The Knight and the Moth (The Stonewater Kingdom, #1)(39)

We stayed quiet for the rest of the crossing. Rory did not ask me about my dream or to take my shroud off again. I listened to the sound of the Tenor and the beat of our steps upon the bridge—hooves and boots, stone and feet—thinking on the stories I’d told the Diviners of the things we’d do when we left Aisling, and how bare it felt, living one without them.





The Seacht was a roaring instrument. By the time we’d crossed the Tenor River it was full morning, and the city’s labyrinthic streets were bustling with people. Wedged between Fig and the gargoyle, I flexed my toes over cobblestones and threw my head back as I took in the city.

It was nothing like Coulson Faire—tents plopped haphazardly in rows upon an open field. The Seacht, its architecture, was a meticulous wonder. Every building, by wood or stone or brick, was built to an exact stature that allowed its neighbors light. There were culverts so no freestanding water remained in the streets. Water wheels fed into factories. I could smell leather. From open windows, I saw men and women in gray robes, shuffling about large tubs or stretching a wet yellow material over large stones, then pinning it to dry.

“Parchment.” My eyes were wide. “They’re making parchment.”

“Oh, Bartholomew.” The gargoyle took my hand. “For writing stories.”

“Histories, more like,” Rory said. “Medical discoveries, star charts, architecture and invention—you name it, it’s been scribbled on a leaflet somewhere in this city. They love that, the scribes. Learning, and scribbling.”

I watched a row of women through an open window as they sewed, then pressed, stacks of parchment together. “You sound disapproving, Myndacious.”

“Not at all. Knowledge is a wellspring, and I happily drink from it.” He scowled up at a banner of an inkwell. “I simply can’t fathom why, for all their learning, folk of the Seacht still lend credence to those old, superstitious ways.”

“You mean the ways you are meant to defend as a knight? My ways?” My wonderment was doused in irritation. “You think that because someone embraces innovation they must scorn the ancient and ethereal?”

Rory retrieved the scribe’s stolen stylus from his pocket and set it on a windowsill. “Clearly you don’t.”

“You said it yourself. Two things can be true at the same time—people can believe in more than one thing at once.”

“Like what is young, and also that which is rather old,” the gargoyle offered.

The streets were wriggling snakes, and so were the river channels that wove beneath bridges, each pointing toward the heart of the Seacht—a bustling marketplace square. We passed more banners depicting inkwells, shops and tanneries, and tall, windowed archives. When we reached the lip of the marketplace, Rory pointed his finger over my shoulder, directing my gaze at a humble brick facade. “I imagine your Diviners came from one of those,” he murmured.

I heard the sweet, unmistakable sound of children’s laughter. The brick building’s door was open, and from it, I glimpsed hair, swinging arms, churning feet, rosy cheeks. Children, gleefully chasing one another. One of them, who seemed no older than eight, caught the open door, shut it—and I noted an inscription painted upon the wood.

Pupil House III

A School for Foundlings

Oh. This was where Diviners were chosen from. Where One or Two or Three or Four or Five or I might have begun, before Aisling. I took a step toward the house—

Someone stomped on my bare foot. I yelped, knocking into a short, burly man with several inkwells in his arms. “Oi! Watch where you’re going.”

I checked my shroud was still in place and muttered an apology. The man’s eyes widened as he took me in. His mouth turned. “Get away from me, bitch.”

The gargoyle made a shrill noise of affront and shoved the man. He tumbled onto his bottom, dropping his inkwells, which shattered on the cobbled street. Ink pooling beneath him, the man struggled to his feet, shouting profanity so decorative I didn’t know what half of it meant, only that he thought me an Omen witch and a whore—

Rory leaned down. Cracked him over the jaw with an open palm. “Watch your fucking mouth.”

The man slipped on his own ink and fell a second time. When he scrutinized Rory—the charcoal around his eyes, the rings in his ear—he clearly didn’t know whether to spit out another slur or flee.

But the Seacht was indeed a city of intellects. The man raised himself out of the ink and ran.

“You can be happy now, I suppose,” I said through tight lips. “Clearly not everyone in the Seacht falls prey to the old ways.”

Rory pushed his hair out of his eyes. “That didn’t make me happy at all.”

“Oh, look—a Diviner!”

Pith. A crowd was already forming. “Did someone show you their ink?” a woman asked me, dragging a man who looked about one hundred years old with her. “Pray, Diviner, will you read mine?”

“Oh. I’m sorry, that’s not how it w—”

More onlookers pushed forward, and suddenly there were two, three, four more inkwells in my face. “Read my ink! Please, Diviner, what signs do you see? Good or bad?”

I was jostled, my bare feet trampled, and then a warm arm was around my shoulders and I was being moved through the crowd, through the marketplace, far quicker than before.