The arches over the doors bore the sacred designs and tenants etched into their gentle undulations. Able forgot himself and craned his neck after them as he followed the general's aide through the towering hallways of the Royal Archives. Chessie was better at remembering her dignity but did stall at least once when a stained glass window painted her in amber, green, and purple.
The aide stopped beside one of the doors and curtly announced, "Naval Archives." He then began to unlock it without attempting discretion. Small wonder, as the three mechanisms that he was manipulating would surely give even Wren Holdfast trouble. The iron-bound door was the height of two men, yet it swung open without a sound.
Able held up the lantern he'd been given so its warm glow glinted off the marble floor inside. He stepped over the threshold with Chessie at his heels.
"You have four hours," the aide reminded them then swung the door closed. That was not silent at all, and as the echoes of the slam faded down the hall, the clicks of the locks going back into place resounded inside the room.
Able Houser, son of a dead fisherman, was locked inside the Royal Archives. Shamelessly, he raised the lantern higher and took a minute just to savor this. Rows of bookcases stood like soldiers in formation before them, and the shelves lining the walls answered their stance. The bas reliefs that ran about the crown of the chamber were even nautical themed, of ships and waves and the cardinal directions.
Chessie wandered over to the closest shelf and pulled out an ancient text, the parchment curling. Able nearly hissed at her to be careful with it even though she was clearly being just that. She was frowning in understandable confusion. "What is this writing?"
"Bantara." Able smiled a touch as he joined her. "In old Larbantry, this is how the nobles, scholars, and especially the clergy wrote. Because the knowledge of it was so exclusive, it didn't stand a chance when the Merchant Court adopted and spread the Dagobari alphabet. But the elite found that a boon, I think, as it remained something of a secret script while literacy became more common. All the royal records are kept in it, all royal edicts written in it, another boon, I think, as it adds an aura of reverence to the whole business. Most people only see Bantara used in the Books of the Prophets, you see."
"And you can read it?"
"Of course."
"So you've read them, these books the Prophets wrote?" She really would not let that be, would she?
"...long time ago, but yes."
"And?"
Able ran his hand over his face then looked back at the door. He scratched his head and mumbled, "You sure are curious about them, aren't you?" Of course she was. They threatened her existence. He should understand that.
"And you're awful skittish about them," she replied with a raised eyebrow. "Why?" Was she really going to insist they do this here? In the very heart of Larbantry? Although that was his own damn fault at this point.
Able gently took the parchment from her hand and replaced it on the shelf. He then motioned for her to follow him away from the door and into the blue light the windows cast across the back of the room. Iron frames filled in with glass to mimic the seas, the effect broken by the crisscrossed shadows of the iron bars beyond them. One of the safest rooms in one of the most secure places in the world.
"Able, you're trembling."
"Because what you're trying to get me to tell you is...most lightly put, illegal." He set the lantern on the closest of the two worktables then set Constance Driver's record file beside it.
"I'm sure we've already done a lot of illegal together," Chessie said from behind him.
"No, not especially." Able sat before his knees got any weaker. He took a breath then looked up to take in her concerned frown. Maybe he was overreacting. Still, he glanced about the shadowy corners of the ceiling.
"We are alone," she said in that certain voice of hers.
"I'm not meant to think so," he replied wryly. "That's the problem."
She only frowned at that.
Able leaned on the worktable. "There...there was, in fact, a first prophet. Nothing in this whole building predates him. We—that is our historians—don't know much about what there was before his time. Allegedly those ancients were not interested in keeping records. That...could be true."
Quietly, as though to avoid startling a mouse, Chessie half-sat on the edge of the table.
"Peerless, he was later named, though he wrote what we call the Book of the Pariah." Able realized he was chewing his thumbnail. Goodness, he hadn't done that since...well at least in a decade? "He was the one who introduced the people to God, see. God spoke directly to him, an honor few earn. At first he was cast out, called crazy, and then deeply feared as what he predicted came true.
"But, of course that earned him followers. Devotees. Eventually an army that united the people called Larbants. He wrote about the transcendent experience he had while he was banished. Wrote about how God had revealed to him how a righteous society would be ordered and function. Wrote out our first laws..." Able shuddered and tried to catch his breath. He felt like he'd run a marathon, and he hadn't even said it yet.
Best get it over with? "He'd...he'd built a nation with just his words. And then he left his progeny in monarchical power while demanding all future clergy be celibate. I thought that was interesting. I'm ten—well maybe eleven? Somewhere in there, and I'm reading this for the first time and my first thought is...is he made this up." Able covered his face with his hands. He might have admitted that once before, to a fellow classmate when they'd been drinking together. Neither of them had been sure which of them had said it in the morning. Neither of them were going to say it again.
"What's so troubling about that?" the Borealunder asked. This must all seem so alien to her.
"That's not what I was supposed to think, Chessie. Growing up here, I knew that. I knew that even as I thought it. That heathen people like you are bad enough, but godless ones?" Able shook his head then let it fall back with a sigh. "Heathens are only ignorant. They can be taught the truth. But those who do the unthinkable and deny the existence of a god at all? They are amoral blasphemers who cannot be tolerated by any righteous society."
"...so you kept quiet?" Chessie was not looking at him. Not staring with that unsettling gaze of hers. Maybe that was her way of being comforting?
"I did," Able said, then set his elbows on the table. "But...even then, it frightened me. If I was wrong, if this god that saw and knew everything told one of his chosen priests what I was thinking...would they take me away to the Halls of Correction? Of course, then that looked to me like a perfect psychological tool to control a populace, which again, what if this god really could tell a priest I thought that? You...probably know me well enough to imagine what sort of mental mazes I made of that, huh?" He flashed her a weak smile.
Chessie turned to meet his gaze and nodded emphatically but lightly with raised eyebrows. "How did you get out?"
"There were others in the university. No one foolish enough to say it, but I could see it in their faces. The patient tongue-biting of professors when especially devout students objected to their teachings. 'Yes, of course, you're right,' they'd say. When any other objection would be met with reasoning. I read the Dagobari authors they were reading, the ones who explained their thinking and showed their findings...I suppose you could say I found my own prophets."
Chessie was staring up at the windows and perhaps even into the sky far behind them. "But none of you could talk about it with one another? At least not without risk?"
"Not plainly, no, but the skeptics among us found ways to discuss it obliquely. Though I think most were not so, hm, certain as I became."
"Certain that all this was wrong?"
"Oh no, I wouldn't..." Able paused to catch his startled breath and found himself meeting Chessie's eyes. Just a normal human gaze. "Wouldn't go that far. I became certain there's no spy in the heavens, but...without it, without this elaborate machine, do you get a civilization like this?" He waved his hand overhead, to the ceiling, the whole palace, the beating heart serving a billion souls across thousands of miles of landscape. "Most Larbants find it comforting. Who am I to call it wrong?"
"Someone who suffered for it." So plain, her tone. So easy.
Only so true, though. Plenty of people suffered far more—were suffering more. Lark had suffered so much. And that was surely wrong.
Able pulled Constance Driver's file in front of him and flipped it open. Something in here must give her plans away. He might not believe in providence, but he wasn't about to fail Lark.
"I'm sorry," Chessie said.
"It's fine," he replied with a sharp hand wave. "I just don't want to waste any more time."
She leaned over to take a look. "You really think there will be some differences in this one over the one in Adeptsby?"
Able rubbed his neck. "So...I never actually looked at that."
"Oh?" She chuckled.
"I kept waiting for an opportunity to get away with looking through her file while she was in the room and it...never came." He touched his finger to his lips.
"So that's why you insisted when the general said there's nothing in there. Is he wrong?"
"Not sure yet. Huh, married and divorced...not surprising, maybe."
She cocked her head. "Any children?"
"None listed, so probably not..." Strange that the only family history was the husband who she divorced a year after marrying on grounds of infidelity. Was that usual for women clerks? "You know what? I wonder if she married this Famous Driver specifically to keep her father's family off of her records."
"Yeah?"
"It's just suspicious. She marries, divorces, then starts working as a clerk, slowly working her way into higher, and higher records clearance. Like she was already planning this twenty years ago."
"I think that only seems suspicious because you know what's missing."
"...yeah, okay," Able conceded. He read through Driver's work history and noted down all the places she'd been stationed. Perhaps there was a pattern that correlated her location and rebel uprisings—
A thump by Able's elbow made him jump. A binder. Chessie had brought a binder over, okay. When had she wandered off? "What's this?"
"Dunno, it's in Bantara." She shrugged. "But I had a good feeling about it."
Able opened the front cover to see it was a compilation of the warships' logs during the blockade in Fairbanks. "...you can read this."
She plainly shook her head.
Able also shook his head and dropped a helpless laugh. "Chestnut Miller, you did not simply wander about this archive and pick out this book without being able to read it."
"It's a good thing I came along," she said as she rolled her eyes up and closed them. "This would take a very long time if we did things your way." She ran her fingers along the text block until she slid her forefinger between two of the pages.
"No," he either warned or pleaded as she flipped the upper pages over in front of him. He saw and could not unsee the date at the top. Twenty days after his father had left for the last time. He closed his eyes, inhaled, exhaled, inhaled again. "Chessie, this isn't funny."
"I know," she said. "I'd show it to someone else if I could, but you're all I have. I don't want to waste any more time either."
Able slid his fingers up to support his forehead and let his eyes roam the page below. Even though he knew the trick of Bantara, it worked its effect, adding a sheen of reverence and authority to the words of the captain who had murdered Pa. "How did you do that?"
"What does it say?"
"No—not until you tell me." Able lifted the binder and examined it at all angles. What was he even looking for? It was a ream of paper stitched together with normal ink on the pages. "I don't care if the answer is some spirit took control of your hands or you saw a ghost or—"
Chessie closed her hand over Able's shaking one. "No voice in my head. No being tells me things."
Able had to fight a breath down into his lungs. He swallowed and fought for a second one.
Chessie's grip tightened so that his knuckles groaned against each other. "Able, you're not insane. In fact, you did what you had to do to protect your sanity."
Did he want his hand back? Or was the physical discomfort helping? He propped his head up with his other hand and forced his swimming vision over to the hand joined with Chessie's. "Just tell me."
"It resonated with you—this book. When I walked along the shelves running my hands over the bindings, this one felt like you. Not precisely like you, just a resonant sensation. It was strongest on that page."
Able's eyes fell to the page again. "It's the captain's log from the Servant of Grace. Says about an hour before midnight, they encountered a thirty-foot, two-sail vessel about ten miles south of the harbor. Chased her down. Showed Southern Shore flags, surrendered after first shot with an eight-pounder...fired second round and sank vessel in accordance with the Firstfall order." He almost couldn't finish for the tightness in his throat. "No account of lost souls given the dark conditions."
"Your father's ship?" Chessie asked.
He nodded weakly as he straightened. "And it's the same account Lark gave me. Only, he thought the Provider might have been sunk intentionally because it was identified as such. That might not be the case." He took his hand back so he could flip back through the book. Here was another mention of the Firstfall order. And after a few more pages, another. What was this code for?
It was hard to wonder at it right now, though. "What exactly did I resonate with when you touched my hand back at Adeptsby? You called it an impression, before. Said you had a vision."
"Mm," Chessie mused deep in her throat. "I cannot tell you if Peerless did things like I do." Which was likely why the question felt so pressing.
Still... "I just want to know."
"Hm." Chessie looked up to the distant ceiling, her gaze cast even further in that way she did. "I told you I don't often wonder. It's like asking someone how they can smell with their nose. But—here, the resonance is a sensation. When I'm walking in the dark, it feels like my foot should go here and then my foot should go here. I think this is not an uncommon sense. Most people relate to the negative side of this, yes? My foot should not go here, or I should not touch this."
"You mean in an instinctual sense?" Able guessed. "As in you didn't see the reason for it, but you don't question the feeling?"
"Yes, I think you catch my meaning. Let's say that sensation is very loud, but you must be much, much quieter to hear the 'yes, that book, yes, that page.' Must be in a much more receptive state."
"Must be completely irrational." Able leaned back in the chair and sighed deeply before starting with realization. "I don't mean that dismissively!"
Chessie nodded. "I know how you meant it. I think I understand now, how rational is safe for you while irrational isn't."
"...now that's a way to put it." Able shook his head then propped it up with his hand. He could have laughed if he weren't so fatigued.
"The visions are...are a step further." Chessie peered at him. Maybe she thought he wasn't up for this. And maybe she was right.
"Yeah?" he prodded, as he'd be damned to cow out now.
She smirked somewhat. "What if you could become rational on the other side of complete irrationality?"
Able raised an eyebrow. "We usually call that 'delusional.'"
She grinned, almost privately, as if at an inside joke. "Accept for the moment that, by being passive and open, I have learned to see another set of colors. Now I take it the step further and look for things in the new colors. A sort of active passivity. I can bring impressions to me that are not in-the-moment resonances. Things that become predictions."
"So...you're saying holding my hand let you...feel some resonance about me that assured you we'd be here, in this palace? Just fated to be here?"
"Oh no, not fated. I sought this future and constructed it. Over time." Chessie stepped around the table and ran a finger along Driver's work files. "I didn't trust her. She brought us the truth about Larbantry, yes, and convincing arguments for an alliance, true. But she also brought that Larbantry with her, and that same gaping, insatiable hole in it was a hole in her. She would eat us after we'd fed her short-term needs."
Unblinking, Chessie met Able's eyes. "You would build a case against her, like this. That's how you would stop her the moment anyone asked. Others might have simply killed her. But I asked the Eagle. How do I stop her? And then I let the impressions of this place, this palace, build in my mind. A glimpse of an answer, half an answer, however much. Day after day I was asking, hoping enough would be added for me to understand at last. How do I stop not Constance, but the ship she steers? I trust your case-building way will work because you were the how for me."
Able looked back down at the book and ran his fingers over the marks of dried ink—meaningless to anyone who couldn't transform them into the truth by looking at them. He tried it on, this idea that he was meant to find this, that it was calling out to him through some form of higher order. Or that his father—whatever what he was had become—had a hand in making sure he learned the truth.
It didn't fit right, like it was a size too small. Constricting...but that's also what made it comforting, like a warm cocoon. Surely why Ma and people like her snuggled into it away from a cold, uncertain world. He might get used to it. Working with Chessie, he might have to.
"Well," he said, "are we going to search for the origination of this Firstfall order 'my way,' or will you just go get it for me?" He gestured to the vast hall with raised eyebrows.
"You would test this, of course," she replied with an amused grin.
"I mean no disrespect." Able sighed and rubbed his eyes. "I really don't. I try to be honest with myself about what I do and do not know. And most of it all...I don't know. I hate to think I'm pretending I know anything." He'd been certain, but only for the sake of his sanity, it seemed.
The table creaked as Chessie leaned on it, her weight shifted into his space. He opened his eyes to see her face inches from his as she leaned on her elbows.
"You're very brave," she said, "and very strong. Though you don't seem to know it."
Yes, that was definitely one of the things he didn't know. He sighed again. "Do I look like I need a pep talk?" He closed the binder and stood with it under his arm.
She straightened. "I thought you should know what I thought since you keep worrying you've offended me. Want me to show you where I found that?"
"Yes, please." He could have found it himself, of course, but this would be faster. "...and thank you."
Chessie led the way through the shelves. "Most people like short cuts. Hm, and are therefore not honest with themselves about what they don't know. If your spirit feels so weak to you, maybe it's because you burden it by treating the unknown as an unknown. No divine purpose or afterlife for you, I gather? Here."
The empty space on the shelf was a hole of glaring blackness. Able had forgotten the lamp on the table, leaving him with only in the dim blue from the windows to make out the labels.
He answered her with a wry smile, "None that I know of."
"That's a fear most people wouldn't face."
"All right, all right." He shook his head and chuckled helplessly. Chessie hadn't reached for any of the binders before he spotted the one labeled "Blockade Command." He pulled it and began flipping through.
"Also," so Chessie wasn't done, "whatever your people and their righteous society say, you have excellent morals. I've never seen you giving yourself any excuses. I'd trust you more than most Borealunders."
Able nearly told her she shouldn't but instead swallowed down the shudder bubbling up his throat. Chessie had yet to show any fear or uncertainty herself, but to be here as a Borealunder, she couldn't be so unnatural as to have none. There were no accommodations for women in the scholar's wings, so the officials had tried to separate them before Able insisted he continue to be responsible for Chessie.
"I hope you'll continue to trust me," she added.
"I can't promise I won't be trying to catch you at reading Bantara," he replied with a wry smile.
"You won't," she said with a laugh.
He turned the page he had found to face her, and she at least didn't seem to know where to look.
"So, the Firstfall was a warship, it says. She captured a vessel trying to smuggle goods into the port and acquisitioned them. Only they were poisoned, and over forty men died of it."
Chessie only nodded to this.
"You don't seem surprised," Able noted.
She raised an eyebrow. "...why are you?"
"...not accustomed to being invaded, I suppose," he mumbled. It made sense to tempt people after your goods with sabotaged ones, ingenious even, in a blood-curdling way. "And as a result, the Firstfall order was to sink all vessels approaching Fairbanks and salvage none of them. Keep the patrol moving swiftly to reduce holes in it. And yes, it was ordered months before Lark was kidnapped, so if the king ordered Lark's murder, it's unlikely he did it this way."
"Okay. So now what?"
"Now...we're stuck here for another three hours." Which Able then spent familiarizing himself with the command side of the Larbant naval forces during the war. Good things to know if he survived to write a second draft.
That became his habit as the week passed and they spent their time in different archives trying to correlate insurgent activity in Stalach with Constance Driver's stations. Several sessions, Able spent the whole time scrabbling through documents for evidence, while others Chessie inexplicably handed him exactly what he needed. And he simply accepted this, as it was more pressing that he figure out the Sons of Justice's goals.