Rise of the Arcane Fire (The Secret Order) Page 11

  The headmaster looked at me with his brow furrowed. “What nonsense is this? You’re certainly not leaving the Academy.”

  I sat back in disbelief. Surely I had not heard him correctly. “I beg your pardon?”

  He leaned over, opened a drawer, and pulled out a familiar piece of paper. It was my drawing of the aviary, but it had been annotated. At least four different scripts had scrawled all over the surface. “I suppose you recognize this?”

  I reached out and touched the edge of the beautiful drawing. “Of course, but my design proved dangerous. And earlier there was the accident that injured Peter. Clearly, I made mistakes.”

  “No.” The headmaster’s voice dropped to a low and very serious tone. “No, you did not.”

  I sat, flabbergasted.

  Headmaster Lawrence dropped his gaze to the plan before him and ran his hand over it, tracing the various pipes. “I don’t mean to imply you are without error. You tend to forget that you’re merely a student, Miss Whitlock. In spite of my reputation I expect my students to learn from their mistakes. I don’t expect them not to make them.

  “In this case Instructor Oliver, Instructor Barnabus, Instructor Victor, and I all looked over your design, and we corrected any errors we found. In truth, there wasn’t much to correct. You did remarkably good work. The birds should have played the song exactly as you had intended.”

  I felt a rushing in my ears and pressure in my chest. Praise. He was offering me praise. He wasn’t throwing me out in the street just yet. It took a long moment for me to find my voice. “Then what happened?”

  The headmaster flattened his hands on the paper and fixed me with a serious look in his pale eyes. “I believe it was sabotage.”

  Sabotage? On the one hand, it seemed so sinister, like a plot out of a dark and twisted novel. On the other, it made too much sense, and that was what bothered me most. “Surely that can’t be true. Who would wish to sabotage me?”

  Headmaster Lawrence arched one eyebrow. “At this point the question becomes, Who does not wish to sabotage you?” He stood from his desk and retrieved from one of his shelves the machine that Peter had attempted to assemble. “And it wouldn’t be the first time. Take a close look at this.”

  I peered at the machine as he placed it in front of me. I couldn’t see anything awry. It looked exactly like the one that I had so painstakingly described in my assignment that day. “I don’t see anything amiss.”

  “Of course you don’t,” Lawrence said dismissively. “But here is the assembled machine you used to make your drawing.” He retrieved a second, seemingly identical machine and placed it next to the first. “What do you see?”

  They were the same. Peering closely at both machines, I tried to magically reveal with the power of my will alone whatever the headmaster was trying to show me. “I don’t see the differ—”

  Wait, just there. The spring, the one that had snapped. It was too thick, and there was a subtle difference to the shape. “That’s not the correct spring.” My words tumbled out of me even as my heart seemed to follow them, falling onto the floor.

  “Indeed, but young Peter couldn’t have known that. The spring on the table in front of him was the only piece that remotely resembled the one he should have used, the one that had been a part of this exercise for decades without incident. Someone replaced that spring with this one. The latch could not withhold the added pressure of this more powerful spring.”

  Dear God in heaven, I hadn’t been the one to harm Peter. I felt a weight lift from my shoulders, only as a new burden took its place. Someone had replaced that spring intentionally. Someone had meant to cause harm. It could have easily been me assembling the second machine and not Peter.

  “Maybe this is all a simple mistake. Perhaps the spring was replaced by accident.” I was so weary of the danger and the intrigue of it all.

  Lawrence shook his head slowly. “It could be, but I doubt it. We will know for certain when Instructor Victor, Instructor Nigel, and I dismantle the aviary. I suspect we’ll find the valves have been altered.”

  “Who do you believe is behind this?” From this point on anything I touched at the Academy would be suspect. I couldn’t continue on this way.

  The headmaster seemed exasperated as he sat back in his chair and perched his elbows on the rests. He folded his hands across his narrow body. “My dear Miss Whitlock, if I knew that, I wouldn’t be speaking with you right now.”

  So he was as lost as I. Wonderful. I had to narrow my list of potential saboteurs. Most of my classmates couldn’t stand to have me in the same room with them, and so most of them had to be suspect. “Do you believe a student could have done this?”

  Lawrence sighed. “It is possible. One of the students might have slipped the stronger spring into the pile of parts on the table while he was waiting for his partner to finish his design.”

  “And the aviary?” I asked.

  “Very few students knew I had chosen your design,” he answered. “My”—he hesitated, the fingers of his left hand closed in a loose fist—“son was caught sneaking through some of my things.”

  I knew it. Samuel was the one who would most wish to humiliate me. He also seemed to care little about harming others. Samuel was the only possibility that made any sense.

  “And he was the only one?” I asked. Of course, if Samuel knew, then David would have known as well. Between the two of them they could have enlisted the help of any number of the sheep that liked to follow them around.

  “No. Peter was called back to the Academy to settle a matter of some work I had wished for him to complete now that the use of his hand has returned. When I entered my office, he was studying your plans very intently. I shouldn’t have left them out on my desk, but I didn’t suspect sabotage at that point,” Headmaster Lawrence said.

  I couldn’t believe it. Peter would never do such a thing. Why would he? “He wouldn’t purposefully injure himself.”

  “It would be the perfect deflection from guilt, and perhaps he hadn’t anticipated the spring failing as he set it. It could have easily snapped later, when an instructor attempted to dismantle it.” The headmaster tested the spring, pushing it forward, before carefully easing it back.

  “But he has no cause,” I said. Peter was my friend.

  “Doesn’t he?” The headmaster looked at me as if I should know something obvious. I backed off, unsure what I was missing. No matter what, I couldn’t believe Peter would betray me.

  Headmaster Lawrence let the question go unanswered. “If the saboteur is a student, it would be a remarkable feat. We have to accept that it might be a higher member of the Order.”

  “Why would one of the instructors attempt to sabotage my efforts? If they wished to be rid of me, they could easily ensure I fail.” I was no fool, and I certainly hadn’t forgotten the reception I’d received during my nomination, but there was no need for deception among the adults.

  “No, they cannot. I watch everything that happens in the lectures, and all marks for students are finalized through me.” The headmaster rolled up the plans and tucked them back into the desk. “You will not fail, so long as you don’t deserve to.” He scowled, only a flash of an expression. “As for those who do deserve such a fate . . .” His voice trailed off as he returned the machines to their places on his shelf.

  Certainly I was relieved that my merit alone would keep me at the Academy, but I still felt uneasy. Like I was a special oddity, a pet project for the headmaster. I didn’t want to need his protection, but if I didn’t have it, I knew I would never take the Amusementists’ oath as a full member.

  He retrieved a box and opened it, revealing a very old pipe with a fat carved-ivory bulb and a long mahogany stem. With delicate care he packed and lit it, puffing as he stared at the narrow window. “This is all far more complicated than it seems.”

  “It appears fairly simple to me.” I sighed as the scent of sweet tobacco filled the room.

  “Does it?” Lawrence removed th
e pipe and held it contemplatively near his chin.

  “The others don’t wish for there to be a woman Amusementist,” I said.

  The headmaster took another puff, then watched me closely. “I believe it goes much deeper than that. Whoever is sabotaging you doesn’t wish to see a woman become head of the Order.”

  I kicked out a foot in my shock, and nearly toppled the chair. “I beg your pardon?”

  “So much has changed with the recent murders.” He paused. “I believe you are to attend the memorial for Lord Strompton. I’m eager to hear some of the rumors. Surely others have noticed that all those who died conveniently made it possible for the Harrington line to ascend.” Headmaster Lawrence watched me very carefully, as if looking to my face to confirm what he really wished to know. “Brilliant political strategy, really. Wait for one of us to inevitably go mad, then mask your own dark intentions.”

  I tried to hold deathly still. Alastair Harrington, the Earl of Strompton, had been a ruthless man. I had seen firsthand the depths of his obsession and manipulation. He’d even shot his son-in-law in the back in cold blood. “I wouldn’t know much about these things,” I lied.

  The headmaster considered me. “Indeed.” He puffed his pipe. “Very few things can prevent David from becoming the head of the Order when Octavian passes, and we have to be honest. Octavian doesn’t have many years left in him. I felt certain your nomination was going to make his heart give out, and yet he lives.”

  “So, David is to become head of the Order. What does this have to do with me?” I stared at the headmaster, though the pipe smoke was beginning to burn my eyes.

  Lawrence looked briefly at the ceiling, then back at me. “You are the last of the Whitlock family. Add to that your Reichlin heritage, and you have just as much political power within the Order as David does.”

  My hands started to shake, so I tucked them into my lap. “I don’t understand.”

  “I think you do,” he continued. “Family ranking within the Order is critical. The higher a family ranks within the Order, the greater their portion is for the patents we release to the public.”

  “I thought the Order was against some arbitrary social hierarchy.”

  “For all our knowledge, we’re not above the occasional hypocrisy. However, there is nothing arbitrary about it. The heir to a family line is the one who earns his family legacy through stellar work as an apprentice and later as an Amusementist, not always the firstborn. The Order tends to rely on family reputation to make our politics more predictable. The system only works so long as the family in power is seen as having intellectual merit.”

  “But if the Whitlock and Reichlin families have been earning greater portions of returns on patents or investments,” I said, “that would mean I have some great fortune.” I was a clockmaker’s daughter, not an heiress. We’d lost everything in the fire. What little money had been in my father’s business accounts had been used to pay our debts. I had been forced to become a housemaid out of destitution. “My family lived well, but we didn’t have wealth. I was left with nothing after the fire.”

  “And you didn’t find it suspicious that your father didn’t have any funds to pay off his debts, when you had lived so well, far better than a clockmaker should? On the contrary. You are the sole heiress to a great fortune. The tragedy is that no one knows where it is.” Headmaster Lawrence contemplated his pipe for a moment. He took another thoughtful puff. “Your grandfather had a great knack for locking things away. I suppose he is the only one who would know where the Whitlock fortune is kept. This bomb you found may have been motivated by lust for that fortune, a crude attempt to take your grandfather’s master key, then claim the fortune.”

  I slumped in my chair. The man in the clockwork mask certainly seemed intent upon claiming the key by any means.

  The headmaster shrugged and puffed on his pipe. “I do hope Henry is safe, for your sake. As it stands, should he return, he would become head of the Order as leader of the Whitlock line and a senior member to David. If he does not, the ranks of the Whitlock and Harrington lines rest entirely upon you and David. Whoever ranks higher by the end of your apprenticeship will become head of the Order eventually.”

  So David had the motive to sabotage me as well.

  The headmaster blew out a cloud of smoke, which curled around his face. “Since it is clear you are a target, the question remains, what to do with you.”

  And we were back to where we had begun, though so many things had been made clear and confusing at the same time.

  “Keep wary, Miss Whitlock. If you notice anything out of the ordinary, I want you to speak with me, and whatever you do, I expressly forbid you to mention any of this discussion to your peers.” He rose. “It could jeopardize our chances of finding the saboteur.”

  I thought about the man with the clockwork mask, and the shadowy figure I had thought I’d seen at the Academy.

  “Headmaster.” I didn’t know how to ask what I so desperately needed to ask. “Is there any way for someone outside the Order to enter the monastery?”

  “No,” he answered with a heavy shake of his head. “It’s impossible.”

  That’s what I was afraid of.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  MY TROUBLES AT THE ACADEMY were compounded at the memorial for Lord Strompton. I had only had a few dealings with Lucinda’s father myself. The most acute of those memories involved his pistol pointed at my chest. Needless to say, I did not bring a handkerchief to dry my eyes. I hated that I had to stay silent about his murders, but I had caused enough controversy in the Order, and telling everyone what had really happened wouldn’t have brought back the dead. Knowing this didn’t make attending his memorial any more comfortable, though.

  As I followed the string of people walking from the country estate dressed in their finest black, I knew the saboteur was likely among them. The line reached down a hill like a monstrous snake, its body undulating through the waving grass until the head reached a rotunda of old Roman ruins on the edge of a vast, sun-soaked lake.

  While we all moved forward at an appropriately somber pace, the front of the line never extended beyond the rotunda, and I wondered what awaited me within the ruins.

  I didn’t know where Lucinda was. The Strompton estate made the splendor of Oliver’s palace look quaint. The dowager countess was managing to host most of the Amusementists, with the remainder staying at Chadwick Hall. I had only briefly seen Oliver. Having had a week to heal, the skin on the side of his face was still raw and red, though the blisters were mending. He wore a patch over one eye. I tried to speak with him, but he was too busy managing the many guests and couldn’t be bothered.

  His reluctance to speak to me only made me feel worse. It was just like with Peter. I couldn’t explain to either of them that I was not at fault. The saboteur had hurt my friends. Now I paid the price with their silence. Unless Peter was the saboteur. . . . Oh, I didn’t know what to think anymore.

  I knew it was selfish, but it drove my ire to no end that the whole reason I was here was to give my support to Lucinda and she was nowhere to be found. She had specifically asked me to attend, and yet I could not find her. Though I was certain she was probably busy with the many guests, at least we could have kept one another company in this dreadful parade. It wasn’t as if she were in the mood to mourn her father either.

  The sun made the heavy black fabric of my dress unbearable. I felt a trickle of moisture meander down the back of my neck as I walked on.

  No one spoke.

  I kept glancing at the faces of the men and women around me, but they all seemed deep in thought or in memories of the departed. Meanwhile I struggled to keep my mind from wandering to mundane subjects, like whether the hair of the woman in front of me was hers in truth, or a wig.

  I had mourned long enough for people who rightly deserved it, and I refused to do it any longer.

  With no other choice but to go along, I kept my head down and followed the line until the shadow
of a worn stone column passed over me. My breath caught as I looked around the weathered ruins. At the center of the rotunda there was a small marble building that looked to be nothing more than a crypt with a heavy iron door emblazoned with the Amusementist seal.

  I watched the line of mourners slowly disappear into the building, and I pondered what might lie deep within the crypt.

  Inside the crypt a servant handed each of us a lit candle. I held mine with a slightly shaking hand as we descended a narrow spiral stair deep into the cool earth.

  My legs ached with the effort of climbing down the endless stairs. The air became stuffy, heated with the breath and bodies of so many people holding candles in such a stifling place.

  Finally we reached the bottom, and we walked down a long, dark tunnel lined with low-burning torches. Their light flickered in the steady breeze that rushed through the tunnel.

  I didn’t know what caused the air to move, and couldn’t discover the source, since there was very little in the tunnel other than dank stone walls and a distant, wavering light up ahead.

  The queue of people seemed to move faster, drawn toward the swirling light. We passed beneath an ornate arch defined by a bronze column on either side.

  What I saw as I passed through stole every thought from my head, and I realized that nothing I could’ve imagined could equal this.

  It was magnificent.

  I had entered a great room made of glass, deep within the lake. The clear ceiling arched over me, supported by curving iron beams with enormous rivets whose heads were the size of eggs. It was like standing within a shimmering bubble beneath the surface of the water, held trapped within a dark iron web.

  I stared, awestruck at the beauty of the shafts of light penetrating the gloom of the lake and reaching through the glass panes. The other Amusementists continued to file into the room, but it easily held the entire assembly. The light of the candles held by the mourners flickered, reflected in the glass dome like shimmering stars within the depths.