39. Meter, from the Greek for ‘Measure’
When Briar emerges onto the lawn, it’s eerily empty, the grass lurid and bright under the watch of the full moon.
Orpheus is whimpering, and Hadley has vomited down the front of her T-shirt somewhere on the way up the stairs; Briar doesn’t know much about head injuries, but this seems a bad sign.
The infirmary is all the way on the other side of campus.
Christ knows how many people Briar might encounter on the way there, and what their allegiances might be, if fleeing Mons have spread the word.
The library, however, is just ahead. There are lights still glowing in the windows of Daniel’s office.
When Briar knocks, they hear the sounds of unhurried movement inside; they knock again, hammering this time, and when Daniel answers the door his brow goes from furrowed to entirely smooth with shock.
‘Briar?’ he says, and then when he catches sight of who Briar is half-carrying, ‘Hadley?’
Hadley? Briar’s surprised by the familiarity, but it hardly matters now. He eases her from Briar’s arms and sits her down on the loveseat just behind the door.
‘She hit her head,’ Briar says. ‘I think she’s bleeding.’
Daniel bends over her, parts her hair and winces. ‘Where are you bleeding, Briar?’
Briar looks down at their hands, the blood dark in the cracks of their skin and black under their fingernails, and says, ‘Oh. It’s not mine.’
They start shaking, their teeth chattering a miserable dance in their mouth, and Daniel says, ‘Sit down, take a breath. It’s going to be all right. Whose blood is it?’ Briar slides to the floor and puts their head in their hands, light-headed and reeling.
‘We were . . . the Trial,’ Briar says. ‘We were at the fourth Trial, and Alistair Buckingham had Westby . . . I think he was going to kill him.’ Westby.
Where is Westby? Briar can only hope that Tate managed to get him to relative safety.
‘But someone else is dead. A pip. Evie. Evie . . . I don’t know her last name, her father is a Lord. Alistair killed her.’
Daniel is still trying to hold Hadley up, stop her from slumping to the floor. ‘Wait, slow down. Alistair Buckingham killed someone?’
‘Yes,’ says Briar, tears burning in their eyes.
Evie. Poor Evie. She’d been so wonderfully annoying, so deeply precocious.
Maybe this place wouldn’t have broken her.
Maybe she would have made it out with some of herself intact.
They cast around for Orpheus, only to discover that he’s gone.
A problem for later. ‘I tried to save her, I couldn’t .
. .’ They remember the text in their pocket and go digging for it, wiping their hands on their borrowed joggers before they do, the half-congealed blood smudging brown across the heathered grey.
‘Hadley,’ Daniel says. ‘Look at me. What’s my name?’
Hadley, who seems unconvinced of her own consciousness, says, ‘Your name is . . . Danny.’
Briar produces the text, holds it up. ‘Use this,’ they say. ‘I tried, but I’m no good . . . You’re a teacher, will it work better for you?’
Daniel takes the book from Briar’s hand and turns it over, distracted.
‘What is it?’ he says, putting it down on the arm of the seat.
‘It’s a Working,’ Briar says. ‘For healing. I found it in the attic, I can read it now. We don’t know why. But it . . . it really works, I’ve used it.’
Daniel goes very still. He lets Hadley collapse back against the cushions as he picks up the text with both hands, then turns to the first page.
‘There’s blood on it,’ Briar says ruefully. ‘Sorry.’ Hadley is gagging quietly, like she’s going to be sick again, so Briar gets up on unsteady legs and goes to her, heaving her upright so she doesn’t choke on her own vomit.
‘You can read this?’ Daniel says.
‘Yeah,’ Briar says, pulling Hadley’s sticky hair back from her face. ‘I couldn’t read any Workings when I got here, but now . . . I don’t know, I guess I can.’ Hadley mutters something against Briar’s shoulder. ‘What, Hadley?’
‘Let’s go to Danny’s house,’ she slurs. ‘It’s not . . . very far.’
Briar frowns down at her, convinced she’s just confused, but then they look sharply up at Daniel. The trophy mounted on the wall behind him reads Oriel College Boat Club, twin to the logo now smeared with vomit on Hadley’s shirt.
‘You’re . . .’ Briar physically recoils, and Daniel glances up from the text and catches the expression on their face. ‘You’re Rochester.’
‘Who?’ says Daniel, feigning confusion, but he’s watching Briar too carefully.
Briar makes a sudden lunge for the text, and Daniel shoves it aside and says, ‘I don’t think so,’ and it’s not an order - not Conduct - but something else. Briar feels all of their attention focus in on him, urgent and acute, waiting to hear what he’ll say next.
‘That’s it,’ he says, ‘just listen to the sound of my voice, don’t worry about anything else.
’ He stops speaking to punch in a number and pick up the grey plastic landline on his desk, and Briar half gets to their feet before he says, ‘No, it’s all right.
Pay attention. It’s going to be okay. Oh - yes, hello, is that Sarah?
Can you send the headmaster to my office, please?
Stay there, Briar, it’s okay. Yes, thank you, Sarah, wake him up.
And someone needs to find Alistair Buckingham very urgently, there’s some question of—’
‘Hang up.’
Bastian is standing in the doorway, dressed all in black, out of breath and magnificently angry. Briar sags with relief at the sight of him, able to look away from Daniel now, not sure what exactly he’d been saying that had felt quite so important.
Daniel visibly fights the Working, his hand jerking as he places the phone back on the receiver with a dull click.
‘Wolfe,’ he says, ‘think about what you’re doing. It’s been a difficult term, emotions are running high, but let’s take a second to breathe.’ Bastian is watching him speak with such concentrated attention - it takes Briar a moment to realise that he’s Working.
‘Bastian,’ they say urgently, ‘he’s—’
Daniel moves towards Briar suddenly. Briar’s not sure what he was planning to do - hit them? Cover their mouth, stop them from talking? - but Bastian is faster.
The librarian is thrown across the room, his back hitting his bookshelf with a hollow thud, hardback books tumbling down around him.
It feels like the walls are shaking, a localised earthquake, a small avalanche of plaster dust raining from above one of the pipes.
When Briar looks at Bastian, his pupils are so dilated, his eyes almost look black.
When Daniel tries to get up, a book sliding off his shoulder, a small gash in his forehead where it made contact, Bastian says, ‘Don’t fucking move.’
He stills so completely that Briar’s not sure he’s even breathing. In fact - he’s not. Briar can see it dawning on him in the flared whites of his eyes, the growing panic, the reddening of his cheeks as he’s starved of oxygen.
‘Bastian,’ Briar says. ‘Bastian, let him breathe.’
For a moment, Bastian doesn’t listen, and Daniel’s skin mottles with effort, his cheeks purpling, the veins bulging in his forehead.
And then he says, ‘Fine,’ and Daniel releases all of the air in his lungs in one go, fighting to pull in the next breath, the rest of his body still completely motionless.
Bastian turns away from him, disgusted. ‘We need to go.’
‘Can you . . . ?’ Briar gestures to Hadley. ‘Can you help her first? She hit her head, I think it’s pretty bad.’
Bastian picks up the text and starts flipping through it, his eyes switching back and forth across the pages.
He puts his hand on Hadley’s shoulder at the same time, his mouth working silently, and bit by bit, the life seems to come back into her; first she opens her eyes, then sits up, blinking hard.
When she looks down at the vomit on her T-shirt and says, ‘Jesus, what the fuck,’ Briar knows she’s okay.
They exchange a look with Bastian, and he nods, and says, ‘Let’s go.’
Orpheus is standing by the open side door of the library looking miserable, and very guilty.
When he sees Briar coming, he says, ‘I’m so sorry I’m so sorry, I needed some air, and then I saw him and he asked me if I’d seen you and I said yes, I don’t know why I said it, I didn’t mean to—’ all in one breath.
‘It’s fine, Orph, you did good,’ says Briar. In an aside, to Bastian: ‘You scared the shit out of him.’
‘I was in a rush,’ Bastian says tightly. He stops walking abruptly. ‘Where the fuck are we going? Campus is swarming, everybody’s looking for you. Apparently, you’re all wanted for murder.’
‘I don’t know,’ Briar says. The tower is too far. Damn this stupid fucking campus for being so extravagantly sprawling. Daniel had been the only teacher Briar remotely trusted. Who’s left? ‘Wait. Give me a second.’
They reach inside their jacket, thanking God and the universe for practical pockets, and pull out the walkie-talkie they’ve never switched on.
They press the button now, and the tiny screen bursts into neon life.
The battery is half-charged. What channel had Eugenia said? Briar takes a stab on three.
‘Eugenia?’ they say, pressing down on the call button, unsure if it’s working. ‘Eugenia, it’s Briar. I’m sorry to wake you, but I need a huge favour.’
The only answer is static for what feels like an entire minute. Briar’s about to try again when the speaker crackles into life.
‘The next time I need to hire someone to do something,’ Eugenia says, dry and distorted, ‘I will make better choices. I will hire one of those new robots they make that walks like a dog, and wants to kill you. That will be less trouble, I think.’