“Darling, I am a man of limited charitability and great impatience. Standing here talking about it won’t make it any less awkward—”
Roy swiped his fingertips down the front of Percival’s tunic.
Percival went still, his jaw dropping in mock outrage. The streak of invisible residue clung to his abdominal muscles. “You’re wrong. That wasentirelyunnecessary.”
A small smile on his lips, Roy continued walking down the stairs, and after a moment, Percival followed.
“It’s mildew, isn’t it?” Roy asked. “The substance.”
“Not as strong as the smell of rot, but yes, I believe so. But if the Basilica has spent millennia in disuse, how are there meals brought to us every morning?” Percival asked, a note of intrigue in his voice. “How has this building not fallen into a state of complete disrepair? I mean, parts of the libraryshouldbe decaying, if these scents are any indication, but it’s kept upright for generations.”
“You’re the one who first said the Basilica could be alive.”
“Yes, but notfeedingus, as you’ve asserted,” Percival replied. “Ididthink it was sentient, but this tunnel disprove that assumption.” His voice deepened. “All I feel here is death.”
As if in confirmation, another flicker of visions descended over Roy’s opened eyes: skulls lined up in a row; moss spread over skeletal jaws and foreheads; a blindfold made of cobwebs. He swallowed. “As do I.”
The passage of time felt broken, somehow, furling and unfurling with disorienting rapidity. The darkness of the tunnel stretching beyond the candlelight seemed to go on either forever or not at all. They were stuck in a moving diorama of echoing footsteps, firelight dancing across stone and the ever-thickening stench of rot.
Then, just when Roy had begun to think this labyrinth might never end, a large chamber appeared out of the dark. He felt a momentary sweet relief flood through him, but it was secondary to the visceral terror underlying all his senses. He knew not what existed beneath the foundations of the library, what age-old horrors had lain here in perpetual slumber. He skidded to a halt, terrified, and Percival stopped beside him, then raised the candle to fully reveal the room.
The stairs ended at a long expanse of mist-blanketed flagstone. Cobwebs hung in the corners of the low-ceilinged chamber. In the center of the space was a tall-stemmed chalice perched upon a marble plinth, the water within shrouded by a thick film of algae. Skeletons were sprawled across the ground, age-yellowed bones protruding from the mist. A miasma of cloying rot and coppery blood hung fresh in the air, as though these bodies had been dead for hours, not thousands of years.
Tears welled up in Roy’s eyes; whether from overwhelm or fear, he could not say. Through his bleary vision, he perceived a bend at the back of the chamber. Tendrils of mist swept through the archway and around the corner. It wasn’t until he watched the fog stir that Roy realized an icy breeze had been whispering across his skin. Even the overcoat he’d chosen this morning couldn’t dispel the cold gnawing through to his bones. Reluctant, he stepped closer toward the warmth emanating from Percival’s candle.
“Be careful,” Percival whispered. Flickering shadows endowed his face with punishing beauty. “If we lose that light, something tells me we won’t be getting it back.”
Roy prepared a retort, but by Percival’s tone, Roy didn’t think it would win him any favors. It seemed Percival was smart enough to know they should, at least right now, remain civil.
Roy started walking again, but slowly, his footsteps sending plumes of bone-dust into the air and rippling candlelit mist. He licked his dry lips, his throat tight with fear.
As the mist swept aside, Roy beheld the dead, at first terrified, then enraptured. One skull was perched on its jaw and cranium, its hollow sockets staring eternally into the eyes of the Reaper. A fat-bellied mouse scurried out from the skull’s dark, gaping jaws. About a foot away was a skeleton, its sinister grin like a macabre mimicry of a smile. Its chest was caved in, its shattered ribs like a mouthful of notched teeth.
Roy flinched, his arms covered with gooseflesh. “What happened to all these people? I know the scholars of the old world were frowned upon, but I...” He found another skeleton, its skull craned back in horrific agony. “I hadn’t realized they were slaughtered,massacred.”
Percival, beside him now, regarded the dead with a dour expression, the corners of his mouth pinched. He might have been frozen, if not for the minute twitch in his left eye. “This is what happens when we dare to dream, darling,” he said. “This is whatwillhappen if we’re sent into the front lines. We’ll die before we can even fight back, and this entire fucking city will praise the day.”
Roy gulped. “Millennia of debasement and humiliation.”
“It’s nothumiliation. It’s sacrilege and societal desecration. The Iron Citadel strips our people of personal identity and manipulates what remains to their own perverse satisfaction. We’re forced to sacrifice our beautiful purpose for a violent cause. I refuse to see this dark age as anything but an avaricious resurrection of the past.”
“And the Governor is orchestrating the full scope of it.”
“He’s not the only one to blame, though.” Percival gestured around them, at the scattered bones and the smog of death filling the air. “I don’t know what this place is, but... It reminds me of everything our people have fought through. Everything they’ve endured.No, it’s not just the Governor. Thousands of years, you said. That equates to hundreds of rulers.Hundredswho made it their life’s goal to abuse and kill us. Why they think this way is beyond me. I’ve gone too long considering the hypotheticals. This place... Oh, Dawnseve, this place is going to hurt me.”
They stood in silence for a while, but as the minutes passed, whispers rose from the mist. The candlelight shuddered again, flinging shadows across the walls.
An anchor of years descended upon Roy’s shoulders, a leaden medallion forged from time itself. His thoughts drifted and then flitted from one to the other, like a conspiracy of ravens migrating. The voices snaking through the tunnels continued whispering, subdued by some unfathomable pressure, yet he couldn’t wring words from their wails.
Say something to Percival, Roy demanded of himself.Tell him he deserves to be hurt, that his pain is warranted for all the things he’s said to you, all the things he’s made you feel, that your nightmares are his doing, that the scars on your chest are as much his fault as Gabriel’s...
But Roy held his tongue. He thought it might be for the best.
15
Roy didn’t move until Percival did, and eventhen, apprehension gripped Roy by the heels, as though he was suspended in hardened mud. He was still trying to process what Percival had said.The Iron Citadel strips our people of personal identity and manipulates what remains to their own perverse satisfaction.
Roy had experienced this sort of psychological change since the first time Gabriel had beaten him, but there’d been no actual recognition of it until recently. This change was different than what he felt around Percival, though; that was a kind of emotional echo, considering that Roy more recently expressed himself in angry outbursts. No, this deeper change—the Iron Citadel’s manipulation of the larger academic community—was a reworking of who he was, who he aspired to become.
