“How did he give himself away?” Zephyrin asked calmly, reaching back to draw the bed linens over himself more fully. Of Foudris’s thin face he made out little in the dim lighting, save his intelligent brown eyes. “Have you known for long?”

“Not until just now,” the other boy answered honestly. “But all along, there’s been gossip...”

“About what?” Zephyrin was curious to know what the “Pyromancer” had done to attract notice.

“He’s been the talk of the capital since before the school year started. Not only did he open his residence to intellectuals and the king’s enemies, he made a habit of flinging gold from his windows into the streets—armfuls of crowns, crowns by the thousands. A crowd gathers weekly. Sometimes he invites them into his property and has them served hot meals, or lets the basebloods warm themselves by fires in the gardens.”

And all that for less than altruistic motives, I’ll wager. This information slotted in well with what he knew; and yet, Zephyrin found himself mildly surprised. Putting himself in the public eye and transparently currying the favor of the famished masses clashed with the mental image he had been steadily filling out in his mind, that of a mastermind directing the game pieces from the shadows, but never moving on the board himself.

Perhaps the man was so emboldened by the king’s disastrous image that he felt himself able to withstand some scrutiny from the secret police, Zephyrin mused, then noticed Foudris on the verge of posing a question, his mouth half-open. “When we get back to the lyceum…” The young blueblood trailed off with a suggestive rise in his voice, as one who has half-formulated the answer to his own query.

Zephyrin hesitated for the space of a breath. “Not a word to him, do you understand? He shouldn’t find out from us.”

Foudris nodded soberly, expecting this answer. A silence fell between them then, more profound than than that which arises from a mere cessation of speech, drawing its depth instead from the pair straying into and proceeding down separate avenues of thought. Zephyrin collated every date and scrap of information he could recall about the period immediately preceding the monarchy’s fall, unsure himself whether there was any value in doing so but impelled by an inexpressible dissatisfaction.

He tentatively attributed it to his increased awareness that the imminent spilling of blood was not quite due to “built up madness in need of an outlet”, as the Emperor Narcissin had described it, but rather to cold calculations and plans long in the making. Lost in thought, Zephyrin was only partly aware of Foudris’s movements as the boy leaned over to his bedside table and took a plain book in hand. He paid more attention when he noticed a familiar drab cover and yellowed pages.

Zephyrin watched Foudris read by the candlelight for some time before addressing him again. “One last thing. Nèreus’s surname… am I correct in thinking there’s a relation between him and Cardinal Tenèval?” Lifting his gaze, Foudris regarded Zephyrin askance as if he had casually announced his intention to go off gallivanting to the moon, or had confessed a spontaneously arisen but deep-seated infatuation with Mlle. Huron. “Of course they’re related,” he said, in a tone suggesting that this information should be patently obvious to anyone attending Lyceum Rudolf VII, and a good many other people besides. “The cardinal is Nèreus’s father.”

Zephyrin stared blankly. “He’s the cardinal’s…”

“His son, yes. By one of his former mistresses—but don’t ask me which one, I couldn’t say. How else would a commoner have gotten admitted to the lyceum?” Foudris regarded Zephyrin bemusedly a moment longer, before allowing his eyes to fall back to the open book lying in the crook of his arm. As his impromptu bedfellow returned to reading, Zephyrin fixated the swaying candleflame, ruminating. All the pieces were falling into place. Nèreus’s key, and the scriptorium… that was when he should have figured out everything. The answer had been right there all along, sitting in plain sight, taunting him.

And quite literally at that, Zephyrin thought wryly, giving Foudris a sidelong look. The boy flipped a page, already absorbed in the book. His book. It was the same autobiography of a baseblood nun that he had picked up on a whim in Apolinary’s shop. Zephyrin had retrieved it from his luggage in the attic and given it to Foudris, telling him to keep it. First the startlement in Foudris’s eyes, then the reverential manner with which he accepted the book persuaded Zephyrin that he had made the right decision.

Still, there was something he was curious about, and perhaps something of his curiosity came through in his posture or gaze, as Foudris soon glanced up with his own mute question. “Something happened when you read this book, didn’t it?” Zephyrin tapped one of the pages to which it was open. “Do you mind telling me what it was?”

Foudris’s fingers twitched, then gradually stilled. Haltingly, he began to recount the story of an ordinary young woman. The compiled letters and journal penned by the baseblood nun told a simple tale, of a peasant girl who grew up dreaming of a life of wealth and ease in the city, but eventually grew to resent the circumstances of her birth. Becoming progressively embittered, it was a dramatic encounter that radically transformed Mari of Vex, one that, as he accepted the book from Foudris’s hands and began reading an extract himself, Zephyrin thought was not wholly dissimilar to his own encounter with the otherworldly.

The woman I beheld wore a robe of unmatched splendor and purity, as if it were woven of starlight; her feet were bare and her fingers graced with golden rings inlaid with rubies and sapphires. A diadem set with precious stones beyond number was set upon her head and a crystalline coronet adorned her alabaster brow; the veil she wore seemed wrought of a fabric excelling the purity of freshly driven snow.

Her star-sown tresses streamed behind her freely like red and violet flames; she wore a mantlet of deep amethyst and on whose front was emblazoned a golden sun radiating rays of glory. The back was not shown to me but I knew by an imperceptible communication that it bore a moon full and unshadowed. Her robe scintillated like beams of light playing upon diamonds, all glittering and brilliant, yet I could behold her painlessly, and the ravishment I experienced by so doing exceeded all the happiness I had ever known, and even ever hoped to obtain in my lifetime.

I would have remained for hours or days in that attitude had that been the good pleasure of the amiable creature I saw before me, whose munificent countenance, though tranquil and unaltering seemed to unfold new charms unceasingly; yet greater joys were reserved for me. She approached me and when in my confusion I dared to ask her, ‘Who are you?’ she smiled and answered in a heavenly tone, “I am your sister, Ùwuinaëlle.”

Then she took my hand in hers and bade me join her, and I was transported in spirit to the parish church of my village. What was my astonishment to see a choir of celestial beings holding court in the sanctuary, by the humble balustrade whereof I had so often knelt! And what greater wonder still inundated my soul when the beauty of these angelic spirits and glorified souls, including that of my guide was eclipsed by the appearance of She in whose honor heaven and earth were made.

As the Goddess descended in incomparable glory through a rift in the empyreans I saw the church’s altar become the support, as it were, of Her throne, the unsurpassed resplendence of which exceeds the powers of human speech or thought. From her seat of unmatched splendor I saw Selena gaze upon the congregation with an ineffable sweetness commingled with a queenly majesty, Her sublime eyes attentive to the needs and aspirations of all.

Most often munificent and overflowing with tenderness, I yet sometimes perceived deep sorrow in Her gaze. Stricken by the sight I dared to voice my distress to my guide, and it was with a shadow of grief coming into her own eyes that my divine sister explained the cause of the Goddess’s sorrow. Our Mother, she told me, is ever disposed to lavish Her children with the temporal and spiritual gifts which will constitute their everlasting happiness; yet often we impede Her action by our resistance and She is reduced to the position of a desperate mother who, holding an infant that inexplicably refuses to suckle, can only watch helplessly as it languishes, weakens, and finally expires…

Zephyrin lifted his eyes from the pages. “These are the paragraphs that inspired your poem?”

Foudris nodded, then paused, thinking. “You know, I had a thought while reading…” He trailed off, as if his elaborating further was contingent on Zephyrin’s approbation. “Yes?” Zephyrin prompted him.

“Do you think it means something that the visionary described Saint Ùwuinaëlle, but not the Goddess? See—” he pointed out a passage— “She only mentions Selena’s throne, and in passing. Isn’t that important? It’s like she’s saying that the Goddess was so beautiful that her appearance was beyond words…”

“I think you’re right, Foudris,” Zephyrin replied quietly, after a brief silence elapsed. He hadn’t needed to ponder the boy’s words; Foudris’s interpretation seemed plausible enough. No, what gave him pause was his demeanor. It was like he was receiving a glimpse of the Foudris that could have been, of the thoughts that would have been original to him, had he been permitted to experience a real childhood and form his own personality, rather than imbibe the views of the adults streaming to and from his guardian’s salon.

Zephyrin was aware of his atypical state of mind as he listened to the young noble’s hushed tones, his impressions given gingerly at first, then more animatedly as they met with a sympathetic ear rather than the condescension that the courtesan’s acquaintances would have offered—to say nothing of Mlle. Huron herself. His contemplative mood only deepening as he gave a reassuring squeeze to the small hand that timidly sought out his own beneath the covers, Zephyrin wondered if the sentiments in his breast bore any resemblance to those of his father, when he had looked over his frail form. The boy’s hand still clasped in his own, it was only when Foudris’s frail chest rose and fell in a slow, even rhythm that he turned over and blew out the candle.

On December 31st AUC983, for the first time in living memory, the Seicwan River froze over, abruptly ceasing to lend its languid flow to barges and commerce. On January 3rd AUC984, Queen Adelaide-Estelle organized an outing with her entourage followed by a ball, whose entertainments included carriage rides, sledding, and ice-skating on the dormant river. Well-prepared for the occasion, the queen had commissioned four superb Rimphaean winter carriages in keeping with the Northern-themed ice sculptures embellishing the palace grounds, which the snowfall and diligent industry of a small army of artists and laborers had transformed into a wintry fairyland.

Among the company was Prince Efflam, youngest brother to King Rudolf XIII; also present were Princess d’Aurellis and her youngest son, Duke Corentin dy Sanct-Àura. The Exalted were present in full force, albeit visibly unimpressed by the modest nature of the entertainments and expenditures required, which they esteemed unequal to their status. Notably absent was the Count Caradog d’Aurellis, the queen’s brother-in-law, who had excused himself shortly beforehand by citing an urgent summons to the Parlement of Lutesse. However, his absence was soon forgotten in the merriment of a day universally proclaimed a grand success by the participants, with the queen herself garnering a lion’s share of the praise for her dazzling display on the ice. Queen Adelaide-Estelle’s ball was a triumph.

A triumph for herself, certainly, but even more so for those intent on toppling His Majesty Rudolf XIII’s reign. For, from across the river bank the lower classes had first been grudging, then increasingly incensed spectators of the festivities. Queen Adelaide-Estelle, it was bitterly and widely insinuated by the commons, would consider it a fair trade if all the children of her adopted countrymen perished of cold, so long as she was able to relive a single day of her Elysian childhood.

The libelers seized upon the opportunity. They claimed the event had emptied the kingdom’s coffers of two hundred thousand crowns, then five hundred, and finally a million; and if this figure seemed far from the realm of plausibility to clearer heads, those who thought thus belonged to a distinct minority, one which had the luxury of being able to think without the twin torments of gnawing hunger and a cold that seeps into one’s bones so completely that warming oneself by a fire becomes an exercise of staving the worst of the chill rather than regaining heat.

On January 9th, homes in the wealthier districts were looted for food and then in the hysteria set alight for warmth, priceless paintings, antiques, furniture, and all, while their former occupants—some of them Exalted—looked on emptily as they swung suspended from street-lanterns. On January 11th, approximately eight hundred commoners wielding firearms, mostly men but some women as well, stormed the guard house controlling access to the King’s Isle.

They shot upon the dozen baseblood subordinates and the noble officer commanding them with equal fervor. The party that crossed the bridge to the Isle of the Moon-Kings was headed by raucous representatives issuing demands, while what remained of the guardsmen was waved aloft on the points of requisitioned bayonets to illustrate the sincerity of the combatants. Only the fear that they made for an easy target on the bridge to the islet induced them to retreat.

For now, thought Zephyrin, as an agitated student in his year told a group of huddled boys with drawn faces what he had learned from overhearing the priests in conversation. Like in the original history, the situation in the capital was deteriorating daily. She needs to use the asterite. The palace was already surrounded; the stone was the only chance the royal family had at escape.

But not less than a week later, Zephyrin’s hopes were to be cruelly disappointed.