There was just one approach to this madness, then.
Roy would have to work alone, yes. But he would—surreptitiously—let Percival’s own research guide him. It was the only way to ensure that no blade, and no blood, ever touched his hands.
* * *
Over the following week, that was exactly what he did. He spent his days, a comfortable and productive nine hours, holed away in shadowy corners and at writing desks. For a while, he felt like a soldier in the trenches, inching along on his elbows and stomach, making progress but then being bogged down by the incalculable number of texts at his disposal and the crushing amount of work he had to do to narrow it all down. He read up on things he had previously cared little for, things that his survival, and that of his city, now hinged upon—battles, fictitious and real; recorded weapon inventories; the accounts of traumatized civilians and soldiers, returned from the front lines of ancient conflicts. Each story was as awful as the last.
He searched between the lines for any references to the Old Ones—a passing allusion, a description of their black armor and great, gauntleted fists, capable of shattering bone. There was nothing. He stocked up on books on foreign armies, two of which he’d covertly glimpsed Percival taking notes on, and then consumed them with increasing rapidity, though he didn’t skim over any of the details. But again, nothing presented itself. It was all much of the same: grotesquely described accounts of the injured, the dying, and the dead.
He was beginning to think Percival had figured out what he was up to. Did he notice whenever Roy was near and swap one important book for a useless one? Was this all some elaborate prank he’d concocted?
Still, Roy had built up his resolve too much over the past week to lay down these proverbial arms. And so, with this resolve, he revisited the small, cluttered room where he’d been about to work before being interrupted by Percival. Here he discovered, to his supreme delight, that the interlacing of meager moonlight and lamplight on the sixth floor—where the room, which he called the Observatory, was situated—worked wonders for his mental endurance.
He seated himself against a tiny bookshelf in the corner of the chamber, next to an ice-glazed window. A tall, imposing cabinet stood over Roy, dusty trinkets lying abandoned atop it. To his far right was a piano, the gloss of its black top lost to untold years of disuse, blending morosely into the floral, murky gray wallpaper. Stacks of books were piled atop one another like bridges on the verge of collapse. Loose scrolls of parchment were strewn across the floorboards, and the expansive fox-fur carpet beneath Roy’s feet was stained black with ink. Calami, quills, and fountain pens lay on broken, three-legged tables.
A sharp, twisting pang of sadness went deep through Roy’s heart and he placed a hand lightly over his chest. He was oddly comforted by the decay, though. It made for a whimsical backdrop to his endless pursuit of the truth, like the misunderstood, scorned hero from a dark fable.
As the days marched on, passing him by, he slowly started to understand how true this comparison was. He frequented the Observatory far more often than anywhere else in the library. He listened to the muffled howl of winter winds and burned through book after book, the bags underneath his eyes as deep as his adoration for literature. Some mornings he would rise from his bed, mosey along from the first floor to the seventh, piling books in his arms as he went, and then walk back down to his workspace. Some nights, he would collapse from exhaustion at his desk and wake to the sound of stirring wind and the rustling of paper. He had gotten sidetracked before, by philosophy and by Percival both. Now he had to atone for his preoccupations by committing himself completely to his task, and though it was utterly exhausting, it was also the most stimulated he’d ever been.
He instantly felt grounded whenever he entered the Observatory. It dawned upon him, over time, that its tranquil, secluded atmosphere diminished most of his disquieting thoughts from the past week, making space for new considerations, new information. As much as he felt the compulsion to work, though, sometimes he forced himself to take a study break for no more than ten minutes. He would stretch his legs, his arms, and even doze off before getting back to work.
Even as he struggled to find answers, however, it seemed as though the Orphic Basilica was an active part of that struggle. He had pushed back on Percival’s thoughts of the building being alive—mostly because he hadn’t wanted to admit his own spectral encounter—but Roy couldn’t help wondering sometimes whether the Basilica didn’twanthim to find anything, like a lover withholding evidence of an affair. Every book he’d read thus far had been either elusive or written in an unfamiliar language. And if there were any underlying messages or codes, he didn’t have the skill set to uncover them.
Was it possible, as Percival had hypothesized, that the librarywasprotecting itself? Was it holding its secrets close to its chest? Roy prided himself on his instincts, but how could hebelievein logic when a ghost had pursued him on that first night, when all he’d heard about the library was based around myths and rumors whispered behind cupped hands... when there was no apparent logic toanythingabout this building?
These ponderings, though, were distractions he couldn’t afford. If he became too caught up in the mysterious haven of the Elder Scribes, he would dither and all his efforts would be for nothing. He almost wished that he had a talisman—something, like his sister’s carving—to bring him back to reality.
No, hedidhave something—orsomeone, rather—to keep him tethered to his mission.
But as I said, this is a game. And, darling, there is nothing I love more than winning.
And so Roy kept playing.
Realizing early on that there was almost certainly no book that would outright describe the Old Ones’ cryptic motivations, he began looking for accounts detailing other peoples’ motivations to invade their neighbor. Before him was one such report. It was loose and might tangle him in another mystery, but with no true concept of war, Roy would take anything to expand that knowledge base, all in hopes that it might point him toward the Old Ones’ goals.
Originally written in Urswaelian, as stated beneath a bright red stamp, the scroll Roy had been examining was a grant approved by the Court of the Silver Robes. Once a long-ruling nation located far south of the Hasdan Isles, Urswaelia had been the first to adopt a democracy into its government, which had ushered in an onslaught of petitions to defend the nation from rivalry. Urswaelia’s crude warmongering mentality was often seen by its allies as a source of suspicion. But Urswaelia, its court especially, had been clueless, misguided. That, Roy guessed, had likely been why they didn’t expect the ambush from Wynair, a neighboring kingdom and their closest ally.
Upon intervening on Urswaelia’s shores, King Archibald IV of Wynair had announced a duel by sword with Randyll, the Court of the Silver Robes’s Councillor of Finance. As these two unlikely combatants crossed blades, Archibald asked Randyll why a grant for an import of Tussyki weaponry had been approved. By the age of the paper, the scroll in Roy’s hands seemed to be the very grant mentioned by the King of Wynair, not a historian’s interpretation of the affair. It must have survived the battle.
Soon after Wynair’s brutal ambush, Randyll had been executed by King Archibald, and the long-prevailing alliance between the two nations persisted until both were felled decades later in an unnamed conflict.
Roy averted his gaze from the grant and looked at the large leather-bound book beside it, the title imprinted in gold lettering on the cover:The Ordnance of Old Wynair.It contained a litany of information regarding Wynair’s weapon inventories, along with further additions to the text: poems, limericks, and ballads.
It was massive—extensive—and he intended to dig in later. But for now, there was something about this grant that pulled at him... almost as if a gentle hand had turned his head back toward the scroll.
Setting his eyes back on the grant, Roy determined that the Republic of Urswaelia and the Kingdom of Wynair had demonstrated their alliance through mutual trade routes. Councillor Randyll had used the Republic’s coffers for years to coax Wynair into delivering books, weapons, and other priceless artifacts. In return, Urswaelia sent Wynair vessels full of their nationally regarded artwork. One item, though—the grant Roy was now holding—had quite nearly shattered the alliance: a list of weapons, forged in the borderlands of Tussyk, purchased and approved by Councillor Randyll.
Just as he was beginning to doubt the effectiveness of his methodology, wondering whether he had made a mistake in this approach, he scanned the list once more and realized not all the weapons were even of Tussyki make. No, there was one at the very bottom of the list, separated from the others.
Roy lurched forward, certain he was experiencing another hallucination. He blinked, his heart pounding. He could feel his mind drawing tight, as if an iron fist was clenched around it and squeezing, tightening, until all he could focus on was seven distinct words:
Black chest plate, country of origin unknown.
Roy stared at Councillor Randyll’s purchases, mystified. For once, the enormity of the assignment did not seem so intimidating. It was a lot, yes, but when put into the perspective of the mystery of the Old Ones’ hidden identity, he understood. The history of a secret world lay within his reach, if only he stayed on course.
If this is a game, I’ve finally made the right move.
A wind started up around him. The breeze wove through his hair, twirled about his torso and danced through the gaps between his fingers. He made out, from afar, the susurration of whispers, which steadily grew and then disappeared with the wind.
