Chapter 3 #2
Anxious, Roy could barely keep himself from stumbling; the snow on the soles of his boots had melted, making the stairs slick and glossy.
They were on the second floor now, the deep and heavy silence irregularly broken by Evan’s rasping breaths and Dimestra’s grunts of discontentment.
If there was ever a time to run, Roy realized, it was now; they were losing their focus, they were disoriented.
But he couldn’t deny the truth. He was intrigued.
He could not leave now. He had barely made his foray into the academic community; how could he simply abandon it after being handed an opportunity such as this?
That is your true weakness, Roy. You want to live in a cocoon, safe and protected by those who provide that safety.
Again, he couldn’t help but think that Dimestra had been right. But what was so wrong about wanting to survive? Or had survival in Northgard become something so impossible to imagine that the very act of imagining it was selfish?
Roy staggered into something hard and tall. He stumbled back, rubbing his forehead with the heel of his palm, and realized he had once again stumbled into Evan, who was murmuring to himself, almost spinning in circles with horror.
Strangely disinterested in whatever Evan was experiencing, Roy felt drawn to the balcony.
Once there, he leaned over and saw shadows and hazy sunlight slashing stripes across the red carpet.
Small reading alcoves, in which tables were cluttered with stacks of documents, were scattered throughout the library, and rolling ladders were intermittently placed between the bookshelves.
Then his eye caught on the four balcony railings jutting out like bookmarks. They had made it. They were here.
We’re on the fifth floor.
“Roy,” ordered the Matron, somehow shaping the three letters into a cruel demand.
She clenched her jaw, agitated, like she was restraining herself from scratching at an itch, though she eventually relented and raised a hand to her temples, massaging them.
Between the rapid decline of Evan’s senses and what looked like the Matron’s developing headache, Roy was baffled.
He felt fine, perhaps even saner than before entering the Basilica.
What affliction had so debilitated his companions but had done nothing whatsoever to him?
“Present yourself to the Governor with utmost respect,” she told Roy.
“Remember your station, if only to remember his. A higher power most will not behold.”
Roy took advantage of Dimestra’s confusion, as he didn’t think her capable of violence in her current state, and said, “Likely because he’s too busy shoving children into uniforms and calling them soldiers.”
“Did you hear me?” the Matron hissed. “Are you listening to me?”
“As ever.”
Dimestra gave him a displeased once-over, then turned on her heel, dismissing his dry remark.
They kept walking. To Roy’s left was a glass cabinet occupied by books on wooden stands, and five paces ahead it curved into a small, dark room.
There was a heavy, though remarkably pleasant, scent of spilled ink and parchment pages hanging thick in the air.
Study spaces, fully equipped with lanterns, quills, inkwells, and long-backed armchairs, had been set up about the area.
There came a brief shuffle of movement from the study space tucked into the far-left corner, where sat a hunchbacked elderly man, his white hair pressed back slick across his scalp like a cap.
He wore a pristine cream coat, the lapels covered in a menagerie of swan feathers, and long white trousers that complemented his thick gray boots.
An onyx necklace hung about his throat, glittering dimly where the lamplight struck it.
His eyes, an unnerving shade of bottle green, initially seemed lifeless to Roy .
. . but the longer he looked, the more aware he became of their hidden depths.
“Is this the boy?” the man asked, squinting. There was a feeble smile on his pale, spotted lips. “Come, Roy. Take a seat.”
Roy had expected this man—The Governor, he forced himself to acknowledge—to lunge at him as a predator would do to its prey.
He’d expected to be beaten, to leave this room with a mouth full of blood.
But he was shocked to find the Governor, who appeared well into his eighth decade, looked as powerless and hopeless as Roy himself.
Dimestra crossed over to Roy and grasped his forearm, fingernails biting into his flesh. Her features were cool, inscrutable.
The Governor held up a hand, stopping her.
“Release him, Matron Dimestra. This message is for the boy and the boy alone. Of all people, you should know this. I have given ample thought to the proceedings that shall take place here. Would it not be appropriate that I see these through myself?” He nodded to her, then to Evan.
“Neither of you are required here on this day. You may vacate the premises.”
Dimestra’s grip slackened on Roy’s arm, and he twisted, freeing himself from her clutch.
He looked askance at her, surprised to see a flicker of disbelief cross her face as she regarded the Governor, cocking her head.
“I must confess, Governor, I did not anticipate this turn of events. I considered it my responsibility to administer all aspects of my rule as both a Matron and a commander of Drove squadrons and, as such, would have thought my presence for this discussion necessary.”
While the Governor oversaw the administrative duties of Northgard from his manor, the Radiant Droves operated separately from him.
Some war commanders chose to form alliances with the Governor to win promotions or other privileges, caring more for power and influence rather than directly dissenting scholarship, while others opposed academia and wanted to curry favor with the Governor.
But Matron Dimestra had only ever remained in league with her soldiers, not with Northgard’s ruler, which, to Roy, raised the question of why she wanted so badly to sit in on his meeting with the Governor.
Maybe she believed that she ought to be further compensated for expanding the Governor’s military force.
But why? He had already guaranteed the safety of the aristocracy.
“He is safe in my hands, Matron,” the Governor assured her, an edge creeping into his voice, like a blade under silk.
“Besides, this business is well beyond your area of expertise. I’m as upset about the scholastic nature of Roy’s involvement in the war as you are.
However, what I have planned for your son”—your son; the words so casual, as though Roy and Dimestra weren’t on separate planes of existence—“will push the Old Ones back. Of that, I have no doubt. So, yes, Roy’s safety is guaranteed. ”
Roy didn’t think that his safety was where Dimestra’s concerns lay, though.
Regardless, with nary a thought, Roy’s silent hope—that the Governor might not be of the same mold as the figures he had tried his hardest to avoid—had been extinguished.
Generals, soldiers, Matrons, and Masters; they beat the world black and red and then pitted one against another until loyalties became unclear, impossible to tell apart.
And yet the Governor had the audacity to place a sure bet on Roy’s survival.
Dimestra’s cheeks went red. “Yes, Governor.” She left the alcove, the echo of her muffled bootsteps like a phantom’s fist thudding on a door. Evan followed behind her at a jog, digging his fingers into the side of his head. Roy was still not sure what was wrong with the man.
“Now, then,” the Governor said to Roy, gesturing to the armchair opposite him, “why don’t you take a seat?”