Chapter 9 #2
“What’s there to understand, Percival?” Roy asked.
He tried not to read too deeply into Percival’s words, but he also couldn’t distinguish whether what he felt from them was anger or a confused sort of admiration.
There was something there, to be sure; he just couldn’t make it out, either.
“I want to stop this war from spreading beyond Northgard, I want to find out who the Old Ones are, and I want to use the Basilica to do it. This place is an opportunity to learn more than we could’ve possibly imagined.
That’s all you need to know, isn’t it? What would your game prove that the Governor’s assignment wouldn’t? ”
Percival shook his head, either glum or disappointed.
“You’re looking through the wrong pair of eyes, darling.
We were given an opportunity, yes, but that shouldn’t mean we can’t set some of the rules.
He gave us six months, but maybe the deciding winner shouldn’t be judged within a span of time but by proof. A demonstration of their findings.”
“This is stupid,” Roy said. “This is utterly impractical. Apart from our not knowing when the Old Ones will decimate Northgard, which could be a matter of weeks, not months, I think it’s ludicrous you’ve completely discarded the arrangements originally set out for us.
It’s hard to come to terms with, I know, but the Governor—”
“The Governor doesn’t know what’s best for us,” Percival cut in.
“He doesn’t know what is in our best interest because he’s too preoccupied with his own motivations.
Sure, we might get this done ahead of schedule, but I would rather use the .
. . bond, for a lack of a better term, that we’ve made as momentum than the fear of extinction.
I work best when I am hated, not when I am doomed to die. ”
“I don’t hate you,” Roy said, frowning. “I have no reason to.”
Percival smiled, but it was cold and dismal. “Give it time, darling.”
Roy shifted the conversation back to the topic at hand. “So, you want us to compete in a race. That’s what this game is?”
Percival shrugged. “I suppose so, yes, but anyone can claim they’re a scholar without irrefutable proof of their dedication.
” He mulled this over for a moment. “What about this? Whichever of us first unmasks the Old Ones shall display their findings, with indubitable evidence, in a practical demonstration. That way, there’ll be no question as to who the winner is.
” Roy’s face must have betrayed his suspicion, for Percival poked him in the sternum and said, “Conceding defeat before the game has even begun, are you?”
“No,” Roy said, a tad too austere. “No, it’s only . . . What would this demonstration entail?”
“Whatever befits the winner’s conclusion, but that’s not nearly as important as ensuring the opponent believes the research explained in the demonstration. Which is to say, of course, that this game caters not to liars but to the strong-minded. A battle of wills.”
From somewhere deep within himself, Roy mustered the courage to smile. “Strong-minded, am I?”
Percival rolled his eyes and rubbed the back of his neck with apparent nonchalance, but his cheeks were burning red. “You’re missing my point.”
While Percival cleared the frazzled expression from his face, Roy deliberated upon the proposal offered to him.
Two propositions in as many days, he thought, yet this one seemed somehow more intrinsically tied to his sense of identity than the Governor’s assignment.
This is what I wanted, Roy thought. To prove my worth .
. . But to Percival? Why would I need his approval?
Although Roy knew he would never find it in himself to care for Percival—apart from, maybe, the fleeting flares of attraction his irritatingly striking looks induced—Roy could not repudiate his deeper curiosities.
What could Percival possibly gain from this “race,” as he called it?
Had there been some ultimatum in the Governor’s proposition that Percival was deliberately keeping from Roy?
Or was he simply this obnoxious, this starved for attention and validation?
Roy doubted it. Gabriel had chosen Roy as his victim because he was weak, helpless, a flailing, brittle-winged bird whose dream to fly out of its cage was as lackluster as its ability to retaliate.
Roy had shown none of the physical attributes that Gabriel had attained over the course of his twenty-seven years, and he’d been beaten and bloodied for it.
Percival might not be so cruel as that, but from experience alone, the only guess Roy could hazard as to why this game was so crucial to Percival was that he wanted something from him.
“I don’t know if this is what I want,” Roy said now, and again, hoping it would cement his uncertainty: “I don’t know. I like burying myself under books, not pressure. We have already bent to the Governor’s whims. Why add to the weight?”
“Oh, don’t fight it, darling,” Percival said with tired but not dispassionate exasperation.
He sounded like they’d had this argument many times before.
“I know you like the craving. I know you long for that rush you get when you’re fighting for something you love.
Hell, isn’t that why you’re here? That’s what led me here, at any rate.
A chance to use what I know best, rather than scrabble for freedom in a city where my existence means nothing.
” His voice did not break, but it came quite close.
Roy flexed his hands, fighting the compulsion to reach out for Percival.
“That’s what this little game between us is about, Dawnseve.
You can try to hide it, but that fire in you will never die out. ”
Roy tensed, wanting with all the half-spent strength in his voice to express his denial, to show Percival’s claims were unsubstantiated, but as Roy thought it over, his convictions were not altogether wrong.
Somehow, Percival saw Roy. He knew what he felt, as bone-shakingly frightening as it was to admit, because it was exactly what Percival had experienced in the reading den on their first day in the Orphic Basilica, exactly what Northgard had dissuaded them from feeling: the fire of determination, ignited by academia.
But although Roy and Percival were like-minded, their motivations were far from adjacent.
Percival might’ve even initiated this game to feed his own ego, though Roy suspected that there was something else there inside Percival, a stolen part of himself that he hoped, through this assignment, he could reclaim.
“You can feel it, can’t you?” Percival said.
“I know you can. The Elder Scribes held that same flame in their souls. It was what moved them, pushed them toward the finish line of every novel, every thesis, every report and article and letter.” He shook his head, his features tender and morose.
“Darling, it was never about the obscurities, not the connotations or the contextual background. It was about ambition.”
Percival’s verdict held water. Around two millennia ago—in the middle of the old world, a period of literary enlightenment—Northgard hadn’t yet possessed the military strength to quash the academic community.
But as the years passed, Northgard, the Northgard Roy had grown up in, gained the upper hand.
They built war machines, ranging from vessels to explosives and, eventually, muskets.
They went on weeks-long gruesome campaigns to weed out, publicly condemn, and then eviscerate as many scholars as their weapons could harm.
According to a variety of historical reports Roy had found in Dawnseve Manor, those whose mythical beliefs hadn’t been deeply entrenched had been brainwashed by the Radiant Droves, though the details of these brutal practices were undisclosed.
Then, fifteen years ago, the Governor instituted a systematic raiding and purging of the havens to which those scholars had once flocked.
“Northgard destroyed every single establishment within the Hasdan Isles in which literature was praised,” Percival said, as if to confirm Roy’s historical musings.
He looked around the room, then back to Roy.
“Only this remains. If you ask me, our higher powers were frightened by the impact that scholars might have on their government because the Governor and his precious allies were so worried for their own survival, their own lives, that they spared no time to consider the people they’re supposed to protect. Now what are we?”
Roy whispered, “Ostracized.”
“Condemned.” Percival nodded, licking his lips.
“We are shunned, mocked, and, at the end of the day, killed for what we believe in, for what we think is right. We hide in our holes, hope our secret correspondence isn’t with one of the Governor’s agents”—Roy swallowed at this—“and eke out the existence of our minds. But we can’t help it, can we?
Our ambition is our downfall. We don’t have the privilege to avoid responsibility.
Damn, nobody does in this world anymore, but unlike the rest of Northgard, we aren’t fighters.
” He scoffed. “We aren’t meant to be on the battlefield.
How can we go on like this, Dawnseve? Who would we be if we didn’t defend ourselves?
I don’t want to find out. I’ll give this life, this legacy I made for myself .
. . I’ll give it my all. I’ll make myself heard, loud and clear, just to know that the Governor sees his blunder, where he was at fault for destroying all those precious books.
All those precious minds.” There was such misery in his eyes that Roy felt a chill.
“I need it. Don’t you? Or are you satisfied with this life? ”