Land of Verne (17 page)

Quinn faced him. “Then go ahead and tell him, why don’t you?” The look on his face was fierce. “Ah, but you can’t, can you, because he’s dead. And
your
father likely had something to do with it.”

Festrel’s mouth snapped shut.

“Come on, Grim,” he said, pulling him up from the ground. There were whispers and snickers as they departed. Boisterous laughter followed. Quinn trembled, but with anger or fright, Grim couldn’t tell.

“What about your mother?” Grim said as they scurried down the corridor. “You didn’t have to do that.”

“Yes, I did,” he said, and Grim knew not to discuss it further. He simply muttered “Thank you” and they strode through the drafty corridors of the orphanage. 

Treena and Rudy were huddled together by the fire of the Hearth Room when they arrived. They pored over a scattering of books.

Grim and Quinn rushed to join them. The orphanage side of Madam Malkim’s was freezing and Grim groaned with the cold. He didn’t want to think about what the winter would bring. He could only hope he would get as many chores in the toasty warm Academy as possible.

“What are you doing?” Grim asked, blowing on his hands and rubbing them for warmth. He held them up to the fire.

Rudy looked up from a book. “I can’t read a blasted thing. How am I supposed to find it?”

“Can I help?” Quinn asked, also warming his hands by the flames. “What are we looking for?”

Rudy leaned over and whispered. “Do you remember the vial that went missing?”

“The one you told me about from the storage room?” Quinn asked and coughed horribly.

She nodded. “Do you remember when we were helping Master Galan and the whole room filled with smoke?”

“How can I forget?” Grim muttered. He rubbed the spot where he’d been bitten by Scarlet. He hadn’t seen much of her lately, having given her the hint that he didn’t want her around. The bite still hurt sometimes.

“Well, I saw the same colored bottle in the room. It was even labeled the same.”

“I thought you couldn’t read it,” Grim said.

His sister smiled shyly. “Quinn’s been helping me. I recognized the same letters, so I took it when the room filled with smoke.”

Grim winced. “I don’t know if that was a good idea. Where is it now?”

“My chores today were to go back in and dust the room again. So Quinn copied the name of it down for me and I put that bottle in the old storage room to replace the stolen one. It looks exactly like the bottle that Eevenellin took. Now we don’t need to get it back from her,” she said with a huge grin.

Grim wasn’t sure of this plan, but it made sense, and it would keep Rudy from getting in trouble.

“What’s it called?”                    

“Marmorite Blue,” Treena said. She sat so close to the fire Grim thought the girl’s robes might catch flame.

“So what are the books for?”

Treena was about to answer, but then leapt up from where she sat. As Grim expected, the poor girl’s robes caught flame.

“Ack!” Treena ran about the room and flapped her arms like a chicken.

Quinn bolted up and whipped out his platinum cane. He pointed at the flames, flipped three switches and pressed a button.

A fine mist of water doused Treena and snuffed out the fire.

“Fast thinking,” Rudy said.

Treena was now sopping wet like a soggy scarecrow. Her spiky hair was like a matted pile of purple straw.

“Thank you,” she muttered.

Rudy picked up the books. “Maybe we should take these back to one of our rooms.”

They gathered them up and made their way down the corridor to Treena and Rudy’s room.

There was a faint howl in the distance and Quinn looked out the window. He began to cough and swigged on a green elixir that he pulled from his robes.

“So what are we looking for? And how did you get them?” Grim asked as he looked at the stack of books. He thumbed through it with clumsy, frozen fingers.

In the meantime, Treena changed clothes inside the wardrobe while Rudy rushed to light a fire in the hearth.

“We’re trying to find out what Marmorite Blue is used for,” Rudy said. “And let’s just say that I’ll need to smuggle these back later.”

“Any luck?”

“Nothing yet. Grab a book,” came Treena’s muffled voice. She stepped out a few moments later and her hair stood on end once more.

They continued sifting through the pile. Grim wished for a table of contents, or an index. Yet there was no such thing in these books. They searched page by excruciating page. Grim thought he should mention the notion to Master Cobblepot. He’d likely appreciate such a concept as the Dewey decimal system.

“Here it is,” Treena said, after hours of searching. In her lap sat a book called
Potions: Cures and Antidotes.
“
Marmorite Blue is a rarely used elixir, usually mixed in small concentrations to help in the curing of broken bones and breathing ailments in the Unseen. It has a number of improper uses, including poison when mixed with fish liver, plague when mixed with the hair of a Changeling, and, when mixed with Gargoyle’s hair, the Elixir of Stone ― a dark concoction that petrifies its victims
.” She flipped the book over in her hands. “This book is really old, from before the time of sinth.” Then she gasped. “Look at the back.”

All of their heads leaned in. There, written on the back, was the name of the last person to have signed it out.  

“Eevenellin Festwith,” Grim muttered.

Chapter 18

The next morning, Grim was so late waking he practically ran to the kitchens in time for breakfast. He had barely sat when Madam Malkim rose to speak to the Academy.

“There was an attack on one of our serv —,…err,… orphans yesterday. An individual has been identified as the suspected attacker and we will ensure that he is tried. Two witnesses have stepped forward already. If anyone else has information concerning this attack, you must speak.”

Grim had heard the rumors. The two witnesses were apparently Festrel and Gorkin.

“Also,” continued Madam Malkim, “I would like to announce that, sadly, Lord Festrel must journey home. He is going to regale his father and the fine people of Harland Manor about our wonderful Academy and we hope he will rejoin us shortly for the Anniversary.”

Festrel rose. The students clapped furiously and cheered, drawing from him a smug grin and a cocky wave. Festrel gave Grim and Rudy a prolonged glance and then sat down. Grim held his head high, looked Festrel right in the eyes, and refused to clap. He sat with his hands folded on the table. Rudy did the same.

Madam Malkim left the room and those that finished breakfast departed; orphans to their chores, the students following Festrel out the door to his awaiting dirigible. It looked to be the same as the one Grim had seen flying overhead when he’d first arrived in this world.

The four of them rose and made their way glumly across the grounds to find Master Galan waiting for them outside of his laboratory. He had them each performing different tasks while he attempted to create a new concoction to cure Dropsy ― a strange condition that had afflicted Veerasin earlier in the day. Her face, arms and ankles suddenly swelled up while she was working in the kitchens. She had a strange bite mark and she said she thought perhaps a spider had bitten her. Grim couldn’t help but wonder about that.

Quinn interrupted Master Galan as he mumbled to himself.

“What is going to happen to the Gargoyle?”

“Hmm?” he said, pulling his head up from a large book in front of him. “Oh, yes, well I suppose he will be tried for murder. There hasn’t been such a murder in Madam Malkim’s. Master Cobblepot is studying the city laws on the matter. Madam Malkim is a city magistrate and will be overseeing the trial herself.”

“Murder?” Grim said. “Does that mean Valeria’s dead?”

“Gargoyle petrification has no known cure. She will remain stone for eternity. She is as good as dead.”

Treena peered around the corner from the large vat she was cleaning. “And what if it wasn’t a Gargoyle that petrified her. Could she be cured?”

The old man frowned. “Do you think someone else petrified her?”

“No,” she said, “but what if it wasn’t Dorian? Is there a cure?”

He shook his head. “There is certainly none that I can speak of.”

“What if he is guilty?” Quinn asked.

“I do not know,” he replied. “It’s possible he will be sent to Gravenhurst to serve his sentence.” Master Galan hung his head. “And likely they will turn him to stone.”

“He couldn’t have done it,” Rudy said. “He’s too kind.”

“Who can speak to the hearts of the wicked.” The old man’s eyebrows furrowed. “I think we’ve done enough. I will take things from here,” he said, and dismissed them so that he could see to other matters.

The next day word went around that Aunt Patrice and Madam Phoebe had returned from their trip to the Rowanwood. It reminded Grim that he needed to speak to his Aunt of his suspicions about Festrel. The boy may have left, but she still needed to know. He felt anxious about facing the old woman, but he knew he had to do it.

Then, on their way to chores with Madam Adelaide, more news showered upon them with the light drizzle that saturated the air. Eevenellin had been appointed as the new assistant to Master Galan — taking over for Valeria Bellow. She was also Madam Malkim’s Head Orphan, a new position since the death of the Sylph. Madam Malkim wanted a closer eye placed on the comings and goings of her orphans.

The four friends inched their way across the grounds, their feet dragging. They had been up late again discussing how to deal with what they had learned. Yet, they had no solid proof of anything.

Rudy was the most troubled. “Now we have to be extra careful. Those books have to go back right away. Eevenellin has the right to inspect our rooms at any time. We could get caught trying to find her out.”

“Do you really think she would have done it?” Grim asked. It didn’t make any sense.

“Maybe she held a grudge against Valeria. She got the new role as assistant,” Treena suggested. “And it’s not like Grundels have always been good. They’ve been known to tunnel a little too deeply into the Hawshorn Mountains, if you know what I mean.”

“No, what do you mean?” Grim asked, but the conversation ended there as they approached Madam Adelaide. The brawny woman waited for them with scrub brushes by the Academy wall. She looked foul.

“Let’s begin,” she grumbled, towering over them. Treena trembled under the woman’s gaze. “Today the walls on the north side need scrubbing. I’ll need someone at the top of the tower to scrub off the bird droppings,” she said, and handed a bucket and brush to Treena. “And I’ll need someone who’s a little more agile to climb up and take care of the windows.” She handed Grim another bucket and a brush. “The other two can help.”

The stone wall glistened with moisture and was heavily coated in green moss. He pulled out his rod with the grappling hook and fired it. It took seven attempts before it finally took.

There were cracks between the stones so Grim inserted his feet and tried to pull himself up the rope. He didn’t get very far. His feet and hands slipped and he fell to the ground with a thud and a grunt. He tried again, over and over, and every time the result was the same; with a little more groaning each time. It didn’t help that Quinn was screaming out instructions to him, suggesting everything under the sun.

“Put your foot on that stone! Step on that large metal spider web! Put your feet in that dark crevice! Stand on that slimy moss!”

Grim almost screamed at him that he didn’t need advice from someone that could barely climb a ladder. He just grunted a little more in frustration.

Madam Adelaide harrumphed and flicked dirt from under her fingernails.

“I see I was mistaken about you ― not as agile as I thought. Close to useless, actually, just like your friends.”

She dismissed them all and assigned them further sewer duty for later in the day.

Grim massaged his hands as he headed to clean soiled bed sheets. His fingers were scraped from trying to scale the wall and he was hardly looking forward to cleaning the sheets on the ribbed washboards. He always caught his knuckles on them.

He marched across the grounds in a foul mood, ready to go something very close to Banshee on anyone who might cross his path. He couldn’t wait to run into someone like Gorkin or Ninnipence. He nearly growled when he heard his name being called out, but bit back his frustration when he saw that it was Finneas Keltin. He hailed Grim, huffing and puffing as he ran to catch up to him.

He stopped to catch his breath. “Please come with me,” he panted. “Your brother is not well.”

“Which one?”

“Sam.”

“What’s wrong with him?”

“I think you should just come with me. Madam Patrice will explain.”

Grim followed him across the grounds and some of the students whispered as he passed. Finneas ushered him through the door of the Infirmary where Aunt Patrice waited for them.

“Where’s Sam?” Grim asked.

“Come with me, dear,” she said, and guided him to a bed that was surrounded by curtains. Sam lay in it with Toby nestled next to him. Rudy was already there, tears running down her face. She ran up to Grim. He hugged her.