Chapter 21
The following afternoon, while Roy and Percival had their heads buried in their work, still recuperating from the knowledge that Atticus Walestone—one of the Elder Scribes and, apparently, the secret identity of Razkamun—was haunting the Orphic Basilica, a series of piercingly loud knocks came from one of the lower floors.
Percival jerked upright, the side of his raised left hand stained with ink, and blinked at Roy with befuddlement.
The rapping knocks came again, louder and with heightening urgency.
Roy bolted to his feet, not noticing how sweaty he was until he tied his gown tighter around his waist. Dots of perspiration were beading on the backs of his hands and running down the nape of his neck.
Percival dropped his quill, which he’d been gripping tightly, then stood and rushed over to the balcony at the other side of the room. He peered over the railing, dragging one hand down his face and clenching the railing with the other.
A sickening but nameless premonition rising inside him, Roy joined Percival, too aware of the bare inches of distance between them.
Again, the rapping sounded, pounding and hammering with increasing frequency, advancing closer like doom on swift wings, and it was only then that Roy realized it was coming from the double front doors. They were trembling in their frames, shaking from the force of the fists thudding against them.
Someone had come to the Orphic Basilica.
“The Governor,” Percival stammered. “He and his Droves must have come for their third supply drop. They’re a tad late, don’t you think?”
“The storm has gotten worse since its last respite,” Roy said. He’d suspected, feared, that this would happen when he’d looked out the window in the hallway leading to the Museum of the Elder Scribes. “It probably delayed their journey.”
“By a week, though?” Percival asked, skeptical.
Roy gulped. Why else would the Governor have visited, though?
Had he uncovered something that might delay or expediate their investigation?
Had he possibly recruited another scholar to assist them?
Then he recollected what the Governor had stated in his letter to the Dawnseves, which seemed like years ago.
This mission is of utmost importance, he’d warned.
If any individual whose involvement I have not sanctioned were to become aware of this assignment—including the maids and butlers in your employ, who are not to spread word of Roy’s task—or interfere with it, it would be considered a breach of the Law of Intervention . . .
Roy asked now, “What do we do, Percival?”
Percival glowered. “Leave the one man legally allowed to kill us out in the snow, clearly.” He shook his head and started toward the staircase on their right. “Honestly, Dawnseve, you’d think you would’ve grown some brains by now.”
When they got to the first floor, Percival hastened toward the entryway and hauled open the door.
A blizzard of snow and gale-force wind whirled inside, and Roy raised an arm over his face, peering at the scene before him through the gaps between his fingers.
Percival tightened his grip on the door handle, hissing out clouds of white breath between his teeth, but fortunately the door was more than heavy enough to stop from slamming open and striking him to the ground.
He was standing just before the threshold now, and ahead of him, Roy spied a solitary figure upon the doorstep.
As he came forward, he saw it was a Citadel emissary.
A scarlet-haired woman, in her late thirties if Roy was forced to guess, she was dressed in the same green felt cap and white military coat as had been worn by the mustachioed man who’d accompanied Matron Dawnseve.
That was where the resemblances ended, though.
She looked frightened, in contrast to her dreadfully stern counterpart, the lashes of her round brown eyes speckled with frost. She was holding something out to Percival.
An envelope that had been folded two or three times over, Roy realized.
“Take it,” the woman said, sharp and urgent.
She thrust out the envelope to Percival, who fetched it from her trembling, black-gloved hand with a disbelieving expression.
She stared at him a moment, then grasped his spare hand in both of hers.
She looked from Percival to Roy, then back to Percival.
“Tell not a soul I was here. Please, I beg of you.” Her voice broke, and tears sprang to her eyes.
“I beg of you, boys, for the sake of my wife and our son. Tell not a soul!”
Percival gawked at the woman, then down at their joined hands, speechless.
Uncertain what he was agreeing to, Roy stepped forward and intervened, reassuring the woman, “Not a soul and not a word. That I promise you.”
The woman let go of Percival’s hand with a cry of relief.
“Oh, bless you. Bless you to the Above.” She sniffled and glanced behind her, down at the foot of the steps.
There, the horse she had ridden in on—equipped with winter riding gear—was stamping impatiently at the snowy ground.
She looked back at them. “I’d best be off.
It’s quiet around here, but I’d wager it won’t stay that way for long.
” She adjusted the cap atop her head, which had gone askew while talking with them, then started back down to her horse.
Still too bewildered to speak, Percival reached for the door. He stopped, though, as the woman suddenly turned around.
“The envelope!” she called up to them, pointing at it feverishly.
“I’m afraid it’s taken a bit of a trek in my satchel, so I’m dearly sorry if any of the message is smudged, but I hope her words will read all right.
” Then she jogged down the steps, tightening the straps attached to the sides of her felt cap, mounted her horse, and cantered off into the snow.
* * *
Seated at opposite ends of Roy’s desk, which he had cleared of its clutter of manuscripts and inkwells and other research paraphernalia, Roy and Percival gawked at the envelope before them with breathless anticipation.
The upper left corner was damp and leaving faint tracks on the table, the lower right creased from the indentations left behind by the Citadel emissary’s thumb and forefinger.
Everything had fallen deathly quiet and still, as though the world were encased in amber.
Roy waited for the library to recognize the letter and the advent of whatever development its arrival implied, for the wind to stir through his hair.
But the air was so stale, so cold. He tried to steady his breathing and, when that did not work, to force himself to retrieve the envelope and open it. But he couldn’t move.
“Who was that, darling?” Percival asked. He had not taken his eyes off the letter since he’d put it on Roy’s desk.
Roy shook his head absently but somehow found the strength to reply, “She must have been sent by the Governor. Perhaps he’s . . . he’s preoccupied or—”
“She was trembling, Roy,” Percival said, exasperated, “and you know damn well it wasn’t from the cold. Did you see her eyes? There was fear there. True fear.”
Roy scrambled for a rational explanation, but nothing sounded right in his head. “Maybe the Governor did assign her to some duty, but she disobeyed his orders.” Something came to him. “She could be a scholar in hiding.”
Percival shook his head this time, either disoriented or not completely convinced. “Who could this other woman she mentioned be, then?” He paused, ruminating. “‘I hope her words read all right,’ is what I think she said.”
A confusion of speculations swirled through Roy’s head, but as he observed the envelope again, he realized that when you came down to it, there was no point in guessing.
This was to be his and Percival’s first contact with the world outside the Orphic Basilica’s walls, aside from the Governor and his Droves, in over two months.
In this moment, it didn’t matter who the sender of the letter was.
It might as well be Dimestra or the emissary’s wife or the Governor’s seamstress.
What was important here was that this person could become their correspondent, a crystal ball Roy and Percival could use to inspect the goings-on of Northgard.
“I suppose there’s only one way to find out,” Roy said. He removed his hands, which were shaking with trepidation, from his lap, then picked up the envelope, tore open the flap, and removed the contents.
Inside of the envelope were four sheets of parchment.
The first had a note on it, which began with Read first. But the next three were filled with delicate, slanted handwriting.
He recognized the penmanship immediately.
He had helped improve it, had looked over the shoulder of the writer every time, much to her constant annoyance, and pointed out even the smallest slipups.
Roy pressed the back of his hand over his mouth, stifling a sob. “Briar.”
Percival, noticeably more intrigued, stood up from his wing-backed chair and dragged it over next to Roy, who shuffled aside and slid the letter over so Percival could better see it. “Your sister?”
Roy nodded.
Percival proceeded to read the letter, his eyes wide, as though hardly believing what he was seeing.
Read first:
Apologies if I gave either of you a fright.
I suppose I should introduce myself. I’m Tessa Ardwell, the professor for Introduction to Governorship at Rasileus Academy.
But primarily, I’m a dedicated old-world enthusiast. Roy: when Briar got in contact with me through Irene, who you’ll learn about in your sister’s letter shortly, she told me about your investigation.
I readily agreed to supply you with information pertinent to your cause.