Roy glanced around. Despite the unmistakable intensity of the wind, there were no windows open in the Observatory. Nobody else was in the room. He wondered whether this apparently mystical wind was somehow connected to the ghost he’d encountered and, if so, what the connection implied. Were those voices he’d discerned, held at bay by some sort of unseen barrier, a part of it too?
Disquieted, Roy looked back to the grant.Black chest plate, country of origin unknown.No, maybe this wasn’t the Old Ones’ black armor. Maybe this was yet another half-baked idea for Roy to compile in his notes. Regardless, Roy scribbled it into his notebook, alongside an addendum referencing the original source. Because, coincidence or not, it wassomething.
If the chest platewasa piece of the Old Ones’ armor, there were many possibilities to consider, the most significant being the durability of these soldiers. Roy theorized, on the basis that he hadn’t heard or read anything on Wynair or Urswaelia before, that the grant had been drafted in an era predating the Age of Scribes. But perhaps the Elder Scribes simply hadn’t recorded the allied lands in their archives.
Was it possible that the Old Ones’ people, the ancestors of those currently decimating Northgard, dated back thousands of years? Even longer, maybe? Northgardhadexisted for millennia, but the Radiant Droves not nearly as long. Which meant the implications of the Old Ones’ heritage were astounding. If these soldiers possessed thousands of years of military training, inherited from their forebears, what were the chances that the Droves could even defeat them?
If Randyll had issued this document, then he must have committed some other act of treason that invariably made the Councillor break his promise with his people and, by doing so,betray Wynair. Maybe Randyll’s request for the black chest plate, potentially wielded by the Old Ones of long ago, had resulted in thecurrentOld Ones wearing the same armor. But why did he require weapons from two different territories? Were the borderlands of Tussyk involved in some way in a clandestine three-party allegiance with the Old Ones and Randyll? Would Tussyk or the Old Ones be sufficiently gullible to join a coalition without moderate benefits? What, in other words, did Urswaelia get out of such a transaction, and why would Wynair object so vehemently?
There was something larger at play here, something he couldn’t quite yet piece together.
Roy groaned. He had to walk around and stretch out the cramps developing in his wrists and the nape of his neck. Twelve hours of rigorous research had tightened the muscles in his back and scrambled his thought process. If he kept pushing himself, Roy knew that he would faint. It had happened before.
Just as he was making to depart the Observatory, though, he felt his attention pulled toward the dust-coated piano in the far-right corner. On its stand were the notes for an original composition,The Ballad of Queen Genya II, which was described beneath the title as “a restorative, soothing balm for the troubled and the inattentive.”
Roy gaped at the piano, pressure building in the space behind his eyes. His family owned a piano, located on the second level of Dawnseve Manor, though its principal function had, over time, become a mantelpiece for the Matron’s—and then Gabriel’s—certificates and medallions. Besides himself, Roy had thought his family seldom played the instrument until one night, to his amazement, he walked in on Gabriel, slouched over the piano and slamming the keys, grimacing as he swung side to side in eerie tandem with the monstrous tide of noise pouring out of the opened lid. It nearly sounded like a scream being borne away on a cold wind. Roy had hurried out of the room before Gabriel could notice him.
Before that night, Roy had played piano with the fervor of a dying man, the instrument his elixir, his only way back to health. He would lose himself in hours of reading, followed by hours of playing, but after seeing Gabriel lost in the music, Roy had drifted away from the piano, too afraid to play, too worried that Gabriel’s influence might seep out of the keys and into his heart.
Now Roy was torn between longing and a bone-deep loss. He hated Gabriel for playing the instrument, for beating him with the books Roy had ravenously absorbed. He hated Gabriel’s casually vindictive manipulation, the cold-hearted ease with which he took and twisted the few pleasures Roy had. But above all, Roy hated himself. He was pointless, hollow. He had made no true efforts to break the curse laid over him, to wrest control of his own mind and reclaim it from Gabriel’s clutches. How could he dare take part in wonders like music and literature when it was obvious that he didn’t deserve joy?
He curled his fingers into a fist, not immediately noticing the tears that streaked down his cheeks. Roy stifled a sob, his vision blurred and his knees buckling, preparing to give out beneath him. Yet for all that, he pulled out the stool and sat, a great mantle of sorrow splaying out across his shoulders. He didn’t bother to walk back to the desk and retrieve the book. It was meaningless, no more consequential than his own existence.
Roy leaned forward and wiped away the dust on the piano with the sleeve of his tailcoat. He studied his reflection, revolted. “I wish you were dead.”
11
Another week passed, and while Roy’s wish fordeath didn’t come true, it somehow inveigled itself into his routine.
Everything, from the books he read to the food he ate to the dreams he had, acquired a dreary and lifeless quality. The barbaric war stories he’d researched days ago, teeming with sickeningly vivid imagery and hyperrealistic interpretations of historical events, no longer affected him as they once had. He was utterly unfazed by the details. He even tried to locate some volumes on hoplology and metallurgy, the studies of armor and metal respectively, but once he realized this was getting him nowhere, offering him no insights into the black armor he’d spotted in the grant, his depression only deepened.
Amidst these long intervals of monotony, he remembered events from his past that he thought he’d shoved down, deep in some mental cavern where they couldn’t haunt him any longer. These memories were mostly of Gabriel: his knives; his horrid grin; his blue eyes shining in the moonlight, cold as frost. The memories struck without warning, though Roy found he could endure them best when he was working. He never gave himself the chance to disassociate, either. He would simply let the memory do its work and drain the momentum and enthusiasm with which he’d come to his studies, and then, when it was over, he dove back in.
He didn’t notice the effect this coping mechanism was having on him until later. It was astounding how one discouraging day could unravel your composure, how a single moment of emotional collapse could cause a change in the week to come. The change was subtle, almost leisurely, and so Roy didn’t recognize it at first. He just started eating less, declining the meals that still mysteriously materialized at his doorstep, but chalked it up to being a symptom of overwork. He slowly lost interest in spying on Percival and sneaking glimpses at the books he had left in various study halls. It all seemed so pointless, so draining.
His dreams of Gabriel grew increasingly convincing, too. He could distinguish between reality and nightmare, but only because he reassured himself, day and night—and in the strange hours between them—that the Governor’s letter had confirmed Gabriel’s absence, that he was missing. But Roy’s mind only took this to mean that, out of all places in Northgard, he washere, in the Orphic Basilica. He saw Gabriel in its darkest shadows, setting fire to book after book, his eyes peering out at Roy from behind a shelf. Roy would stop, his hands trembling, and then as Gabriel broke into a sprint and dashed around the corner, a silver knife gripped in his fist, Roy would jerk awake, panting, a hand clutched against the grooves of the scars on his chest. Sometimes, he wondered if Gabriel was the ghost he had first seen all those days ago, if he was chasing Roy in death, as he had in life.
Percival appeared unaware of Roy’s worsening state of mind, or if hewasaware, then he did not show it. Curiously, nothing really changed in their interactions. They didn’t converse. They didn’t bid each other a good morning or a good night. They occasionally crossed paths, because while the Basilica was seven stories tall and as wide as three manors, it was still only one building. Moreover, their chambers were on the same floor, the sixth, whose books Percival seemed to have taken a liking to. And despite his incident with the piano, Roy hadn’t stopped frequenting the Observatory, located on the fifth floor, so there were days, sometimes, when he would pass by Percival after a long day of studying and steal a furtive glance. Not atPercival, of course, or so Roy continued telling himself as he slowly crawled out of the fugue state he’d fallen into.
No, he was more interested in the books Percival was reading. He read fast, Roy noticed, faster than Roy. One day he was huddled over a half-crumpled manuscript. The next, he was scribbling annotations in his notebook about a leather-bound manifesto concerning etymology.
Percival looked perpetually focused, brows drawn, concentration unwavering, even when there were lines of unease inscribed deep into his forehead. His casual posture, his feet crossed atop one another or one arm flung out over the back of his seat, indicated affability. His straight back, however, denoted stern contemplation. But whenever he got so close to his book that it was like it had caught him by the hand and pulled him into its pages, that was when Roy tended to back away and find another spot to study. Because somehow, he knew that if he was to walk in on Percival in this state, he would get distracted by his deep blond hair, his irksome witticisms, his beauty.
He had never met someone so deeply affected by academia. Then again, he hadn’t ever met anyone in academia, only corresponded with them, so perhaps this was natural. But he couldn’t help but think this was specific to Percival, and Roy just wished he had the strength to ask.
* * *
The days and nights blurred past, abstract and bleary, like a watercolor painting. On one such night, Roy was only a short walk from his bedchamber, fatigued from hunching over his workspace for fifteen hours or so, when he spotted Percival sitting at a lamplit table propped against the wall, his knees drawn up to his chest, his eyes wide and disbelieving behind his glasses. On the cover of the massive book he was making his way through was the title:The Lost Records of Old Wynair.
Excitement and recognition crashed over Roy. His heart was palpitating, beating triple-time, and his hands had grown clammy. Instinct took over, and he walked forward but then, just as quickly, ground himself to a halt.
What are you doing, you fool?Roy chastised himself.You’re so tired, you can barely walk to your bed; how in the pits of Hell are you planning to convince Percival to discuss a text with you? That certainly worked out splendidly the last time, didn’t it?
After a moment, Roy conceded, withdrawing from the alcove and stealing toward his bedchamber, his footfalls whisper-soft. Yet as he settled beneath his silken sheets that night, he resolved to speak to Percival in the morning... but it wasn’t until the next night that Roy mustered the courage.
He was working in the Observatory. A chill permeated the room, and though a lamp was resting atop Roy’s desk, its heat did little to warm his bones. He wrapped his coat tighter about his shoulders, then retrieved a book from the stack in front of him and caught a quick glimpse of Percival, sitting on the other side of the desk. He had entered the Observatory without ceremony or greeting, deposited a stack of manuscripts on Roy’s desk and proceeded to prompt Roy with a question regarding the power imbalance embedded in Northgard.
Percival clicked his fingers in front of Roy’s face. “Darling? A response would suffice.”
