Percival chuckled without raising his gaze from his own work. “Having some trouble over there, darling?”
“No more than you,” Roy said, regarding the disarrayed scrolls strewn across Percival’s desk. “Are you doing research or constructing some sort of flimsy tablecloth?” Roy feigned a look of fervid concentration, as though he wasn’t fumbling aimlessly through his own studies. “Now, limit these interruptions, would you?” He waved in dismissal at Percival, despite that he wasn’t looking at Roy. “I have far too much work to do.”
Percival rolled his eyes.
A half hour later, Roy was skimming through a nautical analysis of the chapter he’d just finished reading, which mainly contained coordinates he didn’t understand nor had any care to, when he flipped to a page that had a folded, crumpled piece of parchment wedged into the binding. Frowning, Roy unfolded the parchment, then smoothed it out and surveyed its contents.
The diagram was simplistic, almost deceptively so. Eight rectangular blocks, each outlined in deep gray charcoal, were stacked atop one another and labeled:FLOOR ONE,FLOOR TWO, and so on. Scribbled into the topmost of these blocks was another column of rectangles labeledBOOKSHELVES, above which were a sequence of overlapping circles, although these Roy couldn’t make sense of. The six blocks below were identical, excluding the circles, but the lowest contained a winding network of curves, like a descending spiral of some sort. Underneath the illustration was this inscription, also scrawled in charcoal:THE ORPHIC BASILICA—FRAMEWORK—DRAFT.
Roy gawked at the piece of parchment, excitement bursting within him, then slipped it under the book and continued reading, enthralled. The next chapter, “The Treacherous Passage to the Orphic Basilica,”unfortunately exclusively addressed the details of the actual seafaring expedition, not the journey to the library thereafter. If there were any references to black chest plates, or anything remotely linked to the Old Ones, Roy didn’t pick up on them.
He reviewed the illustrated framework of the Orphic Basilica again, curious as to the eighth block, which he assumed to be the artist’s hastily drawn interpretation of an eighth floor. It was this that puzzled Roy. There were definitely only seven floors; he had counted them when he’d first been brought here. Had another been in the drafting stage at the time of this expedition, then? Had the architects of the library rejected the propositioned additional floor, explaining the current absence of the eighth? Or could the eighth floor not beseenfrom outside, nor even inside, unless properly accessed? Was it...
A soft breeze whisked through Roy’s hair. Whispers rose from beneath the muffled grumbling of the winter storm, then twirled around him and hissed in his ear, rising as the question formed shape and substance in his mind.
Is the eighth floor underground?
Roy shot to his feet, knocking back his chair and startling Percival, who was ogling him with marked bafflement. Roy stalked toward Percival, then slapped the parchment down onto his desk, his chest heaving.
“Go on,” Roy panted. “Read it.”
After a long moment, Percival obeyed, then slowly straightened in his seat as the truth of the Basilica’s hidden and unknowably vast scope settled in. A cold wind twined around Roy once more, swirled through the air, and ruffled the scrolls on Percival’s desk.
“We’re heading to the first floor,” Percival whispered, his eyes sweeping across the disturbed papers, one of which had drifted toward him. “Right now.”
“Now?” Roy echoed. “We don’t even know what we’relookingfor—”
Percival snatched up the small scrap of paper that the wind had seemed to deliberately stir toward him, then thrust it at Roy.
Roy took the paper and surveyed it. “This is a poem.”
“Written by Charles Patiny, yes,” Percival said. Roy had only read Patiny’s novels, though his poems were considered to be some of the most hard-hitting, all concerning an unreciprocated love. “He wrote chiefly about this man he fancied, but there are a few about his love for the Basilica.”
Roy shook his head, dubious. “I don’t see how—”
“This is what the wind is getting at,” Percival interrupted. “You don’t see hownow,but read it and we’ll know.” He jerked his chin at the paper. “The first, second, and third stanzas. At first, I thought Patiny was making some sort of metaphor, but perhaps not.”
“This damn wind,” Roy said, shaking his head. “I’ll admit: As averse as I once was to it, it’s remarkably helpful.”
“You’ve felt it before?” Percival asked, intrigue glittering in his eyes. “On the seventh floor, you mean? With the ladder?”
Roy supposed it was too late to hold his tongue now. “When I found the grant in the Observatory.”
“The Observatory?”
“The room on the fifth floor, the one with the piano.”
“Ah,” Percival said. “Well, that’s all the more reason to trust its guidance once more, right? Go on, Dawnseve. First, second, and third stanzas.”
The breeze picked up again, making the scrap of paper in Roy’s hand flutter back and forth like a bird testing its recently repaired wings. Roy looked down, then found the stanzas Percival had indicated and read them aloud:
Too many voices, too many words
this hall of memories does hold,
that under flesh, warm forevermore,
further stories are kept on walls of old
