hooted suspiciously as she peered into their hollow.
She crept from branch to branch, skirting the hallway and approaching the study. She saw no movement nor any heat signals through the windows, though there were too many obstacles to be sure. The first few panes were locked down tightly, but on the backside, one of the windows was slightly ajar. I doubt Corax was the one to make that mistake.
She pried it upwards and swung inside, landing in a crouch. A shelf of glass bottles rattled, and she stuck out a hand to catch one right before it crashed to the ground. It was filled with a clear liquid, and she rotated it, looking for the label: HCl.
She placed the vial back on the shelf, noticing that her fingers came back dusty. In fact, other than a pathway through the center, the study gave the impression of a museum that had been left abandoned: cobwebs stretched over shelves of oddities, reagents had dried in their swan-necked flasks, and unmaintained piles of books slouched dangerously to the side. It was confirmation enough that Corax had been gone for some time.
Next to the shelf of vials was a small table, upon which the headmaster had left a stack of half-finished anatomical drawings. Each one depicted a Linnaean with a different malady circled in red—a tumor in the brain, an enlargement of the heart, fluid in the lungs—with notes on their treatment furiously scribbled in the margins.
I wonder what Marcus would make of these, Ember thought, replacing the diagrams and pushing her curiosity aside. Can a man who devotes his free time to the healing arts truly be immoral?
She focused her attention on investigating Corax’s absence with some difficulty. She passed a case of skulls, a cabinet of poisons, and a segment of wall covered in maps of the stars. It was impossible not to linger on the experimental bench, in which miniature vials were tucked into an apparatus that spun with a crank. Nearby were finished boxes of pills, similar to the treatment that the Linnaeans took daily.
Ember’s eyes roamed over them with interest. As far as she knew, it was the pharmacists’ job to make the treatment. Is he working on something new? She spotted a scroll with a list of materials and a step-wise procedure half-pinned under the microscope, but her time was limited, and she couldn’t make much sense of it anyway.
With no obvious clues presenting themselves on the first floor, she walked up the velvet-lined stairs to the second floor of the study. Just like she remembered, the table with the detailed three-dimensional map was in its center, and she was once again struck by the sense that she was looking at something of great significance.
The red flags marked the same areas as before: the old woods south of Mendel, the ocean off of Bayport’s coast, the central desert, and the Valram mountains to the northwest. Now, upon closer inspection, Ember could see that coordinates were written in pencil beneath each marker. Could Corax have gone to one of these places? But why?
A leather-bound tome rested on one corner of the table, and Ember picked it up, examining the spine. Navigating the Southern Hemisphere, the title read, Dr. Salvatore Thompson.
Him again? Ember wondered, remembering the name: he had been an explorer, famous for making it to the southern edge of the continent and back. It had been one of his books that Corax had used to show her Roland’s species. Does this mean Corax has gone into the Old Forest? Why?
Frustrated, Ember sat down, staring at the map. Perhaps, if she examined it just a bit longer…
She jerked upright as the sound of voices came from below, horrifyingly close. Multiple sets of footsteps were headed down the hallway, accompanied by the rattling of a keyring. Shit.
As far as she knew, there were only two ways out of the study: the window she’d come through, and the door that the unwanted visitors were about to open. The window was at nearly the furthest point away from where she sat, and she doubted that she could make it out in time to avoid being seen or heard.
Her pulse thumped in her ears. Will I be punished? Expelled?
A key was being fitted into the lock, and she backed up against the wall like a cornered animal, searching desperately for a cabinet big enough in which to hide.
There was a nearly imperceptible rustling behind her. Then, suddenly, something buried itself in the fabric of her shirt, pulling her unceremoniously backward. There was a brief struggle of limbs and then the wall itself seemed to close in front of her, blocking out the light.
A figure swelled to life beneath her infrared, undoubtedly Linnaean. With a painful knocking of knees and heads, she pinned it against the wall, their breathing unbearably loud in the darkness.
“Who-” she hissed, but a shaking hand clamped over her mouth.
“Quiet, Ember, it’s me,” a male voice said, a little choked. There was a moment of tense silence as Ember tried to place it, and the hand relaxed slightly.
“Orthus?”