It was with conflicting emotions that Zephyrin regarded the boy seated on the hemlock flooring by his small bed, head bowed over folded arms, body wracked by soundless sobs. First he had sympathized for the boy; surrounded by great men and women, the temptation of impressing them to rise in the world was undoubtedly a potent one. That sentiment had then given way to disappointment when it seemed the petty noble youth had shown his true colors yet again; but now, seeing him so visibly distraught, it was pity that temporarily gained the ascendancy in his heart.

“Foudris,” he said after the shoulders had continued to silently convulse for some time, in a bid to draw the boy’s attention.

A muffled moan answered him. Zephyrin felt his impatience stir; that was another emotion vying for a more prominent position, and which would obtain one if he wasn’t careful. The clock was ticking; Zephyrin knew he couldn’t afford to squander this chance to move in the upper spheres of Gaulyrian society. Moreover, the curious pallor of Mlle. Huron’s face as he exited the drawing room combined with her displeasure over the quality of the guests rendered him uneasy. She might very well decide to prematurely draw the evening to a close. If that happened, whatever was transpiring in the shadows would slip through his fingers, irretrievably lost. He had to act, and fast.

Eliminating the distance between him and the young noble and bending down to one knee by his side, Zephyrin said in a low voice, “D’Érazh, you need to calm down. You didn’t betray the Goddess, if that’s your concern. So try to get ahold of yourself and—”

“—I would have.” Foudris raised his head from his folded arms, his face tear-stained but devoid of emotion as a death-mask. “If you hadn’t acted when you did, I would have called the Goddess a—”

“Enough!” Itching to literally shake the boy out of his self-pity, Zephyrin settled for a stern tone. “Stop wallowing, or you really will end up saying something you regret.”

Foudris briefly met the intensity of Zephyrin’s gaze, then averted his eyes and set them on the furniture of his little room. Antique bookcases crammed with leatherbound tomes lined the walls. He regarded them with a hunted expression, as if fearful of their contents, before putting his head back down and gesturing aimlessly in their direction.

“So what if I do?” he muttered. “This is who I really am. You don’t know the thoughts that loop inside my mind, all the things I’ve read.” He shivered as if seized by a fever. “I’ve read the Àpeïronisian texts… it doesn’t matter if it’s all heretical nonsense, I keep remembering what they teach, that Selena is a deceitful spirit, that she’ll burn in a lake of flaming excrement for all eternity—”

“You don’t need me to repeat Father Athand’s lecture about intrusive thoughts,” Zephyrin said calmly. “What matters is what you wish to think, to be.”

Foudris lifted up his head again. Still expressionless, he said dully, “But that’s just it. I can’t love the Goddess. I have all the arguments in mind, all the contradictions, all the absurdities in the Luminous Scrolls…”

“I’m well acquainted with their source.”

A spark of annoyance showed through watery eyes. “Yes, I came across them all in d’Arime’s works. What does that matter? D’Arime was the greatest writer of the past century; it’s not like anyone has refuted him.”

Maybe not in this era. Though the trove of his letters hadn’t yet been fully uncovered in this time period, the provocateur’s legend had well and truly imploded by the time of Zephyrin’s first birth.

“You surprise me, d’Érazh. I wouldn’t have thought you so easily impressed.” Seeing Foudris’s uncomprehending look, Zephyrin elaborated: “Who was Térouan d’Arime? An indefatigable campaigner against serfdom who refused to liberate his own serfs, an ardent abolitionist who profiteered in the slave trade, a self-avowed falsifier of history—‘I do not believe it the duty of the historian to write unvarnished truth,’ wrote he to a benefactor—a public advocate of the people but secret despiser of ‘the rabble,’ which ‘…must be barred from higher learning, as they are fit only to cultivate the earth while dignified men cultivate their minds.’ And this is the man you idolize?”

Foudris’s mouth hung open as he regarded Zephyrin, standing above him with arms crossed. “How… How do you know all of that? Is it all really true?”

“Every last word.” That he knew for a certainty; his Elysian tutors had drilled the latest scholarship so thoroughly into his head that he doubted even a dozen rebirths would succeed in driving an iota of their lessons from his memory. Further cementing his judgment was his father’s succinct but scathing judgment of the man of letters:

Térouan d’Arime. Man—not as an abstraction, but as a being of blood and bone and dreams and passions—was ever a mystery to him. He knew men no more than he knew ideals, virtues, truth. It is remarkable how poorly his writing holds up today. Stripped of its braggadocio and the indulgent platform granted by a degenerated culture, we struggle to find aught of redeeming value. Térouan stood above all his contemporaries, some say. The thought should not astonish us; even a runtling can find himself a giant in a land of dwarves.

To what does Térouan owe his fascination, and how did ‘d’Arimism’ become a de facto religion in Gaulyria? For an explanation we must look to his knack for finding—or more often, creating—the pithy quote or image that vividly encapsulated an era. That Rudolf XI never bellowed at his nobles in his bedclothes is of no import: the image of a tyrant in his nightcap was cleverly painted, was what the commons wanted to believe, and so became more real than reality.

As he reflected on his father’s words Zephyrin saw hope dawn in Foudris’s eyes, alongside the growing desire to cling to his words like a lifeline. The logical conclusion to Zephyrin’s claims was as plain as day: the famed intellectual’s writings were as self-serving as they were full of falsehoods. Could one simply dismiss them? The idea certainly was audacious given the accolades showered upon him by the Gaulyrian and continental intelligentsia, and Zephyrin could see the moment when the short-lived light in Foudris’s eyes sank and was replaced by pessimism once more.

“Even if you’re right,” the boy said in a tone of renewed bitterness, “none of that changes the merit of his arguments. He could be a scoundrel criticizing the falsehoods of worse scoundrels.”

Zephyrin clicked his tongue. What he would give to know what Rose would say in this situation. Two hands on her hips, one loud ‘pshaw!’, and some homespun country wisdom sprinkled in for good measure would get Foudris ‘right as rain!’ in no time. Roger too—Zephyrin could practically see him standing in the dimly lighted room with them, grinning like a Cheshire cat and saying disarmingly, ‘Why’re ye down, Foudris? Ain’t it swell, bein’ chums with Fengar, an’ Ùwuina, an’ the whole heavenly band? Say it with me: hip-hip hooray for Selena!’

Zephyrin let his arms fall to his sides. No matter. Even if he couldn’t be Rose or Roger, he had his own approach. “You’re completely right. It’d be unfair of me to dismiss the man’s affirmations simply because of his character. Which is why I’ll show you how he couldn’t go two pages without indulging a fallacy.” Without waiting for the other boy to speak Zephyrin moved over to a bookcase, scanned the titles, and opened at random the first volume of Térouan’s History of Gaulyria.

“Let’s see. In this chapter we read that the Chivalric Age was a time of obscurity and profound ignorance because the monarchy refused to build schools and kept the peasantry unlettered. All well and good.” Zephyrin flipped several pages ahead. “Yet curiously enough, by the chapter’s end we read that the same epoch was also hopelessly backward because the peasants were brainwashed by scripture and cunning catechisms in the all too numerous schools that dotted the kingdom. A remarkable state of affairs, that.”

Foudris blinked as the contradiction stood out to him in sharp relief for the first time. Zephyrin continued: “How about here? In this chapter d’Arime affirms that, thoroughly incompetent, the monarchy was evil because it mismanaged the country to the extent that the common laborer couldn’t afford to put a single cut of meat on his table for months on end. A serious matter indeed. Yet, curiously enough, we learn a little further on that the episcopacy was evil because it regularly imposed meat abstinence and unfairly denied the laborer his plentiful bowls of lard, meaty broths, slices of bacon, and cured meats. Truly, a miraculous feat.”

A part of Zephyrin was aware that his sharp, sarcastic comments were disproportionate to Foudris’s doubts. In some manner, he perceived that he was really speaking for his own benefit, letting out his frustration after weeks, even months of keeping his lips tightly sealed and nodding along to the idiocy spouted by the likes of the Marquis, Merlinus, and all the magically atrophied nobles he had met since coming to the capital. A wave of contempt then rolled through him as he considered how many were enthralled by the egalitarian ideals that would abolish their privileges, destroy their social class, and result in their deaths.

They’ll get their wish in the end, Zephyrin thought harshly, only to regret it immediately. Fools though many of them were, what animated many of the bluebloods was a misplaced optimism. None of them dreamed what would be the consequences of their literary diversions.

He remembered reading that one female Exalted had thought it amusing to emancipate a Primævan boy and retain him as a literate servant, educating him on a steady diet of egalitarian writings. Learning his lessons well and growing to resent his lower station, the boy had repaid his mistress by plunging a knife in her heart while she slept. Perhaps the woman in question was a noblewoman he had already crossed paths with…

Still holding the book, Zephyrin glanced down to see Foudris grappling with his words. The boy then started as Zephyrin tossed it to him with an underhanded throw. While Foudris grabbed ahold of it clumsily, Zephyrin told him in a calmer tone, “Burn it, if you know any fire spells. Or use it as kindling; I care not. But I suggest you get rid of it one way or another. Térouan died screaming and begging for a priest to absolve him while cursing his disciples; you have little to gain by following in his footsteps.”

As the child bit his lip and stared at the book’s cover, Zephyrin decided to break his illusions for good, for his own sake. Putting a hand on the petty noble’s shoulder, he said in a blunt but measured tone: “There’s no need to ingratiate yourself with the nobility. It won’t exist a year removed from today.”

To his credit, Foudris swallowed hard but kept his composure. “Does this have anything to do with what you wrote in your journal?”

“Yes.” The young noble had probably formed some idea himself after reading it; this would merely confirm his suspicions.

“And… you’re trying to stop that from happening?” Foudris asked slowly.

“No man can. But you’ve given me a hint that there is something in the darkness that needs to be revealed. I aim to find out what it is. Will you help me?”

Their gazes locked and for several seconds all that could be heard was the sound of their breathing. Finally, as if drawing courage from Zephyrin’s resolved expression, Foudris opened his mouth and said, “I know something. The person I told you about before, who used some of the terms from your journal… I think I heard his voice.”

Zephyrin’s pulse quickened. “Tonight? He’s here right now?”

“Yes. I heard him speaking with another man when I walked through the foyer…”

Zephyrin nodded distractedly, already deep in thought. The hour was advanced; this was no time for hesitation. He made a snap decision. “Lead me to him.”

“No.” Foudris shook his head with a seriousness graven in his features that Zephyrin had never seen before. “I have a better idea.”