Roy inspected his surroundings. They had been brought past the wrought-iron gates of the Governor’s manor—a large and rambling estate laden with snow, squares of golden lamplight shining from its many windows—and into a courtyard encircled by imposing white limestone walls. The sled stopped in front of an ascending staircase that led to a pair of teak doors. They hung open, manned by two Droves, revealing a cramped office whose only furnishings comprised of a cabinet stocked with unrecognizable curiosities and a tidy desk. Sitting behind this desk, his skeletal, liver-spotted hands folded before him, was the Governor.
“Fuck,” said Percival, taking a step back and giving a panicked, sidelong look to Roy. “Darling, I’m not so sure about this.”
Roy understood his consternation. But just as Percival had convinced him that the loss of the library was ultimately for the good, so now he felt it his job to do the same for Percival.
“Why?” Roy asked. “As you reminded me, we did everything he asked for.”
“But I also said, ‘and more.’ And that ‘more’ stripped away a large part of his power.”
“You’re right, then—without his Blighted, his plans went up in smoke. He has nothing left to gain from us. And it’s not like he has any additional tricks up his sleeve.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because we know his goal,” Roy answered with ringing certainty, “and without the Blighted, there’s little he can threaten us with that would keep us from sharing his vision for Northgard.” Though even as he said this, Roy acknowledged that hewascurious as to how this discussion, whatever it was that the Governor wished to discuss, would proceed.
We’ll find out soon enough.
They entered the little office, Roy first and Percival following cautiously. The Droves posted outside closed the doors shut behind them and enclosed them in the dark space, which was illuminated solely by a dim lamp placed on the corner of the desk.
The Governor regarded them in an uneasy silence. His complexion had been ghastly three and a half months ago, but it seemed markedly unhealthy now, like something within that short period had accelerated the process. His sagging skin had a troubling quality. It was jaundiced in some places and cadaverous in others. The gaudiness of his bloodshot eyes—trulybloodshot, Roy realized, not infected with the Blight—were appalling in the subdued lighting.
“You did it,” the Governor said, his voice croaky and dry. “You tore the damn thing down.” Before either of them could think of a response, he asked, “What about the Law? Did you amend it?” He coughed into the side of his fist, dappling it with mucus and blood. When he repeated his question, his eyes were wide and shining with desperation. “Well, out with it, boys. Did you?”
Roy had been turning over the words spinning through his head, working out how to construct them into an answer, a reasonable justification for their failure to keep up their end of the bargain, but it was Percival who said, “No, we didn’t. Although in all fairness, we had not anticipated the Orphic Basilica being destroyed so soon, you see. However, without any of the other scholars currently lying low in Northgard to assist us, we fear that we’ll never be able to help you expand the Law, to spread the city’s political influence over its neighboring nations. In a way, wedidfulfill our part of the deal, not to mention that our releasing the ghosts effectively destroyed the Old Ones, so I believe that should compensate for not having expanded the Law of Intervention yet.”
All the flimsy arguments Roy had been assembling in his head vanished once he heard Percival’s. They were all good points, and moreover, they wereindisputable, made evident by the efforts the Governor had already acknowledged they’d gone to. Percival was demonstrating, right in front of the Governor’s eyes, what Roy had told him moments ago:He has nothing left to gain from us.
So now the Governor studied them with heightened suspicion and indecision, his squinted, bleary eyes deepening the wrinkles around them, as though on the hunt for something written between the lines—something which only a continued examination would reveal. He opened his mouth, and Roy flinched, preparing himself for an interrogation or a beating or worse. He grasped Percival’s forearm.
Then the Governor stumbled to his feet, his face blanching with shock and his attention fastening on the left corner of the office. A faint and familiar silver light illuminated his age-weathered features.
Roy followed the Governor’s gaze to the left corner, twisting in his seat with his fingers still clamped protectively around Percival’s arm, and let out a hoarse gasp.
The ghost of a stunningly beautiful middle-aged woman drifted noiselessly in the shadows. Though her passing had reduced her physicality to a murky humanoid shape, when she cupped her hands and placed them over her face—as Roy had seen a ghost do in the Orphic Basilica—her features, and the circumstances of her death, gradually grew clear. A ragged hole went through her left cheek and exited out of the top of the right column of her neck. Her full lips were curved into a shaky, crestfallen smile. She raised one hand, covered in a fingerless glove, toward the Governor. Then she curled it into a fist and pressed it over her heart.
The Governor planted his hands against the desk and leaned forward, his face marked with a look of grave sadness... and fascination. He looked utterly spellbound.
Silent, the woman stared at him with increasing studiousness. She tilted her head, and though Roy attempted to make sense of what seemed an innocuous gesture, he couldn’t quite interpret it. There was some sort of unspoken conversation taking place here, but the nuances were so intimate that Roy sensed he wouldn’t be able to plumb any deeper for answers if he tried.
Yet still, something struck him as odd—a bizarre incongruity. Several months earlier, when Roy had inquired to Dimestra as to the reason behind the Governor’s absence, why Roy hadn’t once in his life met the man who was dictating his immediate future, Dimestra had answered,The Governor has been... absent since his wife passed some few years ago. But as he took the recency of the tragedy into account, alongside the obvious youthfulness of the woman before him, Roy couldn’t help but wonder whether Dimestra had gotten the story wrong.
Had the Governor really married a woman easily fifty years his junior? As far as Roy knew, in Northgard, it was uncommon but not unheard-of. Even so, he couldn’t quite quash his suspicions. It was then that two details came before his mind’s eye, instantly ruling out the possibility that the Governor’s and Cordelia’s marriage was simply an unorthodox union—the black metal necklace and Atticus Walestone’s puzzling allusion to resurrection.
Even if I could exercise such powers, that sort of sorcery has been forbidden for thousands of years and was only recently discovered to be impossible. The repercussions are... troubling.
Before Roy could continue ruminating on his speculations, the ghost of the woman redirected her attention to Roy and Percival, though with decidedly less interest. She looked back to the Governor, the ruby light in her eyes quickly diminishing and petering out. Then she pivoted, and as she turned, she vanished.
“Come back!” the Governor shouted at the empty corner, his voice gruff but filled with sorrow, his eyes scanning the semidarkness with despairing hopefulness. “Cordelia! My dear Cordelia, please! Come back!”
There was no answer. The shadows had already filled in the space the woman, whom Roy could only assume had been the Governor’s deceased wife, had once occupied.
The Governor kept his eyes trained on the gloom nevertheless, his gaunt and fragile hands crumpling the documents beneath them. He raised one of them, though, and absently toyed with the black metal necklace around his throat. It felt to Roy like minutes had passed before the Governor finally addressed him and Percival, but the dejection was gone from his face. He glared, his brows lowered and his wilting skin covered in a slimy veneer of sweat. Death had its sure grip on him, but he was holding on.
He’s going to lash out, thought Roy, panic spreading hot and eager within him.We’ve fulfilled our duties, honored our—his—commitments, and now he’s going to pull out of the deal. He’ll take everything out on us. His frustration, his resentment, his fury and grief and sadness.
Roy was so confident his fears would come true, that he and Percival would not be dismissed until they’d been castigated, that he was stunned when the Governor’s expression softened. He took a few seconds to avert his gaze and compose himself, and when he set his eyes back on them, he was wearing a shrewd half smile. “Here is what I will do,” he said. “I will allow the scholars to safely come out of hiding, those who have survived the Old Ones’ invasion and the ghosts’ subsequent attack, but with the added stipulation that they all help change the Law of Intervention and expand Northgard’s influence. I will give them a year to do this. No sooner, no later. What do you say?”
Percival said, “That’s not our deal—”
