The Knight and the Moth (The Stonewater Kingdom, #1)
Rachel Gillig
CHAPTER ONE
SIX MAIDENS UPON A WALL
The peculiar gargoyle, who spoke mostly in broken parables, shuffled to the dim corner of the ambulatory. There, strung between iron candlesticks, a spider’s web held a fly captive.
“Incessant buzzing.” The gargoyle wagged a limestone finger at the fly, his craggy voice echoing through the cathedral. “Serves you right. If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a thousand times, watch where you are going. Now”—he leaned close and peered at the web—“hold still. I’m going to extract you from this snare.”
He did not extract the fly. He went on, lecturing the poor insect on the dangers of flight. Had the fly been capable of reason, it might have concluded it was better to die in the clutches of a spider than be the subject of this particular gargoyle’s attentions. But the fly could not speak, and thus uttered no complaint. It just kept on buzzing, and the gargoyle kept on talking—
And that was how I was able to slip from the pew I was dusting to watch the king ride up the hill.
Into the nave I ran, bare feet slapping against stone, then I was out of the cathedral, accosted by the sunset, its light filtering through the gossamer shroud I wore around my eyes.
The gravel courtyard was empty, visiting hours at an end. The only figures present were five limestone statues. Five faceless, hooded figures. They stood nigh ten spans high, their ancient arms held open in beckoning. All five were identical but for their left hands—each clasping a distinct stone object. One statue held a coin, another an inkwell. One bore an oar, another a chime, and the final a loom stone.
I wove between the statues on tiptoe, touched by the pervasive fear that I would anger them if I wandered too loudly. But they were mere stone, tendering neither ire nor love. Still, they watched me through the darkness of their hoods, predatory in their stillness. I felt them, just as I felt Aisling Cathedral’s gaze—with its eyes of stained glass—silent and ancient and disapproving, upon my back.
I hurried on.
The courtyard gave way to grass, and stone was replaced by an orchard of gnarled fruit trees. It was late summer, and blood-red apples hung in clusters. I raised a hand above my head and ripped one from its branch without breaking my stride. When I broke through the orchard, a long stone wall stood ahead of me. Upon it—
Five maidens waited.
They wore the same pale fabric as I did, their eyes shrouded with identical gossamer. Perched high upon old stones, bathed in sunset light, their dresses caught the wind. They looked like five flags of surrender, there upon the wall.
As if sensing their last counterpart, the women turned as I approached. The tallest, who’d waved at me from the cathedral doors and hissed, It’s the bloody king! cupped her hands around her mouth and hollered. “Hurry!”
I put the apple between my teeth and pressed calloused fingers onto old stones. Twelve spans high and fraught with lichen, the wall was difficult to scale. But nearly ten years can make a master out of anyone—the stones were a familiar adversary.
I hauled myself up. The women made room for me, and I swung a leg over and straddled the wall. “You’re sure it’s him?”
Two—I didn’t know her name, only her number—tall and solemn, pointed a finger over the vista. “I saw purple banners beyond that bluff. Swear it on my mother.”
“Might mean a bit more if you had a mother,” Three muttered.
“Give it a moment,” Two said, spine like a rod. “You’ll see that I’m right.”
Next to me, Five pushed her orange hair out of her face. The wind shoved it right back. “Are you going to share?” she said, nodding at my apple.
I offered the fruit up. “It’s not very sweet.”
“Blech.” She made a face and threw the apple over the wall. It fell with a thud onto the side of the road—a red pinprick among greenery. “How can you eat that?”
“I suppose we’ll never know.”
On my other side, Four twisted a fistful of wild black curls. She rested an arm on my shoulder, and our gazes met. Or I assumed they did. It was impossible to tell, with the shroud that covered their faces from their brows to the bridge of their noses, where any of the women were truly looking. I did not know their names, and I did not know the color of their eyes.
I did not know the color of my eyes.
“I’ll be damned.” A smile crept over Four’s lips. “Here he comes.”
We turned. There, from the east, peeking out from knolls of green—
Purple banners.
I squinted. Seeing through my shroud was akin to peering through steam off a kettle. But the tor upon which the cathedral sat was so high and Traum’s hills so sprawling and the air so clear that it was no trouble working out the details of King Castor’s procession the moment the hills spat it into view.
There were nearly two dozen of them—bannermen and squires and knights. What a display they made. Daylight danced over their armor and the noise of them caught the wind, sounding over the tor in echoes, distorting their words into a false translation. Even at a distance I could see which one was King Benedict Castor. His armor was not the same silvery iron as his knights’ but gilt, as if he were the sun and they a cluster of lesser stars.