“And you did not fulfill yours,” the Governor interrupted. “Not to the letter, as you admitted. So, as before, an amendment.”
Doubt snuck into Roy’s gut. He felt inclined to protest, to slam his fists against the desk in defiance, because he knew how treacherous this was. He knew from experience. He had been deceived by this man before, and so the consequences of agreeing to the Governor’s new conditions couldn’t be clearer.
Then Percival took Roy’s hand underneath the desk, which sent a reassuring, pleasing warmth though Roy. “We say yes,” said Percival. “You have our approval.” He interlaced their fingers and stood, pulling Roy up with him and tugging him toward the door. He turned the knob and they both stepped out with haste, afraid that the Governor would change his mind.
29
Percival pulled Roy aside to underneath anarch in the courtyard—out of earshot from the Radiant Droves milling about in confusion and agitation, likely dumbfounded by the defeat of the Old Ones and the supernatural entities which had ground the interminable conflict to a halt. Then he blurted out to Roy, “Please tell me you saw what I saw.”
“That was hiswife,” Roy exclaimed, then belatedly remembered where he was and who was around him and lowered his voice. “Dimestra told me that she died three or so years ago, right around the time the Old Ones launched their second invasion...”
He couldn’t purge from his mind the disconcerting image of the Governor’s frailty—his hazy eyes, his liver-spotted hands, the concerning prominence of his veins. Even upon first appearance, Roy had noted these physical disadvantages but dismissed them as the inevitable side effects of old age. Though the longer he chewed on it, on the direction his thoughts had taken when he’d seen Cordelia, Roy found himself returning to Atticus Walestone’s offhand comment... And so he told Percival, who reacted suitably.
“Fuck,” Percival muttered, running a hand over his stubbled jaw. “So you think the Governor attempted to bring Cordelia back, and it... backfired?” He looked furtively around, but the closest Droves were on the other side of the courtyard and deeply engaged in a heated argument. He frowned at Roy, shaking his head. “But that would imply he’d been researching thanatology. Wouldn’t he be disparaged for such hypocrisy?”
“He would,” Roy said, nodding and folding his arms, “which is why, I believe, he laid low. According to Dimestra, the Governor essentially isolated himself here”—he pointed his chin around them, indicating the manor—“ after Cordelia died. My thinking is that he hid away in that office there and stocked up on volumes on dark magic. Necromancy and the like. Maybe he trusted some of his agents with this information and had them retrieve these texts from the libraries and bookshops he destructed.”
“By the Scribes, Iknewthere was something about him—his skin, his eyes. They seem cloudy but comparably more aware, moreintelligent, than a man of his age,” Percival said, then amended, “Hisapparentage. He must be... what, close to Cordelia when she passed? In his forties or thereabouts?”
Roy shuddered. “This botched attempt at dark magic must’ve come with a price. It took something from him. It stole from him his strength, his vitality, and made him this defenseless husk of a man, as helpless as the scholars whom he so detests. And then he went on the hunt for answers, a pursuit of knowledge he, in hindsight, shouldn’t have dared disturb.” He paused, his brows drawn together. “Though, as terrifying as it is to consider, I’m not so sure that his accelerated aging is the only one of these ‘repercussions’ of the Governor’s attempt at resurrection that Walestone mentioned. Percival, everything we’re discussing seemed to have occurred three years ago. Cordelia’s death, the Governor’s search for a resurrection spell, the Old Ones’ encroachment... but also the storm.”
Percival looked taken aback. “The storm?”
“Well, haven’t you ever wondered why snow hasn’t stopped falling for three years?” asked Roy. “Why the clouds never seemed to go away?”
“Sure, but I didn’t attribute it to magic.”
Roy glanced sidelong at the sunlight spilling in through the courtyard, at the brightening cerulean sky past the towering limestone walls. “I think—no, I’mconvinced—whatever spell or rune the Governor invoked led to this convergence of devastating powers. He sought and exploited knowledge from a spellbook, almost insane with grief from Cordelia’s passing, and it brought on the storm. Walestone even suggested that such sorcery hasn’t been practiced since, maybe because the Governor stored the spellbook away after the storm came on, after the Old Ones besieged Northgard—drawn here, perhaps, by the Governor’s failed attempt at resurrection.”
Percival pressed a hand over his mouth, his eyes wide. “And then the Radiant Droves started to go mad. Then their eyes started glowing red.”
Could love really have been the cause of all this chaos?Roy wondered. He didn’t see why not. History was rife with stories of lovers crossing moral boundary lines, committing acts of depravity, things they would have never imagined doing before meeting their paramours. He didn’t find it difficult to believe at all, then, that the Governor had repeatedly experimented with occult magic just to see his wife again, to clasp her cheek and kiss her brow; that he had pushed the limitations of mortality until they bent and snapped; that he’d only stopped when he realized his body was deteriorating exponentially. And what would be the point in raising his beloved from beyond the grave if he wasn’t there to see her?
As though pondering this same question, Percival asked, “Is that why he hired us to investigate the Orphic Basilica? To find a way to resurrect his wife?”
“No,” Roy said. “I think he discovered, probably at some point during his search for a resurrection spell, that Cordelia was gone. Perhaps he saw a ghost on his first visit to the library, the day we arrived, and concluded that his investigation had always been ineffectual. But he was haunted by her, ashamed of his physical limitations, so he began to wear the necklace—which Cordelia herself had gifted to him before her death—to hide from her and spare himself the guilt. It’ll always live with him, sure, but toseeher...”
Percival nodded. “Quite another thing entirely. Why didn’t the necklace work in the office?”
“I don’t think it would work anywhere now. With the doors to purgatory closed, it’s useless. Just a hunk of metal. When the Basilica crumbled, so too did the rune Walestone invoked all those years ago.”
“She’s free to go home now,” Percival said with a small smile. “They all are.”
“Butwe’restill fighting,” Roy snapped. “To survive, to be seen, to be acknowledged as more than just containers of knowledge to be emptied and exploited.”
Percival shook his head. “What are you going on about, darling?”
“The deal, Percival. This new one. That man used us for nearlyfour monthsbecause he didn’t know how to clean the mess he’d made. What were youthinkinggiving him more of our lives?”
“Truly?” Percival asked softly. “I just wanted to get out of that sad, stuffy room so that I could do this.”
Then he clasped Roy’s cheeks, pulled him in, their waists fitting snug against one another, and kissed him with such fervor that Roy stiffened. But as Percival deepened the kiss, the prickles of stubble above his upper lip scratching against Roy’s skin, Roy smiled against Percival’s mouth, powerless to resist.
How could he?Whywould he? It was one of those kisses that, upon the sealing of the lips, made you forget the world and then, upon the parting of the lips, made you remember its countless beauties... and that you were standing before the brightest.
Once he drew back, taking a few moments to catch his breath, Roy encircled Percival’s waist with his arms and kissed his forehead. “A very valid reason. In fact, I strongly endorse this reason.” He traced his thumb across Percival’s jaw. “But I’d still like an answer. Do you think the Governor will hold up his end of the bargain? What if we’re walking into another trap? What if we’re just trading the freedom of the other islands for the freedom of a couple scholars?”
“It mightseemthat way, darling,” Percival said, “but one of the wonderful things about knowledge is that once it’s let loose into the world, it’s practically impossible to fold and tuck back away. The Orphic Basilica housed millions of ideas, and some of us have clung to these despite the years that have passed. Like those ideas, then—while we work on expanding the Law of Intervention for the Governor—we’ll work on getting some others out.”
