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.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Remember this: No gods are ever gone. They simply change.
—The Book of Holy Law, Tract 7131
Quiet, so complete it seemed to ring in Lore’s ears. August was dying. That explained the poison he’d been drinking, the desire to get rid of Bastian so he could name a different heir if it didn’t work. It didn’t tell them anything about what was really happening in the villages, at least not directly, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that all of it was connected.