The Knight and the Moth (The Stonewater Kingdom, #1)(15)

The trio watched me from their side of the table, their gazes all variant in color—black, green, blue—but the challenge in all three was the same. “Six Diviners, just… ambling down the road,” Maude said.

“Quite the spectacle,” Rory muttered.

“We’ll wear cloaks,” I bit back. “Obviously none of us want to be seen.”

The king leaned forward in his chair. “Forgive my curiosity, Diviner. If you are disallowed to leave Aisling, all of Traum must surely be a stranger to you. What happens when your service is up? When you are no longer required to—”

“Drown?” Rory offered, spinning his spoon between his fingers.

“Dream,” Maude corrected.

“We all have tasks. Crafts we learn to bolster us when we depart.”

King Castor nodded at my hammer and chisel. “You’re to be a stoneworker?”

“Perhaps. If the pay is good.”

“The pay?” the king asked, incredulous. “The abbess doesn’t reimburse you for your time here?”

I bit down so hard my teeth hurt. “The Omens first appeared to a foundling, and every Diviner has been one since. That is why the money the abbess collects for Divination goes to the upkeep of the cathedral and the foundling houses we Diviners come from. She saved us from destitution. Gave us a home, a purpose—made us special. That is our payment. I wouldn’t have lived half the life I have without her.”

Tap, tap, tap went Rory’s spoon on the table. “And you call wasting your time dreaming of signs living, Diviner?”

I slapped the spoon out of his hand. It clattered to the floor, and I leaned in, lifting the dull end of my chisel to his nose. “What would a highborn prick like you know about it?”

Rory held perfectly still. He lifted his gaze to my shroud. He was looking for my eyes. For a target.

But he couldn’t find one.

He wrapped his fist around the chisel’s stem, dropping his voice to that low, gravelly rasp. “Point this thing in my face again and it’s mine.”

“I’d sincerely enjoy watching you try to take it.”

I could feel the eyes in the room on us.

“Whatever Aisling or Diviners or the Omens have done to garner your hatred, well done.” My voice was shaking. “I’ve been duly insulted. Now—you’ve stolen Aisling’s spring water. I won’t ask why, and I won’t speak of it again, but I want something in return. So be a good little soldier, and escort. My. Diviners.”

King Castor and Maude and everyone else in the commons sat frozen, some mid-bite, transfixed by the Diviner and the knight putting on a proper show. The only noise that perforated the room was a loud clack, clack, then—

The feline gargoyle was there, putting its stone claw on my shoulder and glaring over my shoulder at Rory. It opened its mouth. Flashed its teeth.

Rory jerked his hand off my chisel, his entire face caught in an eye roll. “I’m not going to hurt anyone, you witless hunk of stone.” He leaned back in his chair, heaving his boots, which had been unmistakably polished, onto the table. “Sorry, Diviner—that was aimed at the gargoyle. I can see how you might be tempted to answer to that description.”

The gargoyle led me to the door, but I turned at the threshold. Faced the table one final time, hot with embarrassment. But for the Diviners, I would bear it. “Please.”

It happened quickly. A tightening of muscle in Rory’s brow, a flare in his eyes. A genuine shred of something, peeking through all his derision.

It was gone as quick as it came.





I spent the rest of the morning at the east wall. Breaking things.

“Knave.” Crash went my chisel into a heart of granite. “Vile, loutish prat. He won’t do it.”

The batlike gargoyle, who was supposed to be assisting me and mixing mortar while I broke stone away from the tor to mend the wall, was picking gowan flowers. “Who, Bartholomew?”

Crash. “Did the knights say anything particular? The ones you caught at the spring last night?”

The gargoyle blinked, like I’d tendered him an impossible riddle. “Knights all sound the same to me. Is that an ungracious thing to say?”

Crash. “Maybe.” Crash, crash. “But as horrible as it is to admit”—the stone cleaved in two—“this specific knight is revoltingly distinct.”

When Aisling’s bell chimed twelve, I put my hammer and chisel away in the toolshed and went to the cathedral, walking past the dormitory stables.

They were empty. So were the dining commons.

The king and his knights were gone.

Aisling courtyard was full, men and women come to say prayers to the Omens’ statues. Others jangling as they walked, coins in their pockets, vying for one of the limited Divining slots. Only those with the most coin would be chosen by the abbess. The rest would leave, invariably to return another day with more money.

There was still sweat on my brow from the stones I’d been hauling when I took off my dress in the dark sacristy and donned my Divining robe.

I waited in silence. Listened to Five dream. When it was my turn, the chancel was decorated with trails of water from the Diviners the gargoyles had carried away.

I stepped into the spring. An aged merchant approached. He gave me his blood, his name. I looked up at the cathedral window, and the abbess pressed me into spring water. I drowned—