A Crown of Golden Leaves: A Percy Jackson Fanfiction

Caput XL: Unravel

A Crown of Golden Leaves
by Kitty
September 17, 2016

"A study in scarlet, eh? Why shouldn't we use a little art jargon? There's the scarlet thread of murder running through the colourless skein of life, and our duty is to unravel it, and isolate it, and expose every inch of it." – Arthur Conan Doyle

Caput XL: Unravel

IT didn't take much for Percy to convince his pater to allow him access to the forbidden part of the bibliotheca; if anything, pater was a little too quick to agree to Jason's suggestion. The next morning, he jabbed Annabeth to get her to roll off his chest to face the brisk chill after another late night between paperwork and sparring with her. (He still wasn't sure how she had managed to convince him to go outside in the freezing air. He hated winter and its continuous rain.)

He pulled on his boots instead of his sandals (another reason why he hated Winter) and a cloak to keep warm, closing the door behind him with a firm click. Grover must have already woken since the hearth was already lit, but the faun was nowhere in sight. Silently, he left their wing of the castle and crept through the silent halls.

It was too quiet. He was an early riser by nature (he had too much energy to sleep in), and he wandered these halls a lot at night whenever he couldn't sleep. Usually slaves and servants were up and about at this hour, preparing to meet their master's needs, but now it was just still. There was no movement in the air, a lack of life seemingly.

Percy scowled and quickened his pace. Hopefully, it was just the first freeze of winter keeping everyone inside since it was earlier than usual this year and not this plague. As bad as winter could get at times, it was natural. It came and it went and it was constant; reliable. You were able to plan for it and prepare to weather through it most of the time.

Well, – He slipped out of the citadel and entered the not-quite-as-still streets; at least there seemed to be life here – the only way to cure this illness is to understand what it is. Hopefully, we'll be able to get it under control soon... I don't want too many people to suffer.

He smiled to himself as something came to him – a half remembered memory, of sorts. It would be easier if he was a mere circus performer; at least he wouldn't have these doubts eating at his conscious, making him second guess every step he took.

Although second guessing himself made him double check everything he did, which he was certain most of the Senators did not do.

Still, he would rather be able to say what he really thought and not fear to invoke some kingdom's wrath upon his country. That was definitely something he wished he could do but had always been too much of a coward to speak out. It was one of Annabeth's qualities that he envied at times; saying what she meant, without hiding her intent behind pretty words, was something she excelled at... even though it ruffled many feathers. Including his at times.

But he was beginning to realize that whenever he didn't like hearing what she was telling him, he needed to listen to her the most. She never sugarcoated the truth and her opinion was usually sound. It might have been funny – if it hadn't been so sad – that an uneducated woman was wiser than the most respected philosophers and attorneys.

The bibliotheca came into view, so Percy quickened his pace until he was slowly jogging. A lone soul sat on the shadows of an alley, curled into a threadbare blanket, and it reminded him vividly of how he had found Jason that one time when he had managed to shake off his bodyguards.

It also reminded him of how he had taken a wrong turn and ended up in a gang's territory when he had been a child. They had been fighting with a rival gang at the time; he could still remember the tension as they had demanded for him to tell him who he was and where he had come from and for whom he worked. Mostly the last one. They had expected a spy from the boy who had been covered in soot with a torn cloak, not the son of one of the consuls, and he had been too proud to say who he was to the street urchins. He probably would have been injured or worse if Jason hadn't found him and convinced the mobsters that he wasn't from their rivals in time.