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It was still the breakfast hour, and the commons door was open. Strewn about in clusters, knights ate off tin plates. Many were already clad in armor. Or perhaps they’d never shed it.
One knight choked on a mouthful of rye bread as I approached. He elbowed the man next to him, the word Diviner a searing whisper on the breeze.
Heads turned—conversations halted.
I surveyed the crowd, frowned, then pushed into the commons.
There were more knights inside, seated at the tables or standing in a crooked line at the counters fixed with food. A few lingered by the hearth, but none near the feline gargoyle with human hands who cooked the food over the fire.
I sliced my gaze across the room. One of the wooden tables had been moved to the far side of the commons. At it, seated between Maude and the king, mouth turning in a sneer that was growing more familiar by the second—
Rodrick Myndacious. That boar.
I drew air into my nostrils and marched forward.
King Castor saw me coming, his porridge spoon halting halfway to his mouth. Maude’s brows shot into her hairline. “Did someone call for a Diviner?”
“Pardon the intrusion, King Castor,” I said, steeling myself. “I need a favor.”
“Oh—of course.” The king wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and smiled toothily, like a nervous dog. “What can I do for you, Diviner?”
“Not you, Your Majesty.” I pointed my chisel at Rory’s chest. “Him.”
The bastard didn’t bother lifting his gaze from his breakfast. “Awful demanding this morning, Number Six.” When he noted my tools, Rory bit the inside of his cheek. “I see you’re armed.”
He’d drawn fresh charcoal around his eyes and secured his black hair with a strip of leather. His clothes were clean, and there was even a whit of warmth in his cheeks. Daylight, and an obvious bath, had made a new man of him.
I had the rousing vision of crashing my hammer onto his skull.
“What you inferred after you gave me idleweed,” I said. “About me knowing nothing of Traum. Of fun. I’d like you to remedy that.”
The king hacked out a cough. “You gave her your idleweed? Isn’t that some sort of—I don’t know.” He continued to cough. “Sacrilege?”
“You dolt.” Maude reached behind Rory and smacked King Castor’s back until he stopped hacking. “Diviners can drink and smoke and fuck just like anyone else.”
An errant knight from another table chuckled—then pretended he, too, was in the throes of a coughing fit the moment he locked eyes with Rory.
I stared at the trio. Maude calling him dolt, Rory christening him Benji. These knights were closer to the king than mere soldiers, despite the age disparity between them—Benji boyish, Rory a young man, and Maude at least ten years older than he was. They were intrepid, somehow. Conspiratorial, all in a row on their side of the table against me, alone on mine.
“Fun,” Rory deadpa
I looked over my shoulder. Lowered my voice. “I want you to escort the Diviners off the tor for the evening.”
The king’s eyes widened, and so did Maude’s. But Rory—he just kept tapping his spoon, chipping away the veneer of my patience. “Be your escort.”
“That’s what I said.”
He shrugged. “No.”
“What do you mean, no?”
“Just that.” He smiled. “You might have ridden other deferential knights hard and put them away wet—but I’m no one’s errand boy. Besides, we leave for Coulson Faire in an hour.”
The king went red, and Maude scrubbed a hand down her face. I heard a thump under the table, and Rory winced. “What he means, Diviner,” she said, “with the utmost respect, is we ca
I didn’t know much about Traum or its hamlets—but in this instance, I knew just enough. “Castle Luricht is within Coulson Faire and hardly any distance away. Your knights could easily make it back here by evening.”
Maude did not deny it. “I was under the impression it was forbidden for Diviners to leave Aisling Cathedral during their service.”
“It is also forbidden for anyone save the abbess, a gargoyle, or a Diviner to touch Aisling’s spring water. The same spring water I smelled here in the commons last night. When I ran into you three.”
Not a subtle accusation.
The king, Maude, Rory—they’d taken water from Aisling’s spring and didn’t want anyone to know. And while the why irked me, it was insubstantial to the what I could do with the information.
Blackmail, for instance.
My fingers danced along the necks of my hammer and chisel. “Do this for me, and I will forget to tell the gargoyles, who are known to be quite violent, mind you, that I ever saw that flagon of spring water.”
The trio watched me from their side of the table, their gazes all variant in color—black, green, blue—but the challenge in all three was the same. “Six Diviners, just… ambling down the road,” Maude said.
“Quite the spectacle,” Rory muttered.
“We’ll wear cloaks,” I bit back. “Obviously none of us want to be seen.”
The king leaned forward in his chair. “Forgive my curiosity, Diviner. If you are disallowed to leave Aisling, all of Traum must surely be a stranger to you. What happens when your service is up? When you are no longer required to—”
“Drown?” Rory offered, spi
“Dream,” Maude corrected.
“We all have tasks. Crafts we learn to bolster us when we depart.”
King Castor nodded at my hammer and chisel. “You’re to be a stoneworker?”
“Perhaps. If the pay is good.”
“The pay?” the king asked, incredulous. “The abbess doesn’t reimburse you for your time here?”
I bit down so hard my teeth hurt. “The Omens first appeared to a foundling, and every Diviner has been one since. That is why the money the abbess collects for Divination goes to the upkeep of the cathedral and the foundling houses we Diviners come from. She saved us from destitution. Gave us a home, a purpose—made us special. That is our payment. I wouldn’t have lived half the life I have without her.”
Tap, tap, tap went Rory’s spoon on the table. “And you call wasting your time dreaming of signs living, Diviner?”
I slapped the spoon out of his hand. It clattered to the floor, and I leaned in, lifting the dull end of my chisel to his nose. “What would a highborn prick like you know about it?”
Rory held perfectly still. He lifted his gaze to my shroud. He was looking for my eyes. For a target.
But he couldn’t find one.
He wrapped his fist around the chisel’s stem, dropping his voice to that low, gravelly rasp. “Point this thing in my face again and it’s mine.”
“I’d sincerely enjoy watching you try to take it.”
I could feel the eyes in the room on us.
“Whatever Aisling or Diviners or the Omens have done to garner your hatred, well done.” My voice was shaking. “I’ve been duly insulted. Now—you’ve stolen Aisling’s spring water. I won’t ask why, and I won’t speak of it again, but I want something in return. So be a good little soldier, and escort. My. Diviners.”
King Castor and Maude and everyone else in the commons sat frozen, some mid-bite, transfixed by the Diviner and the knight putting on a proper show. The only noise that perforated the room was a loud clack, clack, then—
The feline gargoyle was there, putting its stone claw on my shoulder and glaring over my shoulder at Rory. It opened its mouth. Flashed its teeth.
Rory jerked his hand off my chisel, his entire face caught in an eye roll. “I’m not going to hurt anyone, you witless hunk of stone.” He leaned back in his chair, heaving his boots, which had been unmistakably polished, onto the table. “Sorry, Diviner—that was aimed at the gargoyle. I can see how you might be tempted to answer to that description.”
The gargoyle led me to the door, but I turned at the threshold. Faced the table one final time, hot with embarrassment. But for the Diviners, I would bear it. “Please.”
It happened quickly. A tightening of muscle in Rory’s brow, a flare in his eyes. A genuine shred of something, peeking through all his derision.
It was gone as quick as it came.
I spent the rest of the morning at the east wall. Breaking things.
“Knave.” Crash went my chisel into a heart of granite. “Vile, loutish prat. He won’t do it.”
The batlike gargoyle, who was supposed to be assisting me and mixing mortar while I broke stone away from the tor to mend the wall, was picking gowan flowers. “Who, Bartholomew?”
Crash. “Did the knights say anything particular? The ones you caught at the spring last night?”
The gargoyle blinked, like I’d tendered him an impossible riddle. “Knights all sound the same to me. Is that an ungracious thing to say?”
Crash. “Maybe.” Crash, crash. “But as horrible as it is to admit”—the stone cleaved in two—“this specific knight is revoltingly distinct.”
When Aisling’s bell chimed twelve, I put my hammer and chisel away in the toolshed and went to the cathedral, walking past the dormitory stables.
They were empty. So were the dining commons.
The king and his knights were gone.
Aisling courtyard was full, men and women come to say prayers to the Omens’ statues. Others jangling as they walked, coins in their pockets, vying for one of the limited Divining slots. Only those with the most coin would be chosen by the abbess. The rest would leave, invariably to return another day with more money.
There was still sweat on my brow from the stones I’d been hauling when I took off my dress in the dark sacristy and do
I waited in silence. Listened to Five dream. When it was my turn, the chancel was decorated with trails of water from the Diviners the gargoyles had carried away.
I stepped into the spring. An aged merchant approached. He gave me his blood, his name. I looked up at the cathedral window, and the abbess pressed me into spring water. I drowned—
And dreamed.
Coin. Inkwell. Oar. Chime. Loom stone. Good portent, ill portent.
I woke, the abbess’s shroud looming over my face. “Again, my girl,” she said, holding a woman’s bloodied hand to my mouth. It coated my tongue, and I was pressed into water once more.
When I finally made my wet, weary way back to the Diviner cottage, it was almost suppertime. Visitors had been expelled from the grounds—the echoes of their voices were gone, and the wind along the tor spoke in its usual mournful refrain.
I stopped twice to vomit.
A pale figure waited near the cottage gate, sitting in grass and leaning against the fence. “Pleasant afternoon?” One asked.