The Knight and the Moth (The Stonewater Kingdom, #1)(79)

The others called after me but did not catch me until I was already standing upon the lip of the basin, facing the Omen that waited.

There was a boat—small and wooden—a chain attached to its bow. The chain disappeared into water, then resurfaced upon the Ardent Oarsman’s platform. He reached down. Took it in his fist. Nodded at the boat.

Maude caught me before I could get in. “You need a weapon.” A weight slid into my hand. I didn’t have to look down to know it was her battle-axe. “I do have faith in you,” she said. “I think you would do anything for your Diviners. Even d—”

Her voice was drowned out by a new gust of wind. I looked up. Against the rolling gray sky a dark shape appeared, getting closer and closer. A voice, singing out of tune.

The gargoyle was back.

He landed with a huff, sticking his nose up at Rory and Benji and Maude in particular. But when he reached me, all haughtiness vanished. He looked up with an open face. In his hands, resting in the beds of his palms—

My hammer and chisel.

“It is important for a squire to carry a knight’s weapons,” he said, the words so stoic I wondered if he’d practiced them on the flight back. “I will carry them for you, Bartholomew. I will shoulder any weight you give me.”

Oh, I thought, a great swelling in my chest. To be a gargoyle. To be my gargoyle.

I set Maude’s axe down. Picked up the hammer and chisel. They bore no magic like the stone objects the Omens carried. But their weight was familiar, the feel of them in my palms assuring. With them, I felt strong.

The Ardent Oarsman pointed a gnarled hand at the boat.

“That’s your ride,” Benji said, coming up next to me. “No turning back now.”

“She’s not turning back.” Maude stood at my other side, rapping a knuckle over my breastplate. “I want this returned without a scratch.”

They both stepped aside, but not before Maude offered the gargoyle her hand in apology. He didn’t take it.

And then there was a deep voice in my ear. A steadfast presence at my back. “Nervous, Diviner?”

“No,” I said in a rush. Then, “Tell me—”

I swallowed.

“Tell you…” The warmth in Rory’s voice was dissonant against the sound of rain, pinging over our armor. He rounded my body, blocking my view of the Ardent Oarsman, and pulled Maude’s helmet from the crook in my arm. “What?”

“It’s stupid.”

“Then it should come easily to me.”

I bit down on a smile. “The Diviners asked for stories. When we were sick or tired or afraid. To calm us.”

“You want me to tell you a story?” He placed the helmet on my head, over my shroud. His voice, trapped within the iron, hummed in my ears. “Once, there was a foundling boy who didn’t believe in anything. He grew up, became a worldly knight, and still he struggled to believe. He bore hardly any hope, and a mountain of disdain. And that should have been the end.”

He took my hand, squeezed it, tightening my hold on my hammer. “But then he came to a cathedral upon a tor, and met a woman there. And all the tales he’d troubled himself with about cruelty, about unfairness and godlessness… he started to forget. He was afforded another chance, as if by magic, to believe in something. He’d never be a very good knight, but every time he looked at the woman, he had the distinct faith”—his eyes roved my face—“that things could be better than they’d been.”

I’d fallen through the seams of time into a place where there were no Omens or stone, no armor, no gossamer. There was just Rory, me—and a strange sacrality between us.

He lowered the visor of my helmet. “Can you still see?”

“Yes.”

“Good. If you fall in that water, I’m coming in after you.”

I stepped around him. Faced the basin, the Omen—but looked back to Rory. “It’s a good story, Myndacious. I liked it.”

He held me in his gaze like he needed to. “Do you want to know how it ends?”

“Does it end?”

He nodded. “It ends a handful of minutes from now. After you’ve won, and there is one less Omen in the world.” He grinned. “It ends when you kiss me.”

“You mean it ends after I’ve won, and there is one less Omen in the world—and I hit you as hard as I can.”

“With your mouth.”

I withdrew, tucking away my grin. When I faced the basin again, it was my spine, not my armor, holding me up.

I stepped into the boat.

The Oarsman was on his platform, watching. When I got into his boat he took the chain in both hands and began to yank. The water began to churn, the Omen pulling the boat, and me within it, toward his platform.

I wanted to look back. At the gargoyle and Benji and Maude. At Rory. I wanted to see the assuredness in their gazes. But all I saw, when the boat scraped against the side of the platform and the Ardent Oarsman offered me a gnarled hand—

Were cold stone eyes.

I ignored his hand, hauling myself up and moving to the opposite side of the platform, widening the space between us, ever wary of the water waiting just over the wooden lip.

The Oarsman surveyed me beneath his hood and smiled that toothy, jagged smile. He lifted his oar, pointed it at me like a threat, then swung it outward. His voice boomed over the water. “Any intervention on the Diviner’s behalf shall render the challenge lost and her life forfeit. No gargoyle, no king, no knight shall come to her aid.” His smile widened. “Agreed?”