Chapter Twenty-Seven

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Answers mean nothing without the right questions.

—Kirythean proverb

The next week fell into an easy routine. Gabe and Lore would wake up, eat breakfast, and go to the Church library. Then they’d spend hours poring over old manuscripts and bound copies of notes from the years after the Godsfall, Compendiums translated from Eroccan and Kirythean and even old Myroshan, from before Myrosh was subsumed by the Kirythean Empire and the language was outlawed. The mentions of Spiritum, when they found them, were brief. Still, they came every day, looking at the books Malcolm had already procured for Anton, trying to find something to make everything—Bastian, the bodies from the villages, what August and Anton were planning—coalesce into sense.

Their studies included more obscure subjects, too. Namely, texts on the strange things accomplished by channeling elemental power leaked from the minor gods. Someone had made a ship sail faster by using the power of Caeliar; another had managed to make events from dreams mirror in the waking world with the power of Lereal. It made sense that Anton would’ve researched such things, if he suspected that the sudden deaths were due to leftover elemental magic. But nothing in the books resembled what had happened to the villages.

For six days, Malcolm let them work in relative silence, keeping his curious looks to a minimum. When the questions finally came, Lore was surprised it’d taken so long.

“You know,” Malcolm said slowly, “you could just ask Anton what he’s found out.”

Lore froze. Across the library, bent over a book, Gabe did, too.

They’d both known that at some point, they’d either have to come clean to Malcolm or come up with a plausible lie. On that first day, Gabe had conferred with his fellow Presque Mort while Lore looked at the books and told him that they’d rather the Priest Exalted not know of their current project. Lore had tensed, but after a brief moment of silence, Malcolm agreed. He and Gabe were old friends, and from what Lore understood, the librarian wasn’t quite as devoted to Anton as Gabe was. If Gabe was asking him to be discreet, Malcolm knew it was for good reason.

But now, Gabe didn’t move, so Lore made a quick decision. She stood from the bench and stretched out her back, feigning nonchalance. “What exactly is Anton researching, again?”

“He didn’t give me specifics,” Malcolm said, sliding another book from its shelf and giving it a cursory study. He’d given Lore and Gabe a pair of the gloves he always wore, but neither of them were allowed to touch the rarest books even with them on. “He wanted everything with a mention of Spiritum’s practical application brought to him. I assumed he had an idea for how it might be used to counteract the Mortem issue, but since it’s been a couple of months and he hasn’t broached the subject, helping doesn’t seem to be his objective.”

There was something brittle in Malcolm’s voice. Lore slid a look to Gabe; the Presque Mort was looking at his friend with his lips pressed together, a line drawn between his brows.

Malcolm didn’t notice, attention absorbed by his books. He carefully opened the one he’d just retrieved to a certain page and slid it beneath the glass in front of Gabe. Then, removing his gloves so as not to soil them, he retrieved a small watering can from the corner and began carefully tending to the incongruous plants growing along the shelves. “All the references to Apollius granting Spiritum-channeling abilities to the Arceneaux line seem to be metaphor for them being His chosen rulers of Auverraine. No Arceneaux has ever actually channeled Spiritum. It’s all around us, just like Mortem is, but it’s not something that can be grasped.”

“Neither was Mortem, until Nyxara died,” Lore said.

Malcolm pointed at her. “Precisely.” Clearly, he didn’t get many opportunities to debate theories of magic; he seemed nearly giddy at the prospect, his dour manner from earlier forgotten as he finished his plant tending and retrieved his gloves. “So if you subscribe to the idea that Apollius isn’t dead, just waiting in the Shining Realm, it makes sense why no one can use Spiritum. There isn’t a body for it to leak from.”

“If you subscribe to the idea?” Gabe looked up incredulously from the book he’d been reading through the glass.

“You did say your research would be heretical.” Malcolm shrugged, pulling his gloves back on. “I’m just living up to your example.” He gestured with one hand, then the other, indicating one thing following another. “Whoever has the power has to die—or, for the sake of pious sensibilities, we’ll just say experience a change of state—in order for someone else to use it.”

Even with the concession, Gabe didn’t seem terribly pleased by the direction the conversation had taken. With a furrow of his brow so deep it shifted his eye patch, he looked back at his book.

“Now,” Malcolm said, still addressing Lore, “theoretically, you could pull Spiritum from a living thing, much like taking Mortem from a rock or deadwood. But living things cling fiercely to life; they don’t give it up easily.”

Lore wandered over to one of the shelves of books Malcolm actually let her touch, bound copies of lecture notes from the university in Grantere, a smaller city farther north. “I would imagine taking Spiritum from a living thing would leave it dead.”

“That does logically follow, yes,” Gabe said drily.

She ignored him. “And you’d have to pull from something large, like a person or a big animal or a shit-ton of flowers to get enough Spiritum to do anything.” She hadn’t the foggiest what someone might attempt to do with Spiritum, but Mortem wasn’t exactly the most useful thing, either.

“If we follow the theory that it works similarly to Mortem, yes.” Malcolm leaned back against the table, crossed his arms. “But note: No human has ever actually channeled Spiritum, so we don’t really know if it works the same way. This is all conjecture.”

“Then why is it mentioned in the first place?” Lore moved on from the lecture notes and instead grabbed one of the non-rare copies of the Book of Holy Law. She flipped to the notation, memorized now. “The Book of Holy Law, Tract Two Hundred Fourteen. ‘To my chosen, I bequeath my power—Spiritum, the magic of life.’”

Malcolm grinned.

Lore eyed him over the edge of the book’s cover. “You have some fiddly little scholarly fact about this passage, don’t you?”

“Not fiddly, thank you very much, just a translation dispute.” His grin widened. “Tell me; is chosen singular or plural?”

Her mouth opened to answer, then shut with a click of teeth. Lore looked to Gabe; he looked just as confused by the seemingly simple question as she was.

“It can be either, depending on the context. And therein lies the problem.” Malcolm went to the bookshelf, pulling out another copy of the Book of Holy Law. This one was written in Rouskan; he flipped to the same page and pointed out Tract 214. “I don’t suppose you read Rouskan, but they have slightly different variations on the spelling for their equivalent of chosen, one singular and one plural. This copy was translated just after Apollius disappeared—the translator would’ve gotten the dictated passages from Gerard Arceneaux himself.” He tapped the word on the page. “And he used the singular spelling for chosen.”

Gabe got up from the bench, came around to look at the Rouskan translation. “Was the singular translation only in Rouskan?”

“All languages that have separate spellings of chosen to denote singular and plural went for the singular option until about 16 AGF—so fifteen years after Apollius disappeared, right in the middle of Gerard Arceneaux’s reign.” Malcolm was off and running, now, pulling other copies of the Book of Holy Law from the shelves and turning to Tract 214 in all of them, littering the table. “At that point, all translations swapped over to the plural spelling.”

“It’s a sin to change the words of Apollius.” Gabe leaned over and braced his hands on the table, peering at the books like he could make them confess something.

“Sounds like Apollius should’ve chosen His words a bit more carefully, then,” Lore muttered.

Gabe straightened. “Hmm.”

“So if it was meant to be singular,” Lore said, “that would mean that instead of all the Arceneaux line having the ability to channel Spiritum, it’d be only one of them.”

Malcolm nodded. “That’s the same conclusion Anton came to.”

The mention of the Priest Exalted made the air heavier.

The librarian stared at them a moment, dark eyes glinting with curiosity. When he spoke, it was quiet, and with the air of something decided. “Do you want to see the most recent book we acquired? I had to send for it from Grantere, after August specifically requested that Anton find it.”

“Malcolm—” Gabe started, but the other man held up a gloved hand.

“Things have been rotten for a while, Gabe.” The teasing excitement he’d had while talking about translations was gone now; Malcolm sounded resigned. Sad, like someone coming to terms with a fact they’d long suspected but tried to ignore. “Anton and August are clearly keeping secrets, and Anton trapped you in the Citadel when he knew it was the last place you wanted to be. Between that and the research he’s doing—not just about Spiritum, but about Mortem and how it can be manipulated—I’m not convinced he’s who I want to be following.”

Gabe was stricken silent. They’d all skirted close to heresy in here, but Malcolm’s words came the closest of them all.

“Not that I necessarily want to be following you two on whatever harebrained quest you’re on, either,” Malcolm said wryly, “but I have a… a feeling, I guess. Something is changing, and I want to be part of changing it.”

Neither Lore nor Gabe knew what to say to that. But after a moment, Gabe reached out and clapped the other man on the shoulder. He kept silent, and looked troubled, almost afraid.

Malcolm returned the gesture, then turned to the cabinet where the rarest volumes were kept. “Let me find that book. It might shed some light.”

Next to Lore, Gabe crossed his arms, face drawn and pensive. Lore tapped her fingers on the tabletop. “You said Anton was looking into Mortem, too? What about it?”

“Awful stuff,” Malcolm said softly. “Reports on the necromancers, back in the first years after the Godsfall. Apparently, the ability to raise the dead wasn’t about how much Mortem they could channel, but how they manipulated the Mortem that they could. And others worked in pairs—one to raise the dead, the other to control them, through some complicated channeling ritual.”

Lore frowned and twisted at one of the ribbons on her sleeve. She’d worn a new gown today, a powder-blue number with short puffs of fabric covering her shoulders, the ribbons that gathered the sleeve trailing down the backs of her arms. They itched.

Malcolm frowned, opening and closing another drawer. “Dammit,” he muttered under his breath. “It’s on transubstantiation, so I would definitely have put it in this drawer, not the one up top…”

“Would you happen to be looking for Theories on the Physical Practice of Transubstantiation by Etienne D’Arcy?” Bastian asked. “Because I have it right here.”

Lore’s head whipped around so fast her neck creaked.

The Sun Prince of Auverraine stood just inside the door to the library, one shoulder leaning against the jamb. He held a large leather-bound book in his hands, absently riffling the pages back and forth, mindless of their age and value. A guileless half smile lit one corner of his mouth, but his eyes glittered darkly in the dim light.

Malcolm recovered first, the sight of a book being manhandled taking precedence over everything else. “Careful!” He rushed to Bastian and took the book from his hands, too delicately to be snatching, but close. “This thing is at least two hundred years old.”

“Explains the smell.” Bastian relinquished the book without protest, tucking his hands in his pockets and strolling casually to the table where Gabe and Lore sat. Lore eyed him like a mouse would a cat, but Gabe just tensed up, rigid as the glass in front of them.

“Normally, I would be upset that you two didn’t invite me along,” Bastian said, apparently unconcerned with Malcolm’s presence. “But as it stands, I had my own research to conduct. Thus the book.”

“How did you get in here to take it?” The rush of saving the book from the prince’s flippant hands was wearing off; Malcolm didn’t look nervous, exactly, but his face had drawn into wary lines. “The door is always locked—”

“Ignoring the fact that I can get any key I please,” Bastian interrupted, “I wasn’t the one who took the book from the library. I found it in my father’s study.” He cocked his head toward Malcolm. “And if you think I was mistreating it, you should’ve seen what he was doing. He’d left it open and weighted down the pages with a wineglass to keep it that way.”

“Bleeding God.” Malcolm hurriedly flipped the book over in his hands to inspect the spine.

Bastian turned back to Gabe and Lore, his eyes sliding from one of them to the other. “Now,” he murmured, “do either of you know why my father was studying transubstantiation? I doubt he could even spell it, so I assume Anton gave him the book, which means it probably has something to do with the villages, and possibly with trying to frame me.”

“Are you sure you want to do this here?” Lore kept her voice low and jerked her chin toward Malcolm, currently preoccupied with cataloging book damage.

“Oh, right.” Bastian straightened, turned to the librarian. “Hate to do this, Malcolm, but needs must: Gabe and Lore are working for me, now, because it seems my father and my uncle want to blame me for the deaths of the villages and frame me as a Kirythean spy. Congratulations, you’re part of it now. Breathe a word and all three of you can catch the next ship to the Burnt Isles.”

Malcolm froze, the book at an awkward angle in his hands. Blinked. “Well,” he said after a moment. “Thanks for telling me.”

“Anytime.” Bastian planted his hands on the table again, leaned over the glass. “Back to my question.”

“We have no idea,” Gabe gritted out through his teeth. “We’ve been in here for a week, researching Spiritum, because—”

Lore’s eyes darted his way, quick and panicked.

“Because we thought it might hold some kind of clue about the villages,” he continued smoothly. “We hadn’t even discussed transubstantiation—whatever it is—until right before you showed up.”

“It was my idea.” Malcolm walked over to them, holding the book gingerly in his gloved hands. He eyed Bastian’s bare palms, made a face, pulled another pair of gloves from his pocket and thrust them at the prince. “My library, my rules. Put on some damn gloves.”

Arching a brow, Bastian obeyed. “Elaborate, please,” he said as he worked his fingers into too-small white cotton.

There was only a flicker of hesitation in Malcolm’s eyes before he sighed, opening the glass and sliding the book beneath it, flipping to a certain page. “We were discussing how in some earlier translations of the Compendium, the verses about the Arceneaux line channeling Spiritum use the singular chosen. As in, only one chosen Arceneaux could actually do it.”

“That’d explain why none of us ever have,” Bastian said. “But not what transubstantiation has to do with anything. Or even what it is, really.” He tapped the glass over the book. “This thing was not written with a layperson in mind.”

“Transubstantiation is essentially having one thing stand in for another.” Malcolm leaned forward, peering at the book. “Or, as D’Arcy puts it, ‘the spiritual overcoming the physical to the point where the physical is changed.’”

“What does that have to do with Spiritum?” Lore mimicked Malcolm, leaning over the glass and squinting at the tiny words on the page. They all seemed to have more syllables than they should, and the flourishing hand dissolved into squiggles before she could make sense of it.

“By definition alone, nothing,” Malcolm answered. “And scientifically, no one gives the idea much credence. It’s not meant to be taken literally. But Anton desperately wanted me to find this book, and since everything else he’s been looking into lately has to do with Spiritum, I assume he’s found a connection between the two.”

Gabe frowned, crinkling his brow above his eye patch. Every mention of the Priest Exalted’s name seemed to set him on edge.

“So what we have so far,” Lore said, holding up a finger for each point, “is that the ability to channel Spiritum might be held by only one Arceneaux—we have no idea who—and the fact that Anton is looking into bunk science that says you can physically change something if you… what? Believe it hard enough?”

“That about sums it up,” Malcolm agreed.

They fell into silence. Then Bastian straightened, crossing his arms. “It makes perfect sense to me.”

Lore crossed her arms, too, like it was a challenge. “How so?”

“One Arceneaux can control Spiritum. The power of life. My father was looking into how he could make himself into that one Arceneaux.” Bastian shrugged. “The last desperate attempt of a dying man to save himself.”

They stared at the Sun Prince. The Sun Prince stared back.

Gabe was the one who managed to speak. “You mean…”

“Oh, right, I forgot to tell you.” Bastian pushed his hair away from his face. “August is dying.”