Chapter 22
They sat staring at one another for an interminable length of time, their eyes nearly bulging out of their sockets as they took in the magnitude of their discovery. Then, all at once, it clicked into place.
They blurted out their conclusions simultaneously:
“The Governor—”
“The Old Ones—”
“You start,” Roy insisted.
“No, go on, darling,” Percival said. His eyes widened. “The implications, Roy—”
Roy nodded enthusiastically. “I know, I know. All right, one moment. Let me get my thoughts into some sort of order.”
But where to start? There was a heap of questions unanswered, a profusion of theories unconfirmed.
Foremost, though: what kind of affliction was the Blight?
Was it a disease? A result of prolonged exposure to trauma?
Some sort of magic (which, despite what he’d experienced for close to three months, Roy was still loath to acknowledge, since “magic” was what small minds pointed to when they couldn’t find the real cause)?
Roy stood up and paced in front of Percival to keep his mind working, all the while crossing his arms to stop them from trembling. Finally, he started with what he truly knew:
“I have seen one of the Blighted Droves before.”
“Yes?” Percival said, excitement and fear warring with each other in his voice.
“Yes. When I was escorted to the Basilica. At the time I thought her eyes were bloodshot, but in hindsight . . . it’s completely possible she could have been Blighted.
She had this crazed way about her, like .
. . like she’d lost her mind.” Lost it? he thought.
Or had it stolen from her? “I think I dismissed it because the Droves have always loved violence and madness. It makes them feel bigger. Superior. Gabriel felt this way, too.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning that this isn’t something new to them.”
“And yet perhaps this is something more,” Percival said.
He pondered for a minute. “Perhaps the Old Ones see their own advantage in that sort of attitude, so they target people like Gregori—like the Drove you saw on the streets—those who voluntarily, eagerly, fall in line with the Radiant Droves’ ethos.
They’re young. They’re untested. They believe that they are the new and improved order, soaring on the coattails of the grizzled and experienced, if only so they can eventually surpass the veterans.
Wouldn’t the Old Ones target them? Such recklessness—and such disregard for innovation—would make for perfect soldiers. ”
Something about what Percival said there made Roy pause. Not so much what the Old Ones were doing, but who they were doing it to. And yet, paradoxically, exactly what they were doing.
The Old Ones kill, Roy thought. That’s what they do. They don’t discriminate, and they don’t hesitate. They attack, and they conquer.
They are, in fact, the perfect soldiers.
Roy’s eyes widened. “Percival, you’re right. Recklessness does make for good soldiers, and that’s exactly where the Governor comes in: the unarmored, Blighted Droves. And that’s what makes them his perfect soldiers.” As soon as he uttered this realization, another struck him.
Dimestra had said something to the Governor before his first meeting with Roy. 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.
“The Matron,” Roy said. “She told me months ago that she’d supplied him with more soldiers and, in exchange for her contribution, she requested the security of the aristocracy.
But she never knew the truth—not about the Old Ones, and therefore not about precisely who she’d ordered to watch over Briar. ”
Percival rested his forearms on the desk, a crease between his brows. “Wait a moment. ‘His perfect soldiers’? What do you mean? Whose soldiers?”
“By the Scribes! Who else, Percival?”
“The Governor?”
“Exactly! He benefits from this war, and the undead creatures it’s made of his soldiers—some of which were once under the Matron’s command—because he has them under his thrall,” Roy explained, a myriad of interlinked realizations whipping through his head.
“All of them. I don’t know if it’s the oaths they take or some natural affinity to him as their leader, since he basically stole them from the Radiant Droves’ leadership, but for whatever reason, the Blight isn’t swelling the ranks of the Old Ones.
It is, however, expanding his own personal death squad.
Which in turn means he doesn’t need to feed the lower class.
He doesn’t need their support. He doesn’t need what they could provide, because none of it aids him.
The storm winds will keep on blowing, the people will keep on eating each other, and he will still have his muskets, his Burrow, and his Droves, these glassy-eyed resurrected soldiers.
And probably more and more of them, it appears, as the bodies pile up.
I’m sure the only reason he cares about the cannibalism—the only reason he eventually reopened the pass—is because he was worried he’d be losing out on more soldiers for his command.
Remember what Farrek said about there being a shortage of bodies after the massacre?
The Governor must’ve carted them away and used them.
He’s completely content with all this, and not only with these cogs churning, but two others. ”
“Us,” Percival whispered.
“He has us here, beavering away at this mystery,” Roy said. “So that when he does have a big enough force of resurrected Droves, he can banish the rival army that’s laying siege to us.”
“Which he must believe will happen in roughly three months,” Percival surmised.
Roy nodded. “At which point, the moment we deliver the key to the shackles which are the Old Ones, we are through.”
“And should we not,” Percival added, “then he picks two more of us from those still hidden.”
“Until he has no use for scholars anymore—and an army that he is no longer beholden to the Iron Citadel for, to hunt us down.” Roy could almost see it: hundreds of thousands of red-eyed conquerors, hunting down those whose only interest was to find and share the truth; the darkness of the Old Ones’ armor replaced with the darkness of the Governor’s iron rule.
“These are our people, Percival. Or, at least, they should be our people. We can’t let this happen.
Our time here has shown me just how much we can accomplish if we’re not hidden away in warrens and immolated bookshops, hoping for a bit of correspondence that will bolster or refute our theories.
The Old Ones are proof of how unthinking brutes are the antithesis of an enlightened society.
That’s what the Governor is looking to create, only under his terms.
“We need to offer him something that he cannot refuse, then. And in return . . . we will make him guarantee our people’s safety, that those who have survived will be permanently exempt from the hand they’ve been dealt.
That scholarship will live, so that the next time something like the Old Ones approaches our island, there will be those with the proper tools to stop them. ”
“And how do you propose to do that?” Percival asked. “Negotiate with him? When are we supposed to do that—when our six months are up?”
“Yes. We withhold what we discover until he agrees.”
“And if we don’t discover anything?”
“Then we’re sealed for death anyway, no?” Roy said matter-of-factly.
Percival was silent at that, and they looked at each other for a moment, thoughtful.
Then Percival said, “We must keep what we know about the Blighted quiet, then, yes?”
“For certain. That might be our only source of leverage besides what we find to fight and hopefully remove the Old Ones. I’m not sure we can trust him to honor his word without having the threat of exposure in our pockets.
” When he saw the incredulity on Percival’s face, Roy added, “Look, I’m not suggesting that the Governor is our ally or in any way honorable.
But he’s the one in power, so what choices do we have? Let’s see.”
Roy ticked off a finger with each point:
“One: We give him nothing. We die. The other scholars die. Briar and the rest of Northgard dies, at either his hands or the Old Ones’.
“Two: we give him everything we know, including what we’ve learned about the Old Ones, and he takes that information to further his own goals. You and I probably die. The scholars probably die. Northgard is under his authoritarian thumb while the people are under the undead boots of his Blighted.
“Three: we at least try to find a better deal for us. For the scholars. And for Northgard.” He lowered his hand and looked up. “Percival, I don’t think there is really a choice at all.”
After a moment, Percival observed, “You have given this a lot of thought.”
Roy shrugged. “We’ve both had the pleasure of meeting him. I’ve just been looking at every choice we could make since then.”
“And you think when he is given a choice, he’ll be amenable?” Percival asked, raising an eyebrow.
Roy frowned. “Well, we know he’ll do anything to make this difficult.”
“So what more can he threaten us with?”
Roy instantly comprehended what Percival was intimating. “You mean, when he counters, what else do we have to give him?”
“What else beyond exposing his army of Blighted Droves. Because, while damaging, it’s not exactly something we can prove. It needs to be something tangible.”
“Right. It needs to be a sacrifice. For us. Something that will appease the Governor and his hard-liners, while convincing him that he still needs our intellect. And not just you and I, but all the scholars.”
“You talk about the scholars like they aren’t already on the verge of extinction. How can we save something that’s almost dead?”
“Because they aren’t all dead—not yet. A community is a people, not a building.” Roy sighed. “And more and more, I’m convinced we’ll need them at the end of this investigation. For the aftermath, so that Northgard can have a future.”
“Fine, I’m convinced it’s worthwhile. But it still begs the question—”
“What would both appeal to him and keep the remaining academics in Northgard protected?” Roy finished, his heart thrumming at the pensive look on Percival’s face, at how he looked around at the library at the same time as Roy.
Somehow, their thoughts had aligned. That they were even considering something so horrific, so profane, stunned Roy.
Not a building . . .
It was Percival who said it. “We’ll find a way to bring the Basilica down.
Our community, or whoever among them has escaped persecution, might—will—shun us.
” His eyes went hazy, as though he was dredging up some lost memory.
Roy wondered if he was thinking of his fallen friend, the friend whose death had somehow led Percival here. “But at least they’ll live on.”
A maelstrom of stifled wails and whispers uncoiled from the rafters, springing back and forth.
I’m sorry, Roy thought, his throat thick with tears, but he couldn’t conceive of any other way to help the Governor see Northgard’s situation from the eyes of the old world.
The souls imprisoned in the Basilica might not live on, if this was what living after death was, but Roy longed to see Northgard free of disorder.
Perhaps then, he could find a place for himself—he might at least have the right to argue his case to the other scholars—but now, the dream of belonging seemed worlds away.
Instead, he could only see the nightmare of what the decimation of the Orphic Basilica would render and how it would mark him as a traitor, a heretic.
Better it be my nightmare than a whole country’s.
At least, that was what he needed to tell himself in this moment.
As though in the same predicament, Percival looked deeply into Roy’s eyes, asking him something.
Not a word needed to be said. Roy heard the question clearly: Do you want the library to live or Northgard?
Or Briar?
The answer was simple. A community was its people, and people were always the answer. If he had a chance to save as many as he could at the cost of these stones, these spirits, these books, and all the mysteries waiting to be solved within them, then he would take it.
Now Roy only had to wait for that very opportunity.