The Knight and the Moth (The Stonewater Kingdom, #1)(86)
I’d take the tools she’d given me. Then, with hammer, with chisel…
I’d annihilate her.
Petula Hall had been in Maude’s family for centuries, the Bauer name prominent in the Chiming Wood. Indeed, Maude herself was the jewel of the Wood, and I came to realize as we traversed into the hamlet and the village within that it wasn’t always me or the gargoyle folk would stare upon, but her. Maude, whom they would offer their hands, calloused from wielding axes, in greeting.
The air smelled different in the Chiming Wood than it had in the Fervent Peaks or the Seacht or Coulson Faire. Here, within the embrace of birch trees—where the houses were all made of pale wood and every man, woman, and child wore charcoal around their eyes and an axe on their belts—the air smelled sharp, hinting of idleweed.
Folk spoke under the banners depicting chimes, the words of the Wood scrawled beneath, Only the wind can say what is to come. Whenever the gargoyle and I passed, some were even bold enough to speak to us of portents—of the Omens.
“I heard a terrible noise on the wind this morning. Was it a sign of bad things to come?”
“A fine gale blew, and I felled a great tree, but its insides were rotten. Is the Faithful Forester trying to tell me something?”
“What do you see behind your shroud when you look upon the Wood?”
My only answer was silence. There was nothing to say. I’d become molten iron, hit so many times by everything that had happened since the king had come to Aisling Cathedral that I no longer recognized myself. The Ardent Oarsman’s bite had taken my faith, my obedience, clean out of me, and for the first time in my life, I felt rage to be revered. Venomous vitriol that the story of the Omens, of Aisling—of me—was a lie.
Nothing felt holy anymore, except maybe the dead.
“The Wood is so vast,” I said, tripping over bramble as I walked with the others into the village. “Where do we even begin to search for the Forester’s chime?”
“There is a glen,” Maude said. “It’s sacred, because some nitwit from the Eichel family claimed he saw the Faithful Forester there some decades ago, and the elders have used it as a place of meditation ever since.”
Rory spun his coin between deft fingers. “That’s where they have their ceremonies when a new king comes.”
“Which means as soon as the knighthood gets here, we’ll be permitted inside.” Benji kicked rocks. “Your king will be a useless spectacle for the Wood’s nobles, leaving the rest of you to search the glen for the Faithful Forester’s stone chime.”
“I wouldn’t call you a useless spectacle,” Rory said, throwing his arm over Benji’s shoulder. “Just a happy little distraction.” He mussed the king’s hair. “You’re getting good at it. Looking all doe-eyed, practically weeping reverence to the Omens, Mr. Ever But a Visitor.”
“The kingdom’s finest actor,” Maude offered.
“Or her best liar,” the gargoyle said pleasantly.
Benji’s blue eyes shot to my face, as if to say, They don’t know what it’s like to have to perform. But you and I do.
I was still angry at him for the secrets he’d kept about lost Diviners. But I could see in his blue eyes how eager he was to find the stone objects. To take up the mantle and succeed where his grandfather had not. To prove his worth. I’d been like that not so long ago. Of all the faces I’d seen since I’d left the tor, I feared I saw my own in Benedict Castor’s the most.
It took effort, but I smiled at him. “You bear it well.”
On the seventh day in the Chiming Wood, we received a falcon that the knights were near. On the eighth day, we came to the village to receive them. I sulked beneath a birch tree, picking yellow leaves off a branch, waiting.
Across the square from me, leaned up against a tree next to Benji and Maude, Rory spoke to a pair of woodsmen. He was listening to them, but unnoticed by anyone else, his left hand had dipped into the nearest man’s cloak. When he took it out, he was holding a pipe. He stuffed it into his own pocket, looked up, and winked at Maude, who eyed him with exasperation.
Thief.
“You’re making a face at the knave,” the gargoyle said, startling me. He was playing with the fuzzy seeds of a dandelion, peering around me at Rory. “Why are you giving him the cold mouth?”
“It’s ‘the cold shoulder,’ gargoyle.”
He blinked. “What would he want with your shoulder?”
“What would he want with my mouth?”
Amazing how, even with a face entirely of stone, the gargoyle could admonish me with a single look. He’d been giving me that look for days now. Maude and Benji, too—though they’d taken to running like dogs who’d heard a high-pitched whistle every time Rory and I were in the same room. A frequency no one could hear, but we all felt.
It had begun the night I’d told Rory my name. Maybe earlier, if I was being honest with myself. But I’d noticed it distinctly when he’d changed the bandage on my neck.
He’d peeled old linen away with such poignant effort, you’d think he was removing my skin. One hand on my chin, the other on my shoulder, Rory had turned my head, tendering the teeth marks in my neck a pointed look.
“Well?”