Chapter 54 Baz
“MORNING.” KAI GREETED HIM WITH a cup of coffee.
Their fingers brushed as Baz reached for it, his heart fluttering in his chest like a caged bird.
His cheeks warmed as Kai’s gaze lingered on his mouth.
He didn’t know what to say, his mind too full of the memory of Kai’s lips on his.
Tides, was this how he’d be now—acting like a lovesick fool anytime Kai so much as looked at him?
Baz drowned himself in his cup, hoping the words would come—only to choke on the strongest coffee he’d ever tasted.
“Tides, what did you do?”
Kai snatched the cup back, taking a careful sip. He grimaced. “Oh.”
“Oh is right. Out of the way, I’m in charge of the coffee from now on.”
Kai did not get out of the way. In fact, he remained firmly in Baz’s way so that they were in each other’s space, making the bird in Baz’s chest go wild again.
“Have either of you seen Thames?”
Baz jumped away from Kai at Polina’s voice. She was coming down the stairs, her pale face drawn with worry, not seeming to have noticed the intimacy she’d interrupted.
“Haven’t seen him, no,” Baz sputtered.
Polina worried her lip. “I heard him leaving in the middle of the night, and he never came back. That’s not like him.” To Kai, she asked, “Did you encounter him in the sleepscape?”
“No. But I’m sure he’s fine.”
Polina didn’t look so certain as she wrung her hands. “You don’t think… I mean, he wasn’t participating in the games. Surely he can’t have turned up like those other students, right?”
“I’m sure he’s fine,” Baz repeated, though he suddenly didn’t feel certain in the slightest.
They promised Polina to keep an eye out for him before she left for class. When Baz got to the Decrescens library for his usual meeting with Clover, he couldn’t help but stop by the marble busts guarding the archway to the Vault. No sign of blood. No dead body.
His gaze caught on the silver engraving on each of the marble statues. He’d seen them before, but only now did they give him pause. He moved closer to read them.
The engraving on the left statue read Blood spilt for the safeguard of knowledge.
The one on the right: Power eternal for the curious of mind.
The blood of the four founders, spilled under mysterious circumstances.
The knowledge of the Vault, accessible only to the college’s elite.
Like the very group who’d founded it.
A chill ran down Baz’s spine as he hurried to Clover’s table and plopped down in the seat across from him. “When exactly were the libraries completed?”
Clover combed through their research. “No specific date. But they were all completed on time for the college’s grand opening.”
“So, roughly around the same time the founders died?”
Clover blanched, looking up at Baz.
“We agree their deaths sound too ritualistic to be coincidence, right?” Baz said, heart pounding.
“Four founding members from four different lunar houses, all of them dead within the same month, on their respective lunar phases, around the same time construction of their libraries ended… What if they were sacrificed? Their blood—their magical life force—spilled by the Selenic Order to erect the wards around the Vault. Wards that conceal the seat of the Order’s power.
Wards that their own leader—the person they’d appointed as the dean—could have designed. ”
Clover swore. “You think the Selenic Order would have murdered their own?”
“If it meant safeguarding the kind of knowledge they alone wanted access to? I wouldn’t put it past them.”
“The Selenic Order of old were known to conduct lethal rituals,” Clover conceded.
“My guess is, the library founders knew they’d have to die. Why else would they not have grown suspicious of their peers getting killed one by one, each of them on their ruling moon phase?”
Clover rubbed his chin in thought. “The question remains: How do we unpick the wards?”
Baz’s mind raced. The Ilsker student had nearly bled out before he saved her. Wulfrid and his friends had been drained of blood. Blood spilt for the safeguard of knowledge. Power eternal for the curious of mind.
All these stories of mysterious student deaths and haunting presences…
Suddenly it clicked.
“Porpentious Stockenbach,” Baz murmured.
Clover raised a bemused brow. “The writer of ghost stories we were led to during the scavenger hunt?”
Baz rifled through their research. “Hilda Dunhall was a Shadowguide. Lutwin de Vruyes, a Purifier. Didn’t he write that other book we found in the scavenger hunt?
Purifying Practices Against Evil. A book on exorcisms.” Baz’s heart thudded against his chest. “It can’t have been a coincidence what happened when the Ilsker student tried going past the wards.
The library turning cold, that spectral wind howling between the shelves, the lanterns being nearly blown out… ”
“Like a haunting,” Clover concluded.
Baz nodded. “What if the wards are directly tied to the founders’ deaths—more specifically, their ghosts?”
“How would that work?”
Blood spilt for the safeguard of knowledge. If all four founders had bled their magic—their lives—into the wards…
“Maybe Wulfrid and his friends had the right idea to form a group of four,” Baz said slowly, mind racing.
“Just like the initial challenge they had you all doing. There were four founders to match the four libraries that sit atop a fifth—the Vault. If each founder’s ghost or soul is tied to the wards…
maybe we need four people with the same magic.
A Shadowguide, a Wordsmith, a Purifier, and an Unraveler. ”
Clover caught his eye. Understanding rippled between them. If Baz was right, they didn’t need four people at all; Clover alone embodied all lunar houses, all tidal alignments.
He already had what they needed to break through the wards.
They went over their research again and again, coming up with ways to solve the ward equation.
When at last they thought they had it, Clover’s excitement dimmed as a grim realization set in.
“If we do this, I’ll be outing myself as a Tidecaller.
My pull within the Order won’t matter then. I’ll be all but burned at the stake.”
“If we do this,” Baz countered, “we’ll be able to go through the door. None of it will matter once we bring back the Tides and the Shadow.”
Movement caught their eye as a group of students from different colleges—Karunang, Awansi, Ilsker, and Frons—grew excited at a nearby table, appearing to have found something in the large tome the four of them bent over.
The Karunang student noticed Baz and Clover staring and pointedly shushed her teammates.
The games weren’t done. If Baz and Clover could figure out the solution, so might anyone else.
Clover seemed to realize the same thing. “Then let’s be quick about it before someone else beats us to it.”
“I knew I’d find you here.”
Cordie stood with her hands on her hips, staring daggers at her brother.
“Delia.” Clover raised a brow. “Why do I have a feeling I’m about to be scolded?”
“Are you really going to pretend like you don’t know?” At Clover’s impatient gesture, Cordie spat, “Louka is gone.”
Students cast furious glances their way at Cordie’s raised voice.
She caught herself, wiping furiously at her cheeks before continuing in a lower voice.
“I went to his apartment, his shop. All his things are gone. Everyone I spoke to told me he left for Trevel.” She glared at Clover. “What did you say to him?”
“Nothing—”
“You never liked him. And Louka would never have left me. Not at a time like this.”
“A time like what?”
Cordie ignored her brother’s question, her gaze going unfocused as some sort of realization dawned on her. Her eyes welled with tears.
“Delia, I assure you, I said nothing to him.” Clover gently grabbed hold of her, forcing her to look at him. “Whatever’s happened, I’m sure it can be fixed. We’ll find him, all right?”
Cordie nodded, lip trembling slightly. She composed herself, blinking at their research. “Does this mean you’ve figured out the wards?”
Baz realized with a sudden pang that Cordie didn’t know the truth of what they were planning—that if they succeeded in getting past the wards, succeeded at going through the door…
She might never see her brother again.
The thought was unbearable as his mind filled with Romie, with how things might have been if they’d had the chance to say goodbye. Which is why, when he caught up with Cordie outside the library, he found himself saying, “I need to tell you something.”