“And if we can’t?” Roy argued. “If we don’t find a way?”
Percival shrugged. “Then at least we’ll have had time to meet the other scholars, starting with Briar’s surviving compatriots, out in the open and plan what to do next. I’m sure that navigating this new academic landscape will not be a solitary endeavor.” He winked. “After all, it’s always better to collaborate, no?”
Chuckling, Roy laid his hand on Percival’s chest. “Too true. Though I suppose that, moving forward, that principle won’t beuniversallyapplicable. Our community needs one another, now more than ever, but as for the Droves here, I think the future will be looking very different without the Old Ones around.”
“How so?” Percival asked, pulling himself gently from Roy’s grasp, his gaze once again shifting warily about the courtyard.
“For one thing,” Roy explained, “I know the Matron. And I know that as a commander, hersolemotivation was protecting Northgard from the Old Ones. So now that the enemy has been eliminated, it’s safe to say her honor and her standing as a military leader are far too important to uphold the alliance. The Governor will have to sweeten the deal, make it easier for the Matron to comply, and what could he possibly offer her that she couldn’t just take back on her own? So, for the time being, he won’t have direct control of the Droves—who once bent to his every whim and mandate—and with the strictures against scholarship lifted, she’ll be able to pull all the Droves back to the Iron Citadel.”
“He’s lost,” Percival said. “Without his Blighted soldiers, he doesn’t have his authority. And without his authority, he’s just a bereaved grump. This deal is his only pillar of support, and even if wedoexpand the Law...”
“We’ll still have our people back.”
“Yes,” Percival whispered, his voice turning glum. “If not the library.”
Roy, having already started his own grieving of the library, had been mulling something all this time, though. “But is it truly gone?”
Percival regarded Roy carefully, hopeful but not entirely comprehending. “What do you mean?”
“Well, the catacombs,” Roy said. “It was a necropolis, remember? And much larger than the base of the Orphic Basilica.”
“So we could get in . . .”
“Underground,” Roy finished. “And who knows underground better than a bunch of scholars in hiding? Maybe we’ll be able to dig out enough—andlearnenough—to build it back again.”
Percival grinned. “Let’s get started, then.”
They ambled out of the courtyard, hand in hand. The few remnants of clouds they’d seen before entering the Governor’s office had since dissipated. Tufts of light gray hung in the sky, but with the weather still turning, they were already melting into the great wide blue. A pleasant chill teased the air, though it was barely noticeable beneath the warmth of the sun, which shone bright, freed from its smothering cage of black clouds.
Roy started down the hill on which the Governor’s manor stood, then passed through the opened gates ringing the expansive, snow-speckled property. The complexes, streets, and back alleys of Rasileus, all now flooded with sunlight, sprawled out before him. People emerged from communal shelters—which were ruined nearly beyond repairment by the battle between the ghosts and the undead—and blinked, gaping with varying expressions of amazement. Some civilians wandered helplessly through the lattice of streets as though in a catatonic night terror, their faces dazed and streaked with blood.
A woman was calling out for her son. She screamed and wailed and, amidst her confusion, tripped over the carcass of an Old One. As she struggled to get to her feet, leaving a bloody handprint on the soldier’s chest plate, a ghost materialized before her, the crimson shade of its eyes rapidly disappearing. She accepted the proffered hand, then stared longingly at the ghost’s features. “Jonny?” she whispered. “My... My Jonny, is that you?”
His heart swelling with hope, Roy averted his eyes from the scene, then went still. He hadn’t realized that Percival had left his side until he saw him standing near the mouth of an alley, speaking and laughing with a ghost. Percival nodded at something the ghost had said, then pointed to Roy, who waved while passing Percival a questioning glance.
Owen, Percival mouthed, then went back to his conversation.
Roy folded his arms around himself, smiling.
Well, said a voice from Roy’s left.The Governor may be crooked as they come, but at least he picked out a handsome one for you. That being said, you never told me you fancied blonds, Roy.
Even before Roy faced his sister, his eyes were spilling over with tears. “Briar?” he murmured, suddenly forgetting all about her two-faced carving, buried somewhere in the ruins of the library.
Because she was here.
Aside from her voice, whose sweet sound he could never misplace, it was reasonably difficult to discern Briar’s features. He could see the roundness of her eyes, but not their brown depths. He could see the angular shape of her face, but not the skin or the blue veins running underneath. When she lifted her hands and covered these indefinable characteristics, though, as if embarrassed, the chilling details of her fate came forth: a thick length of rope pulled taut around her neck, her face littered with bruises and footprints.
Roy’s eyes widened. “Briar, what did they—”
I don’t wish to talk about it, Roy, Briar interjected.I don’t want to ruin these last moments with you.
It took everything in him, every lingering trace of self-discipline, not to cry out in frustration and demand from Briar the truth of her murder, no matter how harrowing it was or how much hearing it would hurt him. But he honored her wishes, mostly because he didn’t want them to part on bitter terms.
Even so, I guess we can’t get out of discussing Gabriel, Briar said, her red eyes flashing with an emotion that was hard to parse through the shadows enshrouding her.I saw him, Roy, after you and Percival freed us from purgatory. He was ripping through the Old Ones. His eyes were infernos. His screams sounded like laughter. He was a barbarian, a beast of a man, but I suppose his liberation presented him the chance to do what he did best... and, in some sort of twisted way, redeem himself.
Roy was promptly caught off guard, but he couldn’t find a persuasive argument to support his denial. Gabriel had always demonstrated a streak of sadism when he’d abused Roy, and so Roy found it no hard feat to picture Gabriel soaring through Northgard, cackling and gibbering like a lunatic, slipping beneath the Old Ones’ armor and driving them to sheer insanity from the inside out.
I’m sorry, Briar whispered.Perhaps I should’ve kept my silence.
