The Knight and the Moth (The Stonewater Kingdom, #1)(45)

“You’re hurting them!” I screamed, watching as spots of ink burned King Castor’s hand. The boy-king winced, dodging the rest of the ink, swiping at the Harried Scribe with his sword and hitting nothing but air.

The same terror I felt dreaming, the keen sense of entrapment, was upon me. I wanted to fall into darkness and find myself somewhere else—to wake the fuck up. Only this wasn’t a dream. If I shattered my body falling, there was no waking up whole. One wrong move and I would plummet, thudding upon the floor like one of the Scribe’s books.

I began to climb down from the shelves. Closer, closer to the ground I got, until I was but ten hands from the floor.

A cold hand caught my arm. I looked into stone eyes.

The Harried Scribe bared his teeth. “I told you to stay—”

It wasn’t a conscious effort, what I did next. More like instinct, like muscle memory—the will to live. Strong and exact, my palm collided with the Omen’s inkwell, knocking it from his grasp. He let out a wretched sound, swiping at air, but the inkwell was already falling. It fell and fell until it clattered upon the stone floor, ink spilling like a great black wound.

The Harried Scribe’s hand, now empty, began to shake. He turned it on me, striking my face, his blow so vicious my lip split. I lost my grip upon the shelf. And then, just like his inkwell—

I fell.

My back slapped against stone as I hit the floor, wind shooting from my lungs. I coughed, blood spraying from my split lip onto the floor.

A grotesque noise, a cry and a moan, sounded above me. The Harried Scribe let go of the shelf, falling, then landing with a horrible crunch next to me. I flinched, expecting another blow.

He fell to his knees instead. The Scribe lay out upon the ground, prostrating like an overturned book, like a supplicant. He stuck out a mottled tongue.

And began to lick my blood from the floor.

I tried to get away, but the Omen’s horrible eyes wheeled onto my bloody lip. Springing to his knees, he crawled like a beast toward me. He looked possessed, as if he’d forgotten his surroundings—his vast stores of knowledge—reduced to a primal urge to chase me.

His cold hand closed around my ankle. Pulled me toward him. “I can smell it,” the Harried Scribe hissed. “It’s in your blood. Aisling’s waters—”

Rory caught the Scribe’s collar in an iron fist. He yanked the Omen away from me, then threw him upon the floor in the heart of the vast room. Rory stood with King Castor and Maude, who leered over the Omen, their faces painted with disgust. “What do you think?” the king said, his cheeks speckled with burns.

“His hands?” Maude offered. The fabric of her sleeve was in tatters, the skin beneath angry and red. “Or his throat?”

Rory was without burn. He reached into his pocket. Extracted his coin. “Why not both?”

The room was split by a thunderous crack.

My knees buckled, red dust filling the air. The Harried Scribe was no longer in one piece, but hundreds—like the mirror I’d shattered in my bedroom. Only the pieces of him were not glistening.

They were thick and weeping, as if the Scribe had been composed of but two things: bloody flesh, and stone.

I swallowed sickness and fled.

I made it to the dark corridor, running over woolen rugs, when Rory caught me. His fingers clasped my shoulder, but I answered in kind, turning around to take his arm—and slam him into the wall.

He didn’t fight me. I could tell by the tilt of his head against the wood panel that he’d expected my ire.

What he hadn’t expected was my hand, diving into his pocket. The front one along the left side of his waist, the one his fingers fidgeted in—that’s where he kept it.

Rory’s eyes widened. He wrenched me away by the wrist. “I’ll likely regret saying this—but keep your hands out of my pants.”

“That coin.” I was shaking. Seething. “Where did you get it?”

He didn’t answer. He just kept glaring down at my shroud like he wanted to rip it off.

“The inkwell is to the Harried Scribe, and that coin is to the Artful Brigand. You’re him, aren’t you?” I recoiled until my back hit the opposite wall. “You’re an Omen.”

He held his silence like a ransom. Then—“The coin belonged to the Artful Brigand.” He withdrew the coin from his pocket, turning it slowly between his fingers. “It belonged to him right up until five days ago when we went to Castle Luricht, challenged him to his craft, and used it to kill him. As to the accusation—I’m not one of your precious gods, Diviner.” His eyes flickered in the darkness. “I’m the one who’s killing them.”





CHAPTER TWELVE


OUR FEET WILL TAKE US WHERE WE NEED TO GO




He did not stop me from leaving.

Not that he could have. There was an insurgency in my body. If it was not spent out running, I might have easily put it into my fists and broken some vital part of Rodrick Myndacious.

When I crashed out of the Harried Scribe’s lair into daylight and the narrow alley, the gargoyle was where I’d left him—sleeping next to Fig. He’d pulled the saddle blanket and draped it over his head, muffled snores sounding beneath it.

I tore it off. “We must go.”

He gasped, then grimaced. “You’d think one versed in dreaming would know it is rude to wake someone from sleep.”