Three, four, five—Roger stopped counting as the number of figures stepping out of the shadows exceeded eight and corrupting tendrils of fear clutched his wildly thumping heart. The lyceum’s director had spoken in deadly earnest.

Somehow, the Grand Prefect’s plans had been uncovered, and now they were outnumbered more than four to one by the powerful individuals that had lain in wait. Poor at sensing though he was, even Roger could feel the powerful auras they were giving off. If they had been basebloods that would have been one thing, but the presence of twelve nobles closed off flight and resistance both.

Worse still, perhaps, was the discovery that some of the faces gathered behind the director were known to him. Master Pondrey was the first, his squarish, statuesque block of a face austere and as devoid of emotion as a physician readying himself to perform an amputation; with some awkwardness Master Médallus was the second; less discomfited than him followed—shockingly—a succession of slighter and slenderer builds.

Roger couldn’t help himself as the names tumbled out of his mouth. “Loris d’Arx? Dy Sanct-Àura? What are you—” He trailed off, confounded by the realization that a priest had had no qualms involving his classmates in what could only be an act of sedition.

The Grand Prefect’s jaw had tightened upon recognizing his students, but it was the sight of the prince of the blood that affected him most. “Your Highness. I had hoped you would repay your mother’s trust.”

Guilt flitted over the royal youth’s face almost too quickly to be seen before his fine features resolved into a blank mask. “Father Athand. Rest assured that your and my mother’s concerns are quite misplaced. I see no need to join my brother in Fleuria. There is nothing to fear when my father and the people will act in concert for Gaulyria’s prosperity.”

“So long as Your Highness’s father lends his support to radical policies and the Goddess’s gifts are made the enemy of the country, not even the common-born can consider themselves safe,” said the priest, his voice tinged with deep sadness. “This ‘cleansing’—purge? purification? call it what you want—will soon transgress its self-imposed bounds, creating victims indiscriminately among every class.”

The studied composure of the king’s nephew gave way to outrage. “Do you think so little of my father? Is this the extent of your loyalty to my family?

“Is Your Highness aware that the Count of Aurellis has renounced his magic to reign, and will assuredly require the same of his sons?”

“You lie!” shouted Corentin, the sound echoing in the bone-strewn crypt before seeping out into its adjoining passageways. “My father would never—” Trembling with fury at the Grand Prefect’s pitying expression, he clenched his fists and took a step, only to halt suddenly as the Father Director gave his arm a warning squeeze. Once the stunted priest was assured of the adolescent’s submission, he addressed his black-robed counterpart.

“Athand. My faithful Grand Prefect. Did you really think your scheming would escape my notice?” Father Priol regarded his colleague with a sedate disinterest bordering on apathy. “Warning so many among the student body to withdraw from our fine establishment… even advising their parents to flee abroad, too. By what extravagant notion, by what folly, have you allowed yourself to be possessed? The capital poses no threat to the friends of justice.”

The Grand Prefect was spared the need to answer as a tremor seemed to emanate from the ceiling to traverse the crypt’s walls and run down to the ground. The director tilted his shaven head as if to better hear the muffled grumblings above. “The royal troops seem to be holding out longer than expected, I’ll grant you, but make no mistake: they will be routed, and the people will have its wish. A new king will claim the throne.”

“You gravely misjudge the situation and court disaster at your peril,” the other priest replied calmly. “Heed me, Eliaz: this error will prove your ruin, yours and that of him upon whom you have pinned all your misguided hopes.”

The director sighed. “The part of prophet of doom ill suits you, my friend. Spare me your muttered threats and vaticinatory theatrics. I haven’t tracked your movements to extract a recantation under duress. It is the Cygnon I want. Hand him over, and I will grant you the opportunity to slip past the militia guarding the city’s perimeter.”

He thinks the Crown Prince took Zephyrin’s place! The realization fell on Roger like a thunderbolt. Restraining the urge to look at the princess as she hid half-kneeling behind the Grand Prefect’s black robes, he advanced minutely from the shadows to better shield her from view.

The Father Director—whom he had so much respected!—ignored him completely for now. Frustration mingled with pity in the elderly man’s black eyes, moist as the crypt’s slick limestone walls. “Esius, Esius. I’ve no desire to use compulsion. You have but to see reason. The old order,”—a grand, sweeping gesture, encompassing all the human remains around them—“finds a fitting parallel in this mouldering heap of bones, in these grinsome skulls, leering stupidly into the abyss even as it engulfs them.”

The lyceum’s director contemplated one specimen embedded in the wall meditatively, before seeking out the Grand Prefect’s wary gaze once more. “Much like our contemporary grandees, wouldn’t you say? Why they laugh, not even they can say. Their days pass as a blur of triviality. They are undead as they live, twirling their splendidly caparisoned corpses to and fro on the ballroom floor…!”

As if he thought himself in the academy’s chapel rostrum, the priest’s voice ascended to its usual predicatory register, only to abruptly fall back to earth as he remembered his audience. “No,” he said softly, thoughtfully, drawing out the word. “No, the Absolute has long bided over our misery. Too long. Our probation was long, but it has now at last come to an end.”

“What do you mean?” asked Father Athand with a touch of weariness, belaying the care with which he attentively observed the instructors and students forming a menacing circle around him.

“Is it not obvious? Equality of blood, the abolition of privileges, of slavery… don’t you see, Esius? Open your eyes, you fool! The rebels are our true co-religionists! Before the divine all men are equal! Who, I ask you, who among the episcopacy and peers of the kingdom is expending the greatest effort to make that truth a livable reality!”

The short statured priest’s baritone boomed, filling the spherical crypt. “Sinecures, serfdom, exemptions of taxation for the high and mighty—what are they but so many barbaric archaisms, enshrined by dint of centuries of dust-encrusted custom! What madman could oppose the end of these abominations? What reasonable soul not wish for a reform of our corrupt society? Do you not yourself long for a purified kingdom?”

“Yes. But not on the terms imposed by an opportunist and his cronies.” The Grand Prefect kept a measured tone as he spoke, one so natural that Roger almost missed the way his hand strayed to his side.

The lyceum’s director scoffed. “No doubt you will object this race of reformers hasn’t the Holy Father’s approbation. He will understand soon enough. He will have to bow before the inevitable. When he sees a free, moral land rise from the mire of our corrupted mores.”

Receiving no answer from the Grand Prefect, the priest continued animatedly, in the too enthusiastic tones of a man seeking to exculpate himself of breaching with allegiances and personal convictions of long date. “Whence do you hope obtain Gaulyria’s redress, if not in her most devoted sons? Join us, Esius! A new day dawns upon our fair land—”

The Grand Prefect’s lips curved into a sardonic smile, the perpendicular scar slashing down them both growing white. “Is this sun pleased to illuminate looting and lynchings, in your estimation?”

His superior impatiently swung a mottled hand, dislodging a skull from its crevice in the process. As it clattered across smooth stone and was swallowed up by the darkness he exclaimed, “No one denies there were excesses! Yet while acknowledging them, we judge according to. How many pagans did Kaul slaughter, how many soothsayers and witches, when he came into his power? An astute student of history yourself, you know full well that disagreeable, isolated incidents come part and parcel with seismic changes and epochal transformations.”

“Would that they were and would remain isolated.”

“The price that must be paid to reshape Gaulyria is steep but necessary. No aspersions can be cast against the count of Aurellis’s intentions. You know this.” A note of exasperation crept into the director’s voice.

The Grand Prefect was unmoved. “The new regime he and his allies wish to usher in will, I fear, soon veer toward the cacotopian.”

“Caco—” The priest scrutinized his stern compatriot, as if in hopes of detecting some hint of uncertainty, of self-doubt in his mien. Several seconds of fruitless study elapsed before he sadly shook a head weighed by regret. “Now I better appreciate the inroads made by fear-mongering pessimists on your subtle but susceptible intellect.”

“Do you realize,” he continued in a lecturing tone, “that even the most ‘radical’ of the reformers is against capital punishment? Yes, slandered and maligned by our reproachless royalist press though he is, Amédea dy Rez has all along opposed the bloodthirsty practices scandalously imputed to him.”

“In my experience, the words a man speaks and the principles he holds before and after attaining power are rarely coincident.” As the Grand Prefect spoke his eyes discreetly took in their surroundings, and Roger tensed in anticipation of a signal to bolt to one of the many passages issuing from the crypt. But would he have to choose at random? Did Father Athand intend for him and the princess to brave the winding underground to lose their pursuers, or try to regain the surface directly?

His thoughts frantically leaping from one possibility to another, Roger watched as Director Priol’s mouth twisted as if something bitter lay on his tongue. “Full of retorts, aren’t you. But of course you didn’t trouble yourself to sample his views. You’ve paid no attention to Congress’s sessions, to Amédea’s vociferous declarations against the ‘pestilence of atheism’, which, ‘being aristocratic in origin, must be eradicated for equality to be put into practice.’ The diminutive priest paused, his whitened eyebrows drawing together in thought. When he resumed it was with a note of triumph darkening his tone, like ink diffusing in water.

“Why,” he exclaimed, triumphant tones bouncing off the stone walls of the hollowed out, lugubriously lit chamber, “the proposed Constitution currently under debate by the representatives would enshrine belief in the Divine as one of Gaulyria’s civic obligations! The atheistic sects would find themselves formally condemned. Would the Church-sanctioned monarchy ever dream of going so far? I think not. So you see, this nascent government will favor religion and enable belief in the divinity to flourish. You have no excuse—”

“Belief in a divinity, yes, but what kind?” The Grand Prefect’s rhetorical question hung in the air unanswered as the director’s exaltation devolved into a scowl. Several of the youths at his side drew upon their mana warningly, visibly losing patience.

Holding a hand to forestall them, Father Priol’s demeanor assumed something of a father disappointed in his high hopes for an especial favorite. “How obstinate you are. I may as well appeal to the rotting denizens of this crypt, for all it would profit me. Now I see all too clearly: your capital vice, your chief sin, the fault line in your character, in your soul, my dear Father Athand, is your lack of faith. Were you imbued with the supernatural gifts, you would be able to believe in your fellow man. Pray to the Goddess that in her mercy she may deign to supply for this paucity of spirit… either now, or before you draw your last breath.”

“I’ve no lessons to learn from an apostate.” At this crisp answer Roger held his breath, truly conscious for the first time—perhaps because of the high degree of tension to which his senses were wound—of the unnatural regularity of the ossuary’s everlasting green flame, failing to crepitate and strangely immobile in its brazier.

His face half-illuminated by its light, the director seemed to ponder on this statement, before soon hoisting his shoulders in an indifferent shrug. With an air of resigned finality, he raised a glowing hand to unleash a spell at his former subordinate.

What Roger knew next was a jumble of sensations from unseen sources and poorly made out sights; his arm was grabbed; he nearly lost his footing as he was propelled to the rightmost exit in the chamber; a swish of black fabric interposed itself between his eyes and the growing ball of luminosity—

“Run!”

Grimacing as interweaving lines of sun-bright mana began to coalesce in the hollow of his palm, the director’s casting was interrupted by a gunshot ripping through the heavy subterranean air.