The Knight and the Moth (The Stonewater Kingdom, #1)(28)

“I don’t know. I simply—” Desperation bubbled inside of me. “I fear something terrible is happening.”

“Shhh.” She soothed my hair. “Fear is not an outward-pointing compass, my girl. You should not let it guide your way. The Omens—their signs—are the only true measure of what is to come.”

“I know that, abbess. Only the day before Four disappeared, I had a very strange dream. It wasn’t of the usual stone objects.” I drew in a breath. “It was of the moth.”

She was quiet a long moment, the only sound in the room the snapping of kindling. “The moth.”

I described my dream. How vivid Traum looked behind the moth’s wings. How I’d witnessed the statues in the courtyard come to life. How I’d looked into the spring’s water and seen her, the gargoyles.

How Diviners had been broken. Twisted. Wailing.

The abbess sat motionless, listening.

“The moth—the sixth Omen—it’s a presage of death, isn’t it?” My heart was racing. I wished, desperately, that she would hold me. “I worry, abbess. I worry something horrible is happening.”

She turned her head and spoke to the fire. Slowly, her hand slipped from mine. “For whom did you provide this Divination?”

“A knight.” I swallowed. “The batlike gargoyle assisted.”

“I see. Did he pay the fee, this knight?”

“Not exactly.”

“Then you made your own arrangement with him. Without me. Divined, without me.” Her voice quieted. “Perhaps you think me superfluous.”

“Not at all, abbess.”

That earned a whispering laugh. “Do you think me oblivious? That I was unaware of your little jaunt to Coulson Faire? Or that I had not noticed you dream twice as much as the other Diviners? You are at war with yourself, Six, always thinking yourself stronger than them, better than them—martyring yourself for them.” Her shroud rippled as she shook her head. “But I know you, my special girl. And I know, beneath it all, you resent them, wishing yourself half as bold as them.”

She sighed, then leaned forward. Hooked my chin in her fingers. “I understand what it means. If the Diviners have run off without a goodbye, then all your love and resentment and martyrdom were for nothing. I can see why you rail against it—why you suppose their absence is part of a larger scheme.” She dropped my chin, dismissing me. “But it isn’t. They left and will be replaced when new foundlings arrive. Now go. Rest. You look like you need it.”

It was a quiet scolding, the abbess’s voice hardly above a whisper. I wished she’d shouted—a cracking whip to match the lashes her words dealt.

“For each Diviner who has vanished, I have sent one of my precious gargoyles. If it will ease your disquiet,” she said when I reached the door, “I will have them lock your cottage again, lest the others inspired to abandon their stations as well.”

A lock did not stop Two from vanishing.

It was only when I reached my cottage that I realized the abbess hadn’t said anything about my dream of the moth, as if it hadn’t been worthy of her condescension.

The wolfish gargoyle stood sentry at my cottage door, his stony eyes focused on nothing. He set to unlocking the door, and I wondered how things had gotten so twisted. I’d gone to the abbess to unburden myself—in search of comfort, of answers—and left with nothing but shame.

I climbed the stairs. Entered the room.

One and Three and Five were there, quiet and still. One caught my arm. “Did you speak to the abbess?”

“She…” I didn’t know what to say. My eyes fell to the floor. “She says they’ve run away.”

“What?” Three marched out of the room, steps echoing on the stairs. “She can come and see for herself.” A loud banging ensued. “Unlock this door, you stupid hunk of stone!”

She banged and screamed. We listened from our room. When Three went quiet, the silence was deafening.

We all got onto the same mattress. “Tell us something,” Five whispered into my shoulder.

I told a story of the Fervent Peaks—of the hot springs rumored to be there and how the sky was so clear it was as if you stood closer to the moon. One nodded off first, then Three, then Five—head drooping onto my shoulder. The sky went from blue to black to violet. I watched them sleep, their chests rising and falling in unflagging rhythm, the gentle beat of a lulling song. I shut my eyes only a moment…

And jolted awake.

The sky was yellow-pink now. I knew what had happened before my gaze fell to the bed.

Three was gone.





It was not so hard to trick a gargoyle. The trouble was getting him to leave.

“I don’t see why you must work at this hour,” the batlike one said at twilight, spinning an iron ring of keys upon his finger. It crashed into his nose, and he sneezed so violently a dozen mourning doves fled a nearby bush.

“I told you,” I answered, praying the crash of my hammer upon stone would soften the pitch of my lie. “Divining has set me back. I need to finish quartering these.” I put a hand to my stomach. “But to be truthful, I’m feeling a bit queasy. All those times in the spring…” I heaved, spitting onto stones. “I think I might—I might be—”