He blanched, the speed of his heart doubling and his dread deepening, and before he could process what had happened, Roy was falling.
A familiar gust of wind swept toward him from underneath, then rose higher and higher, keeping him airborne. The wind thickened, unfolding out across his back until it felt as though he was being carried on some imperceptible mattress. He dared a look down and was relieved to see that only a small distance separated him from the floor.
Percival jammed the notebook into his pocket, stuck the nub of charcoal he’d been writing with behind his ear, and reached up to grab Roy from underneath his arms. The wind thinned, then disappeared, leaving in its wake a trail of loose pages that swayed and fluttered out of the nearest bookshelf.
Percival deposited Roy on the ground, and while Roy determinedly refrained from memorizing the contours of Percival’s body, Percival laid a hand on his shoulder. “Are you all right?”
Roy nodded, though he was well aware how evidently he was lying; his entire body had gone limp, his muscles trembling from the discovery and the dizzying fall. Once he’d caught his breath, he said, “That’s it, Percival. That’s the confirmation we needed. The Elder Scribes did it. Theydrove outthe Old Ones.”
Percival got out the notebook and read what he’d transcribed. “‘The gathered intellect.’ That could mean anything.”
“It could,” Roy said, “but it’s a connection between the Old Ones and the Basilica nonetheless, and we don’t have many of those. Now we have sufficient reason to believe the Elder Scribes discovered, or possibly contrived, a way to push back the Old Ones.”
Percival seemed unsatisfied with this response. “Why do you look so upset, then?” he asked.
Because if my assumptions are correct, then the image of the idols I’ve built in my head—throughout the entire course of my childhood—is completely wrong, distorted by my naive hope of old-world pacifism. Because this image is one of the only pillars of stability I have, and if it comes down, if it crumbles, then everything I’ve been told, and have told myself, is a lie.
But he hadheardof scholars rebelling, and not too long ago, either. He had even spoken with some of them, stuffed their letters of correspondence beneath a loose board under his bed. He had shirked any and all allusions his contacts had made to resistance, yes, but they’d only informed Roy of the small-scale acts of insurgence they had been planning, like riots and sermons conducted in alleyways where academics would pontificate on the political significance of literature.
Butexile?Roy thought, his mouth dry and his hands prickling with sweat.How could a scholar even accomplish that?
“Never mind,” he said to Percival. “Come on, we’ve been here long enough. It’s time we get back to the books.”
12
In the days following their breakthrough on theseventh floor, the most baffling thing happened to Roy.
Every time he saw Percival, Roy could think of nothing and nobody else. Every time he knew Percival was nearby, he felt addled and weak, as though he’d drunk to the bottom of one too many glasses. He thought about him far too often and, because of this, he studied far too little. He lost his rhythm. He slipped up in his notations. He forgot idioms and aphorisms that had once come easily to him.
I can’t let you get in my way.
He thought of that frequently, too, howcan’twasn’twon’t, how, to Roy, it sounded like Percival wasstoppinghimself from the affliction that had come over Roy. Was that not what this was? A sickness? He didn’tfeelill, at least not physically, but his imagination, reason, and perception were unquestionably impaired. Once more he wondered if this sickness was in any way connected to what the Droves who had unsuccessfully investigated the library had experienced, if the library had anything to do with how recurrently Roy’s thoughts snagged on Percival, but the latter especially seemed highly unlikely. Roy could be outside the library, shivering and frozen down to the marrow in his bones, and Percival would still be on his mind.
Roy attempted, for a while, to view this strange infatuation— a feeling he had not once encountered in his twenty-five years—in an analytical light. He thought of how he’d felt whenever Percival looked at him, whenever he spared him a glance that held longer than was strictly necessary, but in his endeavor to define this host of emotions twisting and tumbling in him, Roy found himself remembering Percival’s crooked smile again, and the intricately detailed brown flecks in his hazel eyes, and the unexpected strength he’d displayed when he’d caught Roy the other night, borne up on that mysterious, whistling wind. Then he was back to where he’d begun—falling for Percival, with no clue as to how to get back up.
The nights wore on, seeming to darken with time, and his feelings deepened, sitting restless in the pit of his stomach. He didn’t know what to do with them, how to study or read or cope in such conditions. How did one go on with an attraction so distracting? And yes, he could finally admit that thiswasattraction. Perhaps a ruinous sort of attraction, but a pull he felt nevertheless.
The question lingered, then: How did one distract oneself from a distraction? The same way he had with the repulsion he’d felt for his brother: He read and worked on and examined texts into the smallest hours of the night, until reality became intangible, a gray pool of water he had to wade through. He surrounded himself with books. He absorbed encyclopedias and pamphlets, poems and articles, anything distantly or closely related to the Old Ones and how they’d been temporarily banished from Northgard by the Elder Scribes. He did not care if he came up empty. He only wanted these thoughts out and gone before they could do him further harm, before he dawdled for the next six months, lost in Percival’s eyes, enchanted by his smile.
Roy knew he was not alone in his thinking. Something had formed between them, not an understanding but something undeniable nonetheless. He could feel it, sense it—the stretches of taut silence, the stealthily stolen glances they exchanged while Roy wrote up his personal report of their progress for the Governor (found some mentions of black armor, will follow up later;researching historical battles to find references of tactics and patterns similar to Old Ones’), the resemblances between the books they leafed through and the notes they jotted down. He liked it sometimes. It gave him a thrilling rush. Whenever he caught Percival’s eye, he could not tell which of them had won a round.
But these pleasures were temporary, and they left Roy feeling a selfish, petty sort of spite. Hadn’t Percival shown moments of weakness? If so, then wasn’t there an event from his past that must have been responsible for the crease in Percival’s brow and the set of his shoulders? These questions shifted Roy’s spite into concern.
If Roy could not change Percival, then perhaps he could understand him. Perhaps that was whatPercivalwas doing in return, and Roy was too broken to see it.
It was foolish to let some wild-mannered man affect him so, Roy knew that. But by the Scribes, he’d never been so eager to do right, to prove his competition wrong so that he could stop thinking of him, of the small joys he couldn’t have.
* * *
About a month into the investigation, Roy was in the Observatory, in the middle of reading a thesis on the Warfare-Philosophy Principle, when three rapid knocks sounded from the first floor. Once he finished the sentence he’d been reading, he stood from his seat, exited the Observatory, and then paused at the railing of the nearest balcony.
Down below, Percival handed several torn-out sheets of notebook paper to the Governor, who then looked over them with a stern nod before folding and tucking them into an inner pocket of his suit. Behind him, three Droves were carrying crates packed full of supplies—inkwells, quills, notebooks, waterskins, loaves of bread, cheese, and several types of fruit—and bringing them up to the sixth floor, where the Governor had told Roy at the beginning of the assignment to select his personal chambers. As the Droves passed Roy on the fifth floor, he noticed that they moved with mechanical exactness, their shoulders stiff and their bloodshot eyes ringed with shadows.
With an affirmative grunt, the Governor dismissed Percival, who silently turned on his heel and headed back to wherever he’d been studying without acknowledging Roy. Or maybe he didn’t see him.
The Governor did, though. He looked up at the balcony where Roy stood, holding his gaze, an expectant expression on his face.
Roy swallowed, then nodded and walked back into the Observatory to retrieve his own report, which he’d been working on over the last few days. It was not an extensive list by any means, for they were only a month into their investigation, though it was also evidence of their labor.
