The Knight and the Moth (The Stonewater Kingdom, #1)(46)

“Dire circumstances, gargoyle.” I wrenched free my hammer and chisel, voices—King Castor’s and Rory’s and Maude’s—sounding in the corridor behind me. “Take my hand.”

He did so without question, his stone footsteps a raucous toll as he followed me at a run out of the alleyway. We muddled through gawking crowds, down serpentine streets, over bridges—past factories and city gardens—lost like fallen milk teeth within the Seacht’s yawning mouth.

When I was too breathless to go on, we stopped on an empty bridge over a narrow canal. “I forget, Bartholomew,” said the gargoyle. “Why are we running?”

I draped myself over the stone rail like a dirty, wet dress and hauled in breaths. “Don’t trust king, knights—Omen. Need—to—think.”

“Just as well. Discussing things with that equine proved quite a bore.” The gargoyle sighed, suddenly forlorn. “I confess horses are not the intelligent beasts I imagined them to be. Though I don’t think that merits the abuse they suffer postmortem.”

That one took me a moment. “No one actually beats dead horses, gargoyle. It’s an expression.”

“Really? How morbid.”

He began to hum to himself. And I—I could hardly catch my breath. The pieces of my life had been stained by the Scribe’s ink, by his face and words and death. “What do you know about the Omens, gargoyle?” I managed. “I never thought to ask you.”

“Because you believe yourself better than me?”

“That’s not—” I looked over my shoulder at him. “Maybe. Maybe I thought there was a hierarchy to Aisling, like I thought there was to all of Traum. That gargoyles were better than other sprites, just like knights and kings were better than craftsmen—and that I was better than all of them.” I bit my lip. “It sounds awful when I say it out loud.”

“True things often do.”

“I don’t believe I am better than you.” I dropped my forehead onto the bridge’s stone rail. “I don’t know what to believe.”

The gargoyle held still but for his snout, which wrinkled in concentration. “Does not the abbess say that the Omens are gods—and you are special to Divine for them?”

“It is possible the abbess does not know all there is to know about the Omens.” Sickness stirred in my belly. “Or that she, too, does not like saying true things out loud.”

“I suppose that is a permanent possibility. Even your dreams may not show you the truth, Bartholomew. I cannot remember it ever being proven that gods are more honest than anyone else.”

“The Omens’ creeds are about truth. I always assumed them virtuous. Eternal—immortal.” I looked out over the canal. “But it seems they are none of those things.”

Boats passed beneath our bridge, long and narrow and laden with goods. Craftsmen, carrying their stock. A dory filled with bread passed by, and my stomach rumbled.

“When was the last time you bolstered yourself with food and water?” the gargoyle asked.

“I don’t know. A while.”

“Slept?”

“Longer still.”

“Whatever thinking you must do, you cannot do it like this.” He blew air from pouted lips. “What woe is mine, ever to childmind you.”

We had no money for an inn, but we did happen upon an empty forge with a caved-in roof. It smelled of dirt and coal and fires long burned out. I lay my head upon my arm, closed my eyes.

And was lost to sleep in seconds.





I woke from a dreamless oblivion with a racing heart and did not know where I was. The walls, the smells—this wasn’t my cottage. But the crescent moon floated through a broken roof, and I was able to make out that I was in a forge upon a lowly bed of dirt.

I’m in the Seacht. My memory came slowly, then far too fast. I’m with the gargoyle in the Seacht. The Diviners are gone.

And the Omens are a lie.

It was quiet. So horribly quiet without the Diviners, breathing next to me in their sleep.

I sat up. The gargoyle stood a pace away, humming to himself as he looked out a window with broken shutters. Next to him were a tin pitcher and a plate of bread and cheese and apples.

My stomach yanked. “Where did you get that?”

He screamed. “Sprites and spoons—you startled me, Bartholomew.”

“Have you been stealing, gargoyle?”

“Yes,” he said with delight. “I’m rather good at it. I was caught only twice. But you—you look stern. Have I behaved ignobly again by your childish standards?”

He had. But it wouldn’t be a stretch to assume he’d throw the pilfered food out the window if I told him as much. “Not at all. Besides, I’m starved.”

The pitcher was full of water. I drained it and devoured the food platter. “Thank you.”

The gargoyle watched me eat, then picked up my hammer and chisel. “Are we leaving, Bartholomew?”

I took the tools in my hands. Even with their familiar weight, I felt unbalanced. “I think… Perhaps we…”

“You seem troubled.” The gargoyle looked up at me with wide, earnest eyes. “Would you like me to tell you a story?”

“No one could craft a story fine enough to make me feel better right now, gargoyle.”