Spira, slumped at the desk like a bagged pudding, was solving equations as they entered. “Ah, you’ve seen it,” said the scholar, noting the rolled pamphlet. “Now, William, you mustn’t take these things so personally. Professor Ondir requested me to explore the practicalities of such enormous creatures existing, how they might be hidden, even from us. And even you have to admit that most of your sources are rubbish.”
He meant the quigutl, and this helped Tess feel a little less sick about what she meant to do next. She steeled herself and valiantly sat upon Spira’s lap. It was soft, as were the shoulders Tess snaked an arm around. The scholar’s guano-colored bowl cut smelled of goose grease close-up. Spira’s eyes bulged like two eggs.
“Remove yourself from my person,” said the saar.
Tess pretended not to understand by telling herself she’d sat upon a bagpipe, which had squeaked in protest.
Will had crossed swiftly to the cabinet; Tess didn’t dare watch him, lest Spira turn to look. She gazed into the scholar’s myopic gray eyes, feeling ridiculous. Flirting with Will had been hard enough, given her upbringing, but this felt downright unnatural.
“I admire your treatises,” she said hopelessly.
Spira, clearly startled, said, “Thank you. They’re a bit pedantic for some tastes, but it’s important to be thorough.”
Tess had inadvertently stumbled on the way to keep Spira’s attention. She continued: “I’m not sure you’ve been thorough enough, in fact.”
“What are you suggesting?” said Spira, brow furrowing.
Tess shifted her weight; it was like sitting on dough, and she was in danger of sinking in. “You claim a World Serpent couldn’t get enough energy to move, even if it ate coal or tar, but what if it delved down to the mantle of the earth?”
Will paused in ransacking the cabinet to look at her; Spira’s expression sharpened.
“We were just at a geology lecture,” Tess explained, “which made me wonder whether such a creature might bask upon the earth’s hot core like a snake in the sun, and take strength from that.”
Spira stared into the middle distance, cogitating. “You raise a point I hadn’t considered. It would be worth calculating, to be sure.”
Tess batted her eyes and patted his pasty cheek. “Are you sure you should do that, Spira? I read somewhere that it’s folly to take such childish imaginings seriously.”
Spira paled. Will didn’t dare laugh, but grinned, brandishing a flat leather case. He had what he’d been looking for. Tess had merely to hold Spira’s attention until Will could duck out.
Will puckered his lips, clearly suggesting that she kiss Spira. Tess balked—that was beyond the pale. Spira must have noticed the disgusted look on her face. “What’s he doing back there?” the scholar cried, trying to turn and see.
Tess, in desperation, grasped Spira’s head and planted a kiss upon those thick, clammy lips. It was like kissing a trout. Spira squirmed, but Tess held on.
“What is this, Saar Spira?” boomed a terrible voice. Tess pulled away from Spira and leaped to her feet. Professor the dragon Fikar stood in the doorway, glaring icily.
Will was already twisting the story. “Spira just grabbed her. He’s a maniac. He needs his brain pruned.”
Tess was so shocked and ashamed that she didn’t hear half of Saar Fikar’s scolding. Before she knew what was happening, Will had taken her hand and they were running down the hallway. He pulled her around a corner and through a door, which he slammed behind them.
Will leaned against the door, laughing so hard he almost couldn’t stand, and then Tess started laughing, too, the stress and anxiety of the last minutes pouring out in one long torrent.
Will grabbed her face and began kissing her warmly, fiercely.
“You are extraordinary,” he said breathlessly between kisses. “My little bird.”
Tess forced herself to pull away, holding his hands so they wouldn’t wander further. She dared not lose herself or let him go too far; whatever little rebellion she might be waging against her family, she had not simply abandoned her morals. She was not that kind of girl. Even kissing him was questionable, but she’d rationalized it to herself: it was not the Final Thing, as her mother ominously put it, and the Final Thing was what she had to avoid, according to the letter of the law. Tess was half lawyer; she knew what a loophole was.
“Is Spira going to be in trouble?” she asked, trying to bring them both back to earth.
“Terrible trouble. Old Fikar was writing up a reprimand as we left,” he said gleefully.
Tess must have looked as sick as she felt. Will caressed her cheek, his brows bowed in overstated sadness. “Of course you feel bad for him, love. I’d expect no less. You’d pity a slug squished underfoot, or a fish flopping in the net, so capacious is your heart.
“Still, this went better than I could have hoped.” He untucked the leather case from under his arm. “Spira carries this everywhere. It contains either his notes or something horrifyingly personal. Either way, we’ve got him.”
Tess followed him toward a moonlit window. They were in the museum, her favorite place, a former monastic dormitory now lined with taxidermied animals—badgers, stoats, lions, swans—and shelves of amber jars where stranger things bobbed. The smell of dried rose petals covered a darker waft of decay; the moonlight brought feral shadows spookily to life.
Will threw open the casement to the chilly night and sat on the window seat; Tess sat across from him, watching his elegant hands unbuckle the straps. He winked at her and said, “Now, at last, we reveal the ugly heart of Spira’s—”
There were no notes. Will froze in apparent confusion.
The case was full of little glass vials, wrapped in cloth so they wouldn’t clink together. Tess picked up one of the vials and rattled the dried herbs inside.
“Spira’s tea-smuggling operation?” asked Tess. “Spira’s oregano addiction?”
Will, in an unexpected burst of anger, threw a vial out the window. It shattered upon the bricks of the old cloister walk. He threw another, then tipped the rest out.
“Will!” Tess cried, appalled.
“I’m sure he can get more,” Will said, shrugging it off.
It wasn’t the scattered herbs that had alarmed her, though, but Will’s blaze of anger. She’d never seen him act so impulsively. It was almost violent.
But surely it was understandable—she, of all people, knew him and could see the good in him. He was frustrated not to have found the notes. Spira’s intellectual attacks must also be taking a toll. His moonlit profile looked like a statue of a tragic king, betrayed and bitter. What was rage but a cover for some secret fragility, some sorrow?
Tess felt strangely privileged to have glimpsed his pain.
She leaned across the window seat to kiss him again, and then, who can say how, she was on his lap, which was much solider than Spira’s. This would have alarmed her, but she’d already crossed that river, it seemed, and nothing untoward had happened. This was not the Final Thing.
Then Will’s hand was inside her bodice, cupping her breast through her linen chemise.
Tess all but levitated off his lap and landed three feet away. “Will!”
“Oh, my love,” said Will, clapping a hand to his chest, his blue eyes wide and ingenuous. “I’ve overstepped. Forgive me—I got caught up and forgot what I was about.”
Tess frantically rehooked her bodice, tears in her eyes; her mother had refused to buy her a gown with “harlot hooks” down the front, so Tess had altered the dress herself, and now look what had happened. She should have worn proper, decent laces.
Will extended his hand like a peace offering. Tess pointedly didn’t take it.
“Would you believe, little bird, that this is what I love about you most?” he said, his voice hushed and awed. “You’re so good. Who else, in the midst of kissing, could keep virtue in mind? I hope you know I admire that.”