One by one, Ophelia pulled at the tips of Professor Wolf’s gloves, which were too long for her fingers. She had visited that man in search of answers, and left him with even more questions—along with a fine collection of scratches. What could have persuaded him not to pursue his research at the Memorial? What was that sample he had evaluated? Why had the response of his colleague terrified him to that extent? Did that fear have anything to do with the fear that had gripped Mademoiselle Silence as she met her death?
A heavy downpour battered every window of the birdtrain. Ophelia closed her eyes, suppressing the emotion that was choking her. The image of the scarf, wandering the streets of Babel like an abandoned dog, obsessed her, day in, day out.
No. Don’t dwell on it. Forge ahead.
She reopened her eyes when she felt the birdtrain veering toward a belvedere. It was the fifth academy it served; soon it would be the conservatoire. Some students got off into the rain, pulling their hoods up; others got on, shaking their raincoats. As at every station, Ophelia checked there wasn’t a boy in a wheelchair among them. She was missing Ambrose. Missing his friendship, his kindness, his chattiness. She didn’t understand why he had suddenly become distant, barely replying to her telegrams, never visiting her, but it concerned her.
No. Don’t dwell on that either.
Through the sinuous trails of raindrops on the window, Ophelia looked at the Memorial tower in the distance. Somewhere between those walls there was the Secretarium. And within that Secretarium, a strongroom. And in that strongroom, the “ultimate truth.” What if it were that very truth to which Mademoiselle Silence and Professor Wolf had gotten too close? And what if Thorn had put himself in danger to uncover it? It was frustrating to know she’d have to get off at the next station, rather than continue the journey over there. Her three hours of leave were coming to an end. The gondolas’ slowness had made her lose precious time; indeed, she’d nearly missed her birdtrain. To be expelled from the Good Family over a missed connection, two days before the end of her probation period, would have been too ridiculous.
Ophelia returned to pulling at the floppy fabric of the gloves at the tips of her fingers. A sigh rose up from deep inside her, but it was her neighbor on the banquette who let it out it in her stead. She gave him a questioning look. He, too, was contemplating the window splattered with rain, but with a guilty expression, as if personally responsible for the bad weather. His profile, with its shaggy pepper-and-salt hair and long, pointed nose, recalled the snout of a hedgehog. He looked familiar to Ophelia, and she understood why on seeing the “assistant” badge pinned to his uniform. “The man with the trolley,” she murmured.
After a moment’s hesitation, the assistant tore his eyes from the window. “Pardon, mademoiselle? Are you speaking to me?”
Ophelia gave him a polite smile. This hadn’t really worked with Professor Wolf, but surely this assistant wouldn’t throw her out of a birdtrain in full flight, would he? “We’ve already met, sir. In the Memorial’s youth department. I had knocked over the books on your trolley, and you . . . well, you received a reprimand because of me.”
“Ah, those books!” stammered the assistant. “That seems so long ago to me.” With head sunk between shoulders, he showed a sudden, intense interest in his hands, clasped together on his knees, and said nothing more. He seemed desperately alone. As alone as Ambrose, surrounded by his father’s automatons. As alone as Professor Wolf, triple-locked into his apartment.
As alone as me, Ophelia couldn’t help but think.
“Eulalia,” she said, introducing herself.
“Quoi?” the assistant asked with surprise. “Oh, um . . . me, I’m Blaise.” He rubbed his nape uneasily, like someone unaccustomed to civilities. “I . . . Your uniform . . . Apprentice virtuoso?”
Ophelia felt a smile, a real one this time, come to her lips. It wasn’t every day she encountered someone even more awkward than her. “Forerunner.”
“I’m impressed.”
Blaise seemed sincere. His eyes, with their black, moist, hedgehog-like pupils, had widened, as if he’d just been told he was sitting beside a Lord of LUX.
Outside, the rain doubled in intensity against the windows, propelled by a westerly wind. The lightning tore through the silence, throwing a bright light across the students’ faces, but not one lifted their nose out of their textbook. Babel’s public transport was always excessively quiet, and for good reason: the conductor imposed a fine at the slightest disturbance.
Ophelia couldn’t help glancing anxiously up at the ceiling, with a thought for the chimeras towing the carriages through the thunderstorm.
“On probation,” she felt obliged to specify. “I’d love to work at the Memorial, like you.”
“Like me? I wouldn’t wish that on you,” Blaise said, pointing at his “assistant” badge. “For years now, I’ve been returning to shelves what I’m told to return; there’s nothing prestigious about it.”
“The Memorial’s collections are really impressive. They must demand a formidable amount of work, no? Especially if one includes the Secretarium,” Ophelia added, as innocently as possible.
“I’ve never set foot in there,” Blaise sighed, much to her disappointment. “It’s far too important and far too confidential a department for the likes of me.”
“And you don’t take part in the reading groups, either?”
Blaise let out an incredulous laugh, which he stifled with his palm as he caught the disdainful look of the conductor. “The automa . . . pardon, Sir Henry’s groups?” he asked, very quietly. “They’d have to be mad to accept me.”
Ophelia didn’t understand what lay behind this remark, but chose not to pursue it. She’d finally found a reasonable person to talk to; she must make the most of every minute of the journey. “I heard about Mademoiselle Silence,” she whispered, watching for Blaise’s reaction out of the corner of her eye. “It must have been a terrible shock.”
At the precise moment she spoke that last word, she was suddenly shaken on her seat. A gust of wind, more violent than the others, had rocked the whole carriage, this time prompting cries of surprise across all the banquettes.
“Keep calm, citizens!” shouted the conductor. “Just some light turbulence. Our Totemist has total control of his team.”
Ophelia pushed up her glasses, thrown to the very tip of her nose by the jolt; she saw several students around her picking up the textbooks they had dropped. As for herself, she wasn’t at all reassured. She had instinctively clung to Blaise’s arm, and he was staring at her hand with a flabbergasted expression, as if it were the first time he was seeing one in such an improbable place. Finally, he tapped it, clumsily, with his fingertips, an apologetic smile at the corner of his mouth.
“This sort of thing often happens with me. The gloves you’re wearing,” he hastily continued, before Ophelia could wonder what he’d meant, “they’re Wolf’s, aren’t they?”
“How do you know they’re . . . You know Professor Wolf?” Ophelia stammered, increasingly surprised.
Blaise rubbed his large, pointed nose with embarrassment. “I recognized his smell on you. I’m an Olfactory, you see? Wolf is a regular at the Memorial. Or rather, he was,” he added, with a lump in his throat. “Before his accident.”
Ophelia noted that he called him just Wolf, without his title. They were certainly rather more than mere acquaintances. Just as she was thinking this, Blaise checked with a nervous glance that the conductor wasn’t paying them any attention.
“Can I make a confession to you, mademoiselle?”
“Er . . . yes?”
Blaise leant over, shyly, and, over the racket of the rain, whispered in a low voice: “It was me who killed Mademoiselle Silence.”
Ophelia felt her stomach lurch, and it was no longer due to the rocking of the carriage. She mouthed “Why?” unable to emit the slightest sound. Blaise withdrew again and slumped on the banquette, plunging his fingers into his already tousled hair, his features strained with guilt.
“That’s not the question, mademoiselle. Ask yourself rather how.” He gave Ophelia a worried look, as if he feared she would suddenly smash the window and leap into the void to escape him. “I . . . I bring bad luck.”
“Ah.” Ophelia could find nothing better to say in response. It was one of the most unexpected admissions ever made to her.
“I’m serious,” Blaise insisted, staring with wide, tormented eyes. “The book trolley, Wolf’s accident, Mademoiselle Silence’s fall, this torrential rain: it’s all really me, you understand? It’s been that way since the day I was born. I defy all the statistics. People who are très competent have studied my case.”
Blaise’s words went straight to Ophelia’s heart. They echoed those of Thorn, two and a half years back: “You have a preternatural predisposition to disasters.” She opened her mouth, but a roar cut her short:
“Shame on you, lambkins!”
Ophelia and Blaise turned around. The students were all exchanging stunned looks. As for the conductor, he had already seized his fine book and was searching, banquette to banquette, for whoever had dared to break the rules. He couldn’t find him.
The voice rose up again, from nowhere and everywhere at once, louder than the thunder outside: “Yes, absolutely, lambkins! Look at you, with your fine uniforms! Look at you with your goody-goody textbooks! Look at you with your oh so proper language! And you dare to claim you’re the youth of Babel?”
Ophelia blocked her ears to avoid being deafened. She’d heard this tenor voice before. It was that of Fearless-and-
Almost-Blameless, the day she’d visited the Memorial.
“Me, I’ll tell you what you are,” the voice continued. “Accomplices! Conspirators of silence! Dictators of right-thinking! If you still have a semblance of pride, citizens, repeat after me: down with the Index and death to the censors! Down with the Index and death to the censors! Down with the Index and d . . . ”
The voice turned into a very shrill, crackling noise, piercing Ophelia’s eardrums. Eventually, the conductor had found a radio set under a seat, turned up to full volume, and had smashed it to pieces with his heel. Silence descended once more, heavy with rain, wind, and storm.
“The incident is over, citizens,” the conductor declared, categorically. “Next stop, the Good Family!”
With ears still ringing, Ophelia looked at Blaise, who had stood up from the banquette to allow her to leave her seat. He shrugged his shoulders, fatalistically.
“As I told you, Mademoiselle Eulalia. I bring bad luck.”
Ophelia stood up, trying to get her balance in the swaying. She looked at what remained of the radio set, which the conductor was picking up at the other end of the carriage. The voice still resonated within her: “Death to the censors!”
“Mademoiselle Silence was actually the senior censor, wasn’t she?”
Blaise raised his eyebrows, which were as pepper-and-salt and shaggy as his hair. “Eh? Yes, but . . . eh bien . . . you surely don’t think . . . ”
“I don’t yet know what I think,” Ophelia whispered, as quietly and quickly as possible. “The only thing I’m almost certain of, Mr. Blaise, is that you’re not responsible for what happened to Mademoiselle Silence and Professor Wolf. I even think that meeting you here, in this birdtrain, has been really lucky for me.”
Blaise stared wide-eyed. The corners of his mouth quivered, like a flickering candle flame. “It’s the first time in my life that I’ve heard someone say that to me.”
“The Good Family!” announced the conductor.
Ophelia shook the hand Blaise had politely held out to her, despite the encumbrance of her oversized gloves. “I have the firm intention of joining the reading groups,” she told him. “We’ll see each other again soon at the Memorial. In the meantime, take care, and ask yourself what really killed Mademoiselle Silence.”
From the landing stage, Ophelia’s eyes followed the silhouette of the winged train as it continued on its path across the sky. The rain had stopped the moment it had pulled away from the ark. ‘I mustn’t,’ she thought, with determination. ‘Offering my friendship to a Memorialist would be unreasonable. Dangerous, even.”
She was forced to admit, realizing she suddenly felt less alone, that it was already too late.