Chapter 10 #3
Roy stared at Councillor Randyll’s purchases, mystified.
For once, the enormity of the assignment did not seem so intimidating.
It was a lot, yes, but when put into the perspective of the mystery of the Old Ones’ hidden identity, he understood.
The history of a secret world lay within his reach, if only he stayed on course.
If this is a game, I’ve finally made the right move.
A wind started up around him. The breeze wove through his hair, twirled about his torso and danced through the gaps between his fingers. He made out, from afar, the susurration of whispers, which steadily grew and then disappeared with the wind.
Roy glanced around. Despite the unmistakable intensity of the wind, there were no windows open in the Observatory.
Nobody else was in the room. He wondered whether this apparently mystical wind was somehow connected to the ghost he’d encountered and, if so, what the connection implied.
Were those voices he’d discerned, held at bay by some sort of unseen barrier, a part of it too?
Disquieted, Roy looked back to the grant.
Black chest plate, country of origin unknown.
No, maybe this wasn’t the Old Ones’ black armor.
Maybe this was yet another half-baked idea for Roy to compile in his notes.
Regardless, Roy scribbled it into his notebook, alongside an addendum referencing the original source.
Because, coincidence or not, it was something.
If the chest plate was a piece of the Old Ones’ armor, there were many possibilities to consider, the most significant being the durability of these soldiers.
Roy theorized, on the basis that he hadn’t heard or read anything on Wynair or Urswaelia before, that the grant had been drafted in an era predating the Age of Scribes.
But perhaps the Elder Scribes simply hadn’t recorded the allied lands in their archives.
Was it possible that the Old Ones’ people, the ancestors of those currently decimating Northgard, dated back thousands of years?
Even longer, maybe? Northgard had existed for millennia, but the Radiant Droves not nearly as long.
Which meant the implications of the Old Ones’ heritage were astounding.
If these soldiers possessed thousands of years of military training, inherited from their forebears, what were the chances that the Droves could even defeat them?
If Randyll had issued this document, then he must have committed some other act of treason that invariably made the Councillor break his promise with his people and, by doing so, betray Wynair.
Maybe Randyll’s request for the black chest plate, potentially wielded by the Old Ones of long ago, had resulted in the current Old Ones wearing the same armor.
But why did he require weapons from two different territories?
Were the borderlands of Tussyk involved in some way in a clandestine three-party allegiance with the Old Ones and Randyll?
Would Tussyk or the Old Ones be sufficiently gullible to join a coalition without moderate benefits?
What, in other words, did Urswaelia get out of such a transaction, and why would Wynair object so vehemently?
There was something larger at play here, something he couldn’t quite yet piece together.
Roy groaned. He had to walk around and stretch out the cramps developing in his wrists and the nape of his neck.
Twelve hours of rigorous research had tightened the muscles in his back and scrambled his thought process.
If he kept pushing himself, Roy knew that he would faint. It had happened before.
Just as he was making to depart the Observatory, though, he felt his attention pulled toward the dust-coated piano in the far-right corner.
On its stand were the notes for an original composition, The Ballad of Queen Genya II, which was described beneath the title as “a restorative, soothing balm for the troubled and the inattentive.”
Roy gaped at the piano, pressure building in the space behind his eyes.
His family owned a piano, located on the second level of Dawnseve Manor, though its principal function had, over time, become a mantelpiece for the Matron’s—and then Gabriel’s—certificates and medallions.
Besides himself, Roy had thought his family seldom played the instrument until one night, to his amazement, he walked in on Gabriel, slouched over the piano and slamming the keys, grimacing as he swung side to side in eerie tandem with the monstrous tide of noise pouring out of the opened lid.
It nearly sounded like a scream being borne away on a cold wind.
Roy had hurried out of the room before Gabriel could notice him.
Before that night, Roy had played piano with the fervor of a dying man, the instrument his elixir, his only way back to health.
He would lose himself in hours of reading, followed by hours of playing, but after seeing Gabriel lost in the music, Roy had drifted away from the piano, too afraid to play, too worried that Gabriel’s influence might seep out of the keys and into his heart.
Now Roy was torn between longing and a bone-deep loss.
He hated Gabriel for playing the instrument, for beating him with the books Roy had ravenously absorbed.
He hated Gabriel’s casually vindictive manipulation, the cold-hearted ease with which he took and twisted the few pleasures Roy had.
But above all, Roy hated himself. He was pointless, hollow.
He had made no true efforts to break the curse laid over him, to wrest control of his own mind and reclaim it from Gabriel’s clutches.
How could he dare take part in wonders like music and literature when it was obvious that he didn’t deserve joy?
He curled his fingers into a fist, not immediately noticing the tears that streaked down his cheeks.
Roy stifled a sob, his vision blurred and his knees buckling, preparing to give out beneath him.
Yet for all that, he pulled out the stool and sat, a great mantle of sorrow splaying out across his shoulders.
He didn’t bother to walk back to the desk and retrieve the book.
It was meaningless, no more consequential than his own existence.
Roy leaned forward and wiped away the dust on the piano with the sleeve of his tailcoat. He studied his reflection, revolted. “I wish you were dead.”