Roy leapt up and scrabbled to his feet. “Justtellme!” he wailed. “Tell me what I can do to—”
“Darling.” It was Percival, his hair mussed on one side, standing on end on the other. He looked half-asleep yet still deeply troubled. “What is it?”
Roy hesitated. He’d thought he was better than this,braverthan this. He’d thought that it might be easier to talk about his recurring encounters with the residents of the spirit world, or whatever plane of existence the ghosts inhabited, but now as he glanced around and saw none of them there, he quailed at the prospect of Percival thinking he had gone mad, that insomnia and overwork had finally driven him insane.
But would he? Percival had been changed since Roy had shown him the grant—thoughtful. Not quite kind, but considerate at least. He’d cleared out the Observatory because the clutter would always get Roy into a panic. He’d held Roy in that room in the museum, his fingers inadvertently brushing past Roy’s scars.
This will be one of the hardest things I’ll have to do,Roy thought, but as he took in Percival’s worried expression now, some of his apprehension slipped off his shoulders. He did not speak the next words that came into his mind, but oh, how he wished he had the bravery.But at least I have you with me.
“Roy?” Percival asked.
Roy considered for a moment. “Can we sit somewhere?”
* * *
They walked up to a reading room on the sixth floor, where they usually frequented when they needed a change of scenery from the Observatory. Roy went over to one of the armchairs set before the hearth, which was flanked by a huge painting of men, women, and those of both or neither sexes, all dressed in flowing white robes. The plaque at the bottom of the frame readPictured: The Protectorate, and just beneath that,Behold the eye of memory.There were about one hundred of the librarians portrayed, roughly the same number of the wooden caskets he’d seen lining the walls of the Elder Scribes’ burial chamber.
Percival closed the door to the reading room, then strode toward Roy. “How’s this?” he asked. “Is this all right?”
Roy turned to face Percival and was about to quietly thank him when he perceived something unnatural, misshapen, about Percival’s face. It took him a moment to realize that what was wrong with it was that it wasn’t his own.
A ripple had begun to flow across his features. His short blond hair, which ended just shy of the nape of his neck, spilled out, turning into shoulder-length, blood-matted brown snarls. His hazel eyes, soft with concern and anxiety, were now an attentive and piercingly sharp blue, glittering with malevolent glee. They looked sunken, though, heavy with the weight of the horrors he’d seen.
“Get back!” Roy howled at Percival, atGabriel, and again thrust his palms against his chest. Then he scrambled away, keeping a safe distance between himself and his brother. And while he knew that this was simply a hallucination, an uneasily realistic mirage produced by his traumatized mind, that some aspects of Gabriel’s features were not quite right—his nose was too bulbous, his head too narrow—this did nothing to quell Roy’s panic.
Gabriel staggered back and fell on the ground, then shifted his weight from his left elbow to his right and cocked his head. “My dear, dear brother, what has he done to you?”
Roy bit into his bottom lip, drawing blood that passed through the tears gushing down his cheeks. “Getback!” he screamed again, his voice rasping, cracking. Briar was still asleep, after all, a few doors down from his chamber, and Gabriel didn’t like it when she was awake at this time of night. He liked it when he and Roy were alone, any possible disturbances dealt with prior to the torture. He liked it when he could see the mess he’d made of Roy, his scars still fresh and weeping blood.
He’d become inured to, and acquainted with, Gabriel’s collection of knives: which ones hurt the most, which bled the most. Roy wasn’t squeamish, nor easily fazed by blood; he was more troubled by Gabriel’s derision—his attacks on Roy’s failings and shortcomings, how he had exploited his own intelligence by putting it to use for a bygone world. It was nothing that Roy hadn’t heard before, but now that he thought on it and cast his mind back to those bleak years virtually locked away in Dawnseve Manor, his understanding of his own insignificance had only solidified when it’d been written in blood. His deepest fear, marked on his body.
“Briar will hear us,” Roy said, barely a whisper. “She will hear you.”
Gabriel pushed himself up from his elbows and into a squat, his hands dangling between his spread legs. He looked almost animal, his face dappled with gloom and burnt orange light. “The same words on yet another night.” He laughed. “When will youlearn?”
Panic burned hot in Roy’s blood. He choked out another scream, and again, it came out as a garbled cry. Yet still he couldn’t help clinging to hope with feverish desperation, despite knowing that Briar had never interrupted and stopped Gabriel’s ministrations. If, on the nights Gabriel tortured Roy, he had forgotten to prepare for such intrusions with a gag or some other device to quiet Roy, then he made do. A piece of parchment. A handful of coal. And once, Gabriel’s own blood-slick fingers, shoved down Roy’s throat.
“It’s fortunate that what you lack in courage, you make up for with obedience,” Gabriel said. He slowly reached for something behind him, hung on the waistband of his trousers, and took it out for Roy to examine. It was a kitchen knife, the handle worn and grooved, the same one he’d used to carve H-I-S-T-O-R-Y. “Fortunate, yes, but a shame. They say that the sturdiest of the Above’s creations are made of bravery.”
Sniveling, Roy scuttled back on his elbows and the heels of his boots, the floorboards scratching at and abrading the tough fabric of his sleeves. Blood slithered underneath them, dripped down his arms, and splatted onto the floor.
Gabriel hunkered down before the spilled blood, dragged his finger through it, and lapped it up. He inhaled deeply. “And what is bravery but overcoming adversity? What is adversity but the birthplace of pain?” He stood to his full height, his shadow enveloping Roy. He fell quiet, his head cocked and his eyes squinted, as though someone were whispering something in his ear. Then he boomed, “This isn’t a lesson; I’m doing you afavor!”
“Name your price!” Roy cried. He retreated another foot or so, then could go no farther; he’d smacked the back of his head against the chair behind him. “Name it!” With a quivering arm, he wiped away the blood, tears, and snot that had pooled into the divot above his top lip. “Please!What must I lose to be free of this?”
Gabriel stalked toward the fireplace, oblivious to Roy’s pleas. He began to stoop low and angle the knife near the crackling flames, which threw cavorting shadows upon the walls, but stiffened when he saw the poker leaning against the stone arch of the fireplace, unblemished by soot or smoke. He slid the knife back under the waistband of his trousers and ran a hand down the handle of the poker, caressing it.
“No,” Roy croaked.
“I resisted the temptation too long,” Gabriel said, an undercurrent of longing in his voice. “I was patient, Roy. I was servile.” He took the poker into his hands, observed it. “I wanted to wait for the right moment, for some time to pass before I indulged.” He looked at Roy. “But I can hardlystandit. The sounds you made, brother. That gurgling whimper when you saw the first letter.” He stared, his mouth ajar, his gaze drifting down to the left of Roy’s chest. “I still hear it, still see it.”
“Please!” Roy screamed, bawling. “Please—”
Something whistled through the air, dark and swift as smoke billowing out the barrel of a musket. Then pain exploded across his face. His head cracked to the side. A gash tore open in his cheek, pouring blood. His vision blurred, fragmented, and then came back together in time for him to see Gabriel advancing toward him, his face crumpled and disfigured with rage. He swung the poker again, raving incoherently, his tongue lolling out of the corner of his spittle-flecked mouth.
Roy dodged but did not entirely clear himself out of the poker’s range. It struck the side of his chin, hurling black dots up before his eyes. A strident whine started in his head, ringing higher and higher, then dissipated once Gabriel had prowled back to the fireplace and thrust the poker into the blue core of the flames.
“I see the Matron hasn’t made it clear enough for you, that rutting bitch,” Gabriel bit out, his upper lip folded back in a wolfish sneer. “This sick predilection for stories... It’s immoral, unbecoming. You’re nothing without them. Youclingto them, as a babe clings to its mother’s breast.”
