Roy recalled what he’d heard the last time they’d been in the catacombs.See what they made of your kind! Oh please, I say! I plead to the Above! Heed me! They butchered us and killed our young—
Color washed back into Percival’s face. “You’ve been looking at the swords this entire time!” he shouted. “Tell us! What are they?”
The bones stitching the ghost’s form together had begun to shiver and clatter, though at Percival’s shout, Walestone stilled.Again, my memories are not as reliable as they once were. But I...He squinted at Valusvar and Kharuan.I believe those swords, if employed correctly, might be the cornerstone of our liberation. You both unsheathed them, yes?
“Just one,” Percival said. “Valusvar. When I lifted it, I accidentally pointed it at Roy, and he saw these... visions of his own death.”
Yes, the visions, Walestone said with burgeoning recognition.A method used by the wielder to incapacitate unsuspecting victims. But there is another power, scholars. Another...
Roy was about to say something, but Walestone began to tremble, the bones holding his form collapsing to the base of the sarcophagus. Wind snagged on him like tearing cloth, and then he was gone.
21
The following afternoon, while Roy and Percivalhad their heads buried in their work, still recuperating from the knowledge that Atticus Walestone—one of the Elder Scribes and, apparently, the secret identity of Razkamun—was haunting the Orphic Basilica, a series of piercingly loud knocks came from one of the lower floors.
Percival jerked upright, the side of his raised left hand stained with ink, and blinked at Roy with befuddlement.
The rapping knocks came again, louder and with heightening urgency.
Roy bolted to his feet, not noticing how sweaty he was until he tied his gown tighter around his waist. Dots of perspiration were beading on the backs of his hands and running down the nape of his neck.
Percival dropped his quill, which he’d been gripping tightly, then stood and rushed over to the balcony at the other side of the room. He peered over the railing, dragging one hand down his face and clenching the railing with the other.
A sickening but nameless premonition rising inside him, Roy joined Percival, too aware of the bare inches of distance between them.
Again, the rapping sounded, pounding and hammering with increasing frequency, advancing closer like doom on swift wings, and it was only then that Roy realized it was coming from the double front doors. They were trembling in their frames, shaking from the force of the fists thudding against them.
Someone had come to the Orphic Basilica.
“The Governor,” Percival stammered. “He and his Droves must have come for their third supply drop. They’re a tad late, don’t you think?”
“The storm has gotten worse since its last respite,” Roy said. He’d suspected,feared, that this would happen when he’d looked out the window in the hallway leading to the Museum of the Elder Scribes. “It probably delayed their journey.”
“By a week, though?” Percival asked, skeptical.
Roy gulped. Why else would the Governor have visited, though? Had he uncovered something that might delay or expediate their investigation? Had he possibly recruited another scholar to assist them? Then he recollected what the Governor had stated in his letter to the Dawnseves, which seemed like years ago.This mission is of utmost importance, he’d warned.If any individual whose involvement I have not sanctioned were to become aware of this assignment—including the maids and butlers in your employ, who are not to spread word of Roy’s task—or interfere with it, it would be considered a breach of the Law of Intervention...
Roy asked now, “What do we do, Percival?”
Percival glowered. “Leave the one man legally allowed to kill us out in the snow, clearly.” He shook his head and started toward the staircase on their right. “Honestly, Dawnseve, you’d think you would’ve grown some brains by now.”
When they got to the first floor, Percival hastened toward the entryway and hauled open the door.
A blizzard of snow and gale-force wind whirled inside, and Roy raised an arm over his face, peering at the scene before him through the gaps between his fingers. Percival tightened his grip on the door handle, hissing out clouds of white breath between his teeth, but fortunately the door was more than heavy enough to stop from slamming open and striking him to the ground. He was standing just before the threshold now, and ahead of him, Roy spied a solitary figure upon the doorstep.
As he came forward, he saw it was a Citadel emissary. A scarlet-haired woman, in her late thirties if Roy was forced to guess, she was dressed in the same green felt cap and white military coat as had been worn by the mustachioed man who’d accompanied Matron Dawnseve. That was where the resemblances ended, though. She looked frightened, in contrast to her dreadfully stern counterpart, the lashes of her round brown eyes speckled with frost. She was holding something out to Percival. An envelope that had been folded two or three times over, Roy realized.
“Take it,” the woman said, sharp and urgent. She thrust out the envelope to Percival, who fetched it from her trembling, black-gloved hand with a disbelieving expression. She stared at him a moment, then grasped his spare hand in both of hers. She looked from Percival to Roy, then back to Percival. “Tell not a soul I was here. Please, I beg of you.” Her voice broke, and tears sprang to her eyes. “Ibegof you, boys, for the sake of my wife and our son. Tell not asoul!”
Percival gawked at the woman, then down at their joined hands, speechless.
Uncertain what he was agreeing to, Roy stepped forward and intervened, reassuring the woman, “Not a soul and not a word. That I promise you.”
The woman let go of Percival’s hand with a cry of relief. “Oh, bless you. Bless you to the Above.” She sniffled and glanced behind her, down at the foot of the steps. There, the horse she had ridden in on—equipped with winter riding gear—was stamping impatiently at the snowy ground. She looked back at them. “I’d best be off. It’s quiet around here, but I’d wager it won’t stay that way for long.” She adjusted the cap atop her head, which had gone askew while talking with them, then started back down to her horse.
Still too bewildered to speak, Percival reached for the door. He stopped, though, as the woman suddenly turned around.
“The envelope!” she called up to them, pointing at it feverishly. “I’m afraid it’s taken a bit of a trek in my satchel, so I’m dearly sorry if any of the message is smudged, but I hope her words will read all right.” Then she jogged down the steps, tightening the straps attached to the sides of her felt cap, mounted her horse, and cantered off into the snow.
