Percival sat up, clutching Roy’s forearm. “No. This is on me. And you’re right; I won’t give my pain what it wants. I won’t give in.” He sighed. “I’ve been a fool to think for so long that I could.”
“I don’t want to pressure you,” Roy said, “but... but the ghosts—”
“I know,” Percival said. “They want us to share our burdens and our torments, the things that have weighed on our minds since coming here. Before then. Perhaps it’s some... cruel perversion of the wind’s guidance.”
Indeed, some of the ghosts that had amassed around Percival while he had been thrashing helplessly on the ground were drawing back now, as though in slow realization, as though to say,This is the path, the next stepping stone.
“Should we go somewhere more comfortable?” Roy asked.
Percival proffered his hand to Roy, who took it. “No, just on the steps here. I don’t want to stall another moment.”
They sat on the first few risers of the grand staircase, their knees brushing. The ghosts observed expectantly from the shadows.
“Where should I start?” Percival asked, wringing his hands.
Roy hesitated. “Who’s Owen?”
An empty, dismal smile touched Percival’s lips. “I guess that’s as good a place as any. Owen was my partner. He and I met five years ago through one of my correspondents, but I’m sure that’s not an unheard-of story. It’s how most romances between scholars develop these days, isn’t it?” His smile faded. “We were both twenty. I thought I fell in love at first glance, although in hindsight, it was probably that initial phase of enchantment. He... Oh, Dawnseve, he was perfect.”
Roy waited to feel jealous, or resentful, but there was only this ineffable dread coiled up tight in his stomach.
“We spent every available space of time together,” Percival continued, “no matter whether it was two minutes or two hours. I read him poetry, some penned by his favorite poets but most by me, and by the time I was through the third or fourth poem, he would fall asleep in my arms. But I didn’t mind. That only gave me the chance to look at him, to commit his face to memory. Somehow, I noticed something new about him whenever I did this. A scar. A birthmark. His freckles. It was like he had a million facets to him, and I was honored to bear witness to them, to keep them, to remember them.”
Percival hung his head. “My family never knew about Owen. My brother and sister—Edgar and Louise—could tell something was different about me, but they never addressed the change. My parents were teachers at Rasileus Academy, which is always understaffed, and so they were rarely home to see.”
“You didn’t trust Edgar or Louise?” Roy asked.
“No, not with that information,” Percival said. “I had a... difficult, maddening sort of love for those two. They were both zealous Drove sympathizers and would have alerted one of the baton-swinging brutes if they discovered I was trading forbidden texts with Owen, but some part of me couldn’t abandon the memories I’d shared with them. Anyway, they never suspected my transgressions, and I thought, imprudently, that I could live in peace with that. But maybe I was wrong. Maybe therewassome slim possibility—so slim I hadn’t seen it at the time, yes, but there nonetheless—that they could have tolerated my scholarship, if they had ever learned of it.”
Roy thought of the fire he’d faintly seen through the dark form of the ghost that had accosted Percival. “Did they? Did they find out?”
“Not as far as I know,” Percival said. “I was seldom at our family manor, though. I weaved this illusion among my parents and siblings that I’d formed a study group with my classmates at Rasileus Academy, but in truth, Owen had begun introducing me to scholars he’d met through his correspondences. I hadn’t realized there were so many of us. Before then, I had only fallen in with a few like-minded academics—those who had survived the Governor’s purge—but to think that the survivors numbered in the hundreds was... It was inconceivable. In retrospect, I shouldn’t have combed so deeply through the network. I was much too curious, and as I reflect on what occurred soon after Owen showed me all of his colleagues, I think it was my curiosity that led me astray.”
Percival released a long, steadying breath. “Four months ago, I embarked on a rather arduous research project. I was in desperate search—if only out of personal desire—for a book on the Themelian Spires, a stealthily hidden mountain range near the Timeless Gap. Allegedly, it was there that Tobias Enghall and Nemene Aftford initially devised the concept of the Orphic Basilica.”
“The first two Elder Scribes,” Roy said, awestruck.
“Indeed,” Percival said, his expression crestfallen. “Owen selected his contacts meticulously. He was wary, and not without good reason. Have you ever been to the Western Ranges, Roy?”
Roy slowly shook his head, unsettled by the dismay in Percival’s voice. “I’ve barely seen half of this city, much less anywhere else.”
“The Radiant Droves stationed in the Western Ranges take drastically worse measures to unmasking and torturing suspected scholars than those in Northgard,” Percival said. “They skin them alive. They whip their exposed wounds. They brand them. They treat them with absolute, unremitting disrespect. I haven’t a clue who rules the soldiers over in the Ranges, but from what Owen told me, I bet they’dsneerat the Governor’s decision to make use of us. Owen was strict about who he kept in contact with for this very reason. Because he’d seen the worst of this world, had lived alongside them, and he could differentiate between a scholar and a spy. ‘The differences are easy to spot,’ he told me once, ‘so long as you have the eye to spot them.’
“And I didn’t. I wasadamanton locating that damn book, darling. You know how it is. Once we’ve set our minds on something, we become relentless in our pursuit, tangled in the chase.” Percival kneaded his throat, as though it were hard to speak. “None of Owen’s allies knew where the book was, but one—a young woman, new to the network—had heard of an archaeologist who was allegedly planning a trek to the Themelian Spires to do an excavation of the region. Naturally, I told Owen. He’d always admired my dedication. It was one of the things, he’d said plenty of times before then, he loved most about me. But his reaction was... Roy, I had never seen him somad. Embittered. He claimed I’d gone insane, that he had fled to this city for a life of obscurity, that I was taking it all away from him, exposing him. I promised him that I would take the necessary precautions to guarantee his protection, toensurehis life here was just the beginning.”
Percival clenched his teeth, tears slithering down his cheeks. “I was sostupid, Roy. So fucking stupid. I should’ve listened to him. I should’ve sworn I wouldn’t meet anyone outside the inner circle he’d made within the network. I should’ve realized the new recruit and her companions weren’t meant to be trusted, that some of themwereunderhandedly doing the Governor’s bidding, but instead, I unwittingly threw my entire inner circle to the wolves.”
Roy took Percival’s quivering hand in his own. “Percival...”
“There were ten of us,” Percival choked out, his cheeks turning red. “Not many, but... but more than I could’ve ever imagined existing five years ago. By the Scribes, I thought I was alone, but I guess I didn’t know what alone felt like until that...” He sobbed. “Until thatfuckingday. One day, darling, and it all went to Hell. I still remember it as vividly as if it happened yesterday. A week after I came back from the Western Ranges, I was leaving a morning lecture at Rasileus Academy, where I still attended classes, mainly to keep up pretenses, when I smelled smoke on the wind. I remember thinking that a second purge had begun, that the Governor had invented some way to permanently root us scholars out. But at least then, I would have gone into the dark with Owen. I wouldn’t have had to be alone.” He paused. “Darling, do you... do you know the bookmark penalty?”
“I do,” Roy said. He remembered seeing it for the first time... and shuddered. That line of frost-coated corpses, opened books nailed haphazardly to their faces.
Percival nodded, his eyes bleary. “I saw the bodies before the fire. The Droves bookmarked them. All nine of them. They spread them out like... like breadcrumbs, leading me to the flames. Owen was at the very end.” He cried silently, his shoulders shuddering. “The Governor’s agent must have learned about our relationship somehow. Or maybe they’d discovered the truth long ago and were just drawing out the punishment, making sure I never forgot the price of my failure.
“And I never did. I still see those nine bodies every day, every night. But none more so than Owen. I’ll never forget how they placed the book beneath his eyes so I could see the fear in them, thehorror.” Percival’s voice cracked. “Then—Then I saw the smoke. By the Scribes, I can still smell it, Roy. Burnt, charred flesh.”
A silence hung between them, strangely bereft of the moans of passing ghosts.
