Chapter 28 #2
They stood there shivering for a moment—bunched closely together, aimless and confused—then slogged to the left down the slight mound of snow on which the library, lying in ruins behind them, had once been erected.
Percival led the way, despite evidently having as little an understanding of where they were going as Roy.
There hadn’t been any inns or villages on the journey to the Orphic Basilica where they could ask for shelter, from what he could remember, but that had been almost three months ago, and his mind had not been as strong since Briar’s murder.
They walked onward, their boots leaving deep prints in the snow.
Minutes trudged by, then became an hour.
The landscape before them, whose contours and lights had once been hard to define, resolved out of the thick white haze.
The outskirts of Rasileus were still quite far in the distance, but whereas months ago Roy would not have been able to make heads nor tails of it in this weather, now the numerous dwellings of Rasileus were clear.
And as their slow trek resumed, he saw why.
Across the sky, from the isolated patch of snow-packed land solely inhabited by the destructed Orphic Basilica, all the way out to the heart of Rasileus and far beyond, the clouds were thinning—and with amazing speed, too, Roy noted.
The large gray masses drifted away, taking with them the darkness that had cloaked the sky.
A brilliant beam of sunlight, the first which Roy had seen in over three years, sifted through a break in the clouds and illuminated the city in an aureate glow.
Roy had opened a bridge between worlds with a sword of unknown origins, and he still thought that moment paled starkly in comparison to this breathtaking view.
The chill that had stubbornly clung to the breeze disappeared.
There was no menacing bite to the wind, no cold that snuck under the layers of his clothing and seeped into his bones.
Instead, a relieving and much-welcomed warmth hovered in the air.
The snow on his clothes and hair began to melt, and a delightful thin film of sweat gathered on his palms. He brought his hands, clammy from the growing heat, out before him and tipped his head back. Then he grinned at the golden sunlight.
For years, rumors and theories about the beginnings of the snowstorm had floated around the city.
Once, Briar had tattled to Roy that one of her professors at Rasileus Academy thought the unusually long season had somehow spawned from the fumes that emitted from the Governor’s up-and-coming military inventions.
A sign not of foreboding and misfortune, but of success and modernity.
Roy still wasn’t sure on what side of the argument he fell. Science or mysticism? Coincidence or miracle? All he knew was that once the Old Ones had been unmasked, and the ghosts freed, the storm had gone from blizzard to breeze, and now, to breath.
A little while later, Roy and Percival were traversing a small valley covered in still-melting snow when they spotted a sled, drawn by two horses, gliding steadily toward them out of the white haze.
Once it drifted up to them, the sled came to an abrupt halt on Percival’s side.
A Drove was gripping the reins in her black-gloved hands, a harsh scrutiny settling across her freckled face as she considered Roy and Percival.
Roy searched for a hint of the Blight’s red glint in her hazel eyes, but there was nothing there.
They’re gone, he thought. All the Old Ones. And all of the Governor’s undead.
The Drove assessed them a moment longer, squinting, then sat back. “Hop in,” she ordered. “He’s waiting for you.”
* * *
Rasileus and the streets beyond were in a shambles.
Gray mushrooms of smoke billowed out from the remnants of flattened, burnt, and destructed tenements.
The roads were carpeted with blood and scattered with the corpses of the Old Ones and the undead, unarmored Droves—whose ruby eyes had now returned to their normal, albeit lifeless, gaze—and the countless civilians whom they had slaughtered.
Entrails littered the road down which their sled passed, and at one point, the driver had to bellow out of the window for someone to clean the mess.
It was at this instance, when he distinctly heard the squelching of guts being shoveled and dragged across cobblestone, that Roy looked away and had to concentrate on his breathing.
Percival placed a hand on the small of his back, although he appeared equally horrified by the massacre, his face pale and his lips pursed with disgust as though he was trying his hardest not to vomit.
They sat the rest of the way to their destination in tense silence.
When the sled stopped about an hour later, at the tail end of which Roy had fallen into a pleasurable light doze, the Drove sitting opposite the two of them opened the door, then took Roy by the arm and pulled him none too gently out into the dazzling sunlight.
He was still unaccustomed to, and rather startled by, the unforeseen change of weather, so he blinked several times, letting his vision settle.
Percival pulled himself out of the bruising grip of the Drove, who had deposited him beside Roy, and grumbled, “Careful.”
Roy inspected his surroundings. They had been brought past the wrought-iron gates of the Governor’s manor—a large and rambling estate laden with snow, squares of golden lamplight shining from its many windows—and into a courtyard encircled by imposing white limestone walls.
The sled stopped in front of an ascending staircase that led to a pair of teak doors.
They hung open, manned by two Droves, revealing a cramped office whose only furnishings comprised of a cabinet stocked with unrecognizable curiosities and a tidy desk.
Sitting behind this desk, his skeletal, liver-spotted hands folded before him, was the Governor.
“Fuck,” said Percival, taking a step back and giving a panicked, sidelong look to Roy. “Darling, I’m not so sure about this.”
Roy understood his consternation. But just as Percival had convinced him that the loss of the library was ultimately for the good, so now he felt it his job to do the same for Percival.
“Why?” Roy asked. “As you reminded me, we did everything he asked for.”
“But I also said, ‘and more.’ And that ‘more’ stripped away a large part of his power.”
“You’re right, then—without his Blighted, his plans went up in smoke. He has nothing left to gain from us. And it’s not like he has any additional tricks up his sleeve.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because we know his goal,” Roy answered with ringing certainty, “and without the Blighted, there’s little he can threaten us with that would keep us from sharing his vision for Northgard.
” Though even as he said this, Roy acknowledged that he was curious as to how this discussion, whatever it was that the Governor wished to discuss, would proceed.
We’ll find out soon enough.
They entered the little office, Roy first and Percival following cautiously. The Droves posted outside closed the doors shut behind them and enclosed them in the dark space, which was illuminated solely by a dim lamp placed on the corner of the desk.
The Governor regarded them in an uneasy silence.
His complexion had been ghastly three and a half months ago, but it seemed markedly unhealthy now, like something within that short period had accelerated the process.
His sagging skin had a troubling quality.
It was jaundiced in some places and cadaverous in others.
The gaudiness of his bloodshot eyes—truly bloodshot, Roy realized, not infected with the Blight—were appalling in the subdued lighting.
“You did it,” the Governor said, his voice croaky and dry.
“You tore the damn thing down.” Before either of them could think of a response, he asked, “What about the Law? Did you amend it?” He coughed into the side of his fist, dappling it with mucus and blood.
When he repeated his question, his eyes were wide and shining with desperation. “Well, out with it, boys. Did you?”
Roy had been turning over the words spinning through his head, working out how to construct them into an answer, a reasonable justification for their failure to keep up their end of the bargain, but it was Percival who said, “No, we didn’t.
Although in all fairness, we had not anticipated the Orphic Basilica being destroyed so soon, you see.
However, without any of the other scholars currently lying low in Northgard to assist us, we fear that we’ll never be able to help you expand the Law, to spread the city’s political influence over its neighboring nations.
In a way, we did fulfill our part of the deal, not to mention that our releasing the ghosts effectively destroyed the Old Ones, so I believe that should compensate for not having expanded the Law of Intervention yet. ”
All the flimsy arguments Roy had been assembling in his head vanished once he heard Percival’s.
They were all good points, and moreover, they were indisputable, made evident by the efforts the Governor had already acknowledged they’d gone to.
Percival was demonstrating, right in front of the Governor’s eyes, what Roy had told him moments ago: He has nothing left to gain from us.
So now the Governor studied them with heightened suspicion and indecision, his squinted, bleary eyes deepening the wrinkles around them, as though on the hunt for something written between the lines—something which only a continued examination would reveal.
He opened his mouth, and Roy flinched, preparing himself for an interrogation or a beating or worse. He grasped Percival’s forearm.
Then the Governor stumbled to his feet, his face blanching with shock and his attention fastening on the left corner of the office. A faint and familiar silver light illuminated his age-weathered features.