Part One
The Orphic Basilica
1
Roy Dawnseve couldn’t remember how manytimes he’d read the Governor’s letter, but when the horse-drawn sled came to escort him to the Orphic Basilica, the paper was covered with thumbprints, coffee stain rings, and tears.
He was in the sitting room, stoking the coals in the fireplace with an iron poker, when he made out the clopping of horseshoes approaching from outside: soft, rhythmic, and subdued by snow. Dread clamped down on his heart, then passed in nauseating waves over his body. His hands trembled, his knees buckled, and his black-silver curls were plastered with sweat to the nape of his neck.
I never sent a reply; I never said a damn word, he thought. Three days had gone by since the letter had been delivered, and while he’d felt stuck in a fever dream during them all, now cold clarity washed over him—along with an unsettling epiphany.It was Mother.Shemust have answered.Shemust have approved the proposition without bothering to ask me.
But as Roy slid the poker back into its holder, the screech of metal grating against metal dampened by the pounding in his head, hope flickered in him. He wondered how likely it might be that he could stay here, safe and sound in the same space as his sister, how logical it might be to isolate himself from the war by simply ignoring its existence and maintaining his peace. He stared into the flames and saw himself, in the dancing shadows, poring over outlawed books of philosophy and history by candlelight—naive, ignorant, and aware of the screams ripping through the city streets... but too scared to do anything about them.
Roy shook his head at this impossible prospect, swallowing the bile that had risen to the back of his throat. There was nothing that could be done or reversed; he couldn’t stay cooped up in his room forever. The decision had already been made for him.
On the heels of this thought came another, far more daunting in its implications.I’ve been exposed... but by whom?For years he had been startled awake by the same nightmare: one of the Governor’s agents, someone Roy had once believed to be a fellow scholar in hiding—afriend—was turning him in, dragging him in shackles to the Governor’s manor to be flogged, beaten, and burnt at the stake.
Roy’s fears weren’t unfounded. He had heard on the grapevine that fifteen scholars had once held a theoretical discussion regarding the works of Edelrin, an old-world historian, in the charred basement of a demolished bookshop. They’d all been executed promptly upon discovery.
These weren’t the only stories he’d heard of modern scholars throughout his twenty-five years, though, and he supposed that comforted him to some degree—that despite the flame of wisdom and learning having mostly been extinguished, an underground network of academics was still determined to keep alive the knowledge of the old world. There were even intimations of a scholar-led revolution, but none of the rebels reportedly participating in the uprising had ever gotten past the planning stage of a riot before they were discovered and then executed for the Governor’s sick satisfaction.
But, as the Governor had explicitly spelled out in his letter, Roywasn’tto be executed. He’d been given an opportunity. It did not escape him, however, that if he failed, he would be blamed for the fallout.
Panicked, he drew away from the fireplace, crossed the sitting room to its entrance, and then rested his hand on the doorframe. Thoughts streaked down his mind like raindrops down a windowpane.
For the three years since the Iron Citadel had sounded its battle cry against the Old Ones, Roy had been thankful for, even dependent upon, the privileges that his aristocratic title—the second heir of Dawnseve Manor—bestowed upon him. He had a family. He had a home. He had stability, for the most part, and though he had always known that these precious luxuries would have to be taken from him eventually, Roy had allowed himself to indulge in the writings of old-world academics, to study the fields of research of which Northgard had been deprived. He had never considered that his studies could amount to something of value, and he supposed he could hold his brother accountable for that feeling of worthlessness.
Roy shook his head, ridding himself of his darkening thoughts. He strode out of the sitting room, the insoles of his slippers stuck to his feet with sweat, and made his way across the hallway beyond, which would lead him directly out to the forked staircase at the back of the foyer. Uncertain what to do with his hands, he unclasped the pins from his hair, and his curls tumbled down to just above his shoulders, brushing the back of his nightgown.
Desperate to ground himself, Roy tucked the hairpins just above his ear, nearly drawing blood as he did so, then looked out through the frosted window spanning the left wall. He immediately wished he hadn’t. While blanketed in a fresh layer of snow, the city of Northgard—the greatest and last-standing city on the continent—could not conceal its misery. A gale blew through the streets, rattling the spears of ice dangling from the chimneys of white-stoned commune shelters and manors. Another gust came roaring past the throng of citizens clustered along the thoroughfare, and they screamed in earnest, frantically looking up and down as though uncertain to whom they should pray. Even from afar, it sounded like the residents of Hell pleading for redemption.
But there was no redemption, not that Roy could see. Winter had fallen hard upon Northgard three years ago and had shown no signs of easing up since. If anything, the snowstorm had intensified during the war, stirring up rumors regarding its implications. Some believed it might deter the Old Ones, or at least stall them; the Governor had even drawn especial attention to this in his missive, along with the Edict of Containment—the iron-constructed wall he’d ordered after rumblings of a black-armored army had spread across the city—which sealed Northgard’s coastlines from neighboring islands. Others assumed that the seemingly perpetual winter was an ill omen, a premonition of calamity. Considering the way his day was unfolding, Roy wondered whether these superstitious allegations might not be correct, for he could not fathom what scientific phenomenon might explain the weather.
Roy pressed his hand against the windowpane. The chill seeped through the glass and spread across his palm. A stuttering exhale escaped his lips, blooming out before him in frosty white clouds. Through the fog he saw, faintly, the slope of the hill upon which his family estate sat, shrouded in acres of thick snow. Leading down to the city’s first square of buildings was a narrow pathway furrowed by a winding trail of sled tracks.
He braced himself, then started at the creak of an opening door.
Briar stood at the threshold to her chambers, staring at him, a look of stupefied denial in her wide brown eyes. A crimson-and-gold woolen nightgown was draped about her shoulders, which were slumped with either defeat or resignation. By the desolation on her angular face and the disarrayed condition of her black ringlets, Roy thought it was probably the former. In her hands was a wooden carving of a two-faced woman, the left half of the figurine in golden battle armor, her mouth contorted into a sneer, the right garbed in a scarlet dress and wearing a serene smile.
It occurred to Roy that Briar might never have connected the carving’s appearance to its symbolism. Their mother had once whispered to him, moments after she had given birth to Briar, the aphorism associated with the carving:
What was once war may bring peace. Or war again.
Had their mother not shared this with Briar? Roy supposed not. Years ago, if the Reaper had ever come knocking on Dawnseve Manor’s doors, she might have been the first to answer, defending her young, but Roy couldn’t now align the woman she’d once been, a doting if somewhat pedantic mother, with the hard-faced demoness known to most—even her children, the majority of the time—as Matron Dimestra, who now ruled in her stead. Once those locks had clicked into place, Roy had almost forgotten he had a mother at all.
“You heard it, too,” Roy muttered, returning Briar’s stare. “The sled.”
Briar gulped, her hands tightening around the carving. “I couldn’t dare to sleep, Roy, not when I haven’t had the chance to see you go, to... to say...” She closed her eyes, took a deep, uneven breath, then burst into tears, which slithered in glimmering tracks down the sneering half of the carving. She rushed over to Roy and threw her arms around his waist.
Roy stiffened at the contact at first, then gradually rested his chin upon her head, the two-faced figurine—still clenched in Briar’s grasp—jutting into his ribs. “What was once war may bring peace,” he murmured.
Briar withdrew from Roy’s embrace and looked up at him, her cheeks wet with tears. “Or war again.”So Dimestra did tell her,he thought.
Agony cut through Roy, cold and sharp as frozen glass. He regarded his sister, waiting for her to confess and let free every fear, every worry, every horror trapped behind her tear-laced eyes. But she said nothing. Roy was hardly surprised; they had performed this tragic spectacle too many times to count. He tried to recall the exact moments when their open lines of communication had receded to tacit discomfort, but he could only think of their sideways glances, of shattered glass, of their brother Gabriel’s white-knuckled fists, scarred, calloused, and red with Roy’s blood.
This is what you’re leaving her with, Roy scolded himself.These memories of pain and hate. This is all she will ever know.
He had never outright discussed the matter with Briar, mainly to preserve what they had left of their bond. Still, she would ask him, after returning from her classes at Rasileus Academy, why there were broken plates and blood on the floor or, after staggering into the kitchens in the middle of the night for a glass of warm milk, why there were bruises on Roy’s face. But despite her attempts to broach the subject, he had kept his silence. It was better this way, cleaner, than disclosing that Gabriel had been the cause of this abuse, even if she had known all along. Not to mention that if he admitted to Briar the scars Gabriel had inflicted on him, it was inevitable that an interrogation with Dimestra, who was also oblivious to Gabriel’s torment, would be in order.
