Page 7 of A Study in Drowning

It didn’t matter. From the other side there was a shuffling sound, a muttered curse, and then the door swung open.

A blinking Master Corbenic stared down at her. “Effy.”

“Can I come in?”

He nodded once, stiffly, then stepped aside to let her through. His office was how she remembered it: so cluttered with books that there was only a narrow path from the door to the desk, dusty shutters pulled down so that only a knife of light squeezed through. Framed degrees lined the wall like taxidermy animal heads.

“Please,” he said, “sit down.”

Effy stood behind the green armchair instead. “I’m sorry I didn’t make an appointment. I’m just . . .” She trailed off, hating the smallness of her voice. Master Corbenic’s sleeves were rolled up to his elbows, exposing the swathes of dark arm hair and the golden watch glinting within it.

“It’s not a problem,” he said, though his words had a chill to them that made Effy want to shrink down and vanish through that tiny gap in the shutters. “I figured you would come back sooner or later. I heard about your little project.”

“Oh.” Her stomach knotted. “I suppose Dean Fogg told you.”

“Yes. He’s speaking to me again, miraculously.” Master Corbenic’s voice had grown even colder. “Saltney is a long way from the big city.”

“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.” She picked at the loose fibers on the back of the armchair. “Dean Fogg said I could have six weeks starting with the winter holidays, and he made Master Parri agree to count it as my studio credit, but I still—”

“He wanted your adviser to sign off on it,” he finished tonelessly. His fingers, crumpling the white fabric of his shirt, looked enormous.

She drew a breath, steadying herself against the armchair. She had pulled out so much of the green thread that it looked like she was clutching a tangle of vines. But the armchair had been in tatters since the first time she saw it. At the beginning of the semester, whenever Effy came back from Master Corbenic’s office, for hours she would find these small green threads caught in her hair.

Slowly, she reached into her pocket and took out the folded parchment. “I just need your signature.”

There. She had said it. Immediately her chest felt lighter. The grandfather clock in the corner ticked past the seconds, each one plinking down like a droplet of rainwater on the floor. Her hand shook as she held the paper out to him, and for a while he said nothing, did nothing, until all of a sudden he lurched forward.

Effy took a stumbling, instinctual step back as he grabbed the paper from her hand.

Master Corbenic gave a low, short laugh. “Oh, for Saints’ sakes. There’s no need to act like a blushing little maiden now.”

Her pulse was so loud and fast that she scarcely heard herself say, “You’re still my adviser—”

“Yes, and isn’t that a wonder—I was sure Dean Fogg would have dismissed you, or had me sacked.”

“I didn’t tell anyone,” she managed, her face burning.

“Well, word still got around, didn’t it?” Master Corbenic said, though he deflated visibly, leaning back against his desk. He ran one enormous hand through his black hair. “I met with Dean Fogg last week. He was apoplectic. This could have cost me my career.”

“I know.”

She knew it so well, it was all she had thought about, when he stood over her in that armchair. When he palmed the back of her head, when the weak sunlight glanced off his belt buckle, all Effy had been able to think about was how dangerous it all was. Master Corbenic was young, handsome, a darling of the faculty. He and Dean Fogg took tea together. He didn’t need her.

But oh, he had made it seem like he did. “You’re so pretty,” he had said, and had sounded almost breathless. “It’s agony to watch you come in here every week, with your green eyes and your golden hair. When you leave, all I can think about is when you’ll come back, and how I’ll survive seeing something so beautiful I can’t touch.”

He had held her face in his hands with as much tenderness as a museum curator would handle his artifacts. And Effy had felt her heart skip and flutter the same way it did when she read her favorite bits of Angharad, those permanently dog-eared pages.

“Is this all you need from me?” Master Corbenic slashed his pen across the page and thrust the parchment back to her, then huffed a lower, shorter laugh. “You know what I think, Effy. You’re a bright girl. You have potential, if you keep your head out of the clouds. But a first-year student, taking on a project of this scale? It’s beyond you. I can’t fathom why the Myrddin estate would put out a call for students in the first place. And—I assume you’ve never been south of Laleston before?”

Effy shook her head.

“Well. The Bottom Hundred is the sort of place that young girls escape from, not go running off to. It would be easier to just stay here in Caer-Isel and try to get your grades up. If you need tutoring in Master Parri’s class, I can help you.”

“No,” Effy said quickly, pocketing the parchment. “That’s all right.”

Master Corbenic stared at her inscrutably, the late-afternoon sunlight pooling on the face of his wristwatch. “You’re the sort of girl who likes to make life more difficult for herself. If you weren’t so pretty, you would have failed out already.”

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