Страница 32 из 90
Folk were scarce on the bridge, the hour still early. But for every man or woman or child who passed, the gargoyle and I earned a wide-eyed stare. Some even stopped in their tracks or pointed, echoes of “Look, a Diviner!” following me across the bridge.
I pulled my hood tighter over my head.
“You’ll need more of a disguise than that.” Rory spun the pilfered stylus between his fingers. “The Seacht is dense. Populated. There’s no orderly queue like the one you’re accustomed to at Aisling. People will swarm you, just like that pathetic merchant from Coulson Faire. My advice?” He jerked his head at my face. “Lose the shroud. It’s too distinct.”
“Fu
“Two things can be true at the same time, Diviner.” Rory glowered at a passing cart, and his voice lowered. “Take it off.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“No is a sufficient answer.”
He rubbed his face. In the light of the day, even beneath smudged charcoal, there were impressive shadows beneath Rory’s eyes. I wondered when he’d last slept. “You left Aisling,” he said with the effect of a man invoking his last shred of patience. “Broke a few things on your way out. If you’re hoping the abbess will take you back—”
“That’s not why I won’t take it off.”
“Why, then?” He smiled without warmth. “What’s behind it?”
That was the trouble. I didn’t know. The gargoyles provided us with clean shrouds when ours grew dirty, and when we washed our faces, it was with discipline—always keeping our eyes shut and away from the cracked mirror in the Diviner cottage.
I remembered One, searching her reflection in that same mirror two nights ago—her horrified gasp. What has been done to us?
I turned my head away and said nothing.
Rory muttered beneath his breath. “Fine. Don’t take it off, then. But know it will be dangerous.”
“Isn’t that what my knightly escort is for? Besides, I have these for protection.” I wagged my hammer and chisel in his face. “And the gargoyle.”
We both looked over our shoulders. The gargoyle had taken Fig by her lead, his face close to her muzzle as he lectured her. “Never trust anything written in rhyme, Bartholomew. It is trickery—a pretty falsehood. That is something I intend to tell everyone when I pen my own book of tales. Firstly, of course, I must learn to read and write.”
Rory angled his brows at me. “An army of wits, you two.”
“Shut up. He doesn’t have much sense or memory or even a name—just a strange compulsion to serve Aisling. He’s a bit… peculiar.”
“You’re a pair, then.”
If I told him, No, I’m not a pair—I’m one of six and there are five cracks in my heart for it, he would laugh at me. He’d remind me that the only reason I am distinct now is because there are no other Diviners around to make me indistinct.
I did not need a reminder of that.
When the silence hung too long, Rory pivoted. “Speaking of Aisling, there’s something I’ve been wondering. It involves you, me, my blood on your tongue—and the little matter of your dream.”
My stomach tightened. “What about it?”
“You didn’t say anything in the spring. The gargoyle pulled you out after you—” He exhaled sharply. “You know. Drowned. He laid you on your back upon the chancel and said you were dreaming, but you didn’t breathe a word. Why is that?”
The last lie I’d told was to the gargoyle, and I’d had to feign a vomiting spell to be convincing. Better to aim toward the blurry truth. “I don’t know why I didn’t say anything.”
Rory’s stare warmed the side of my face, dark eyes mapping my every corner, as if he could almost hear me think, I saw the sixth Omen, the moth—and horrible things have been happening ever since. I might have even said it out loud…
Were it not for that strange coin in his pocket.
When the silence became unpalatable, Rory said, “You’ve been Divining a while, I take it.”
“Nearly ten years.”
“How old are you?”
“Bartholomew is quite old,” the gargoyle answered behind us, drawing an idle finger though Fig’s mane. “Though in a sense, she is prodigiously young—”
“No one knows,” I interrupted. “I have no memory before Aisling. But my teeth are healthy and my skin is not so lined yet.” I looked to Rory. “How old do I look to you?”
“If I answer badly, are you going to pulverize my head with that hammer?” He studied me down his nose. “You look…” Was that red in his cheeks? “You look like a young woman. Not far from my age. But your condescension is perfected. Like that of someone old.”
I made a face. “What’s your age?”
“Twenty-six. But my youth felt so endless that perhaps I’m the exact same age as you.” He lifted one shoulder, like a full shrug was not worth the effort. “Young, and also rather old.”
We stayed quiet for the rest of the crossing. Rory did not ask me about my dream or to take my shroud off again. I listened to the sound of the Tenor and the beat of our steps upon the bridge—hooves and boots, stone and feet—thinking on the stories I’d told the Diviners of the things we’d do when we left Aisling, and how bare it felt, living one without them.
The Seacht was a roaring instrument. By the time we’d crossed the Tenor River it was full morning, and the city’s labyrinthic streets were bustling with people. Wedged between Fig and the gargoyle, I flexed my toes over cobblestones and threw my head back as I took in the city.
It was nothing like Coulson Faire—tents plopped haphazardly in rows upon an open field. The Seacht, its architecture, was a meticulous wonder. Every building, by wood or stone or brick, was built to an exact stature that allowed its neighbors light. There were culverts so no freestanding water remained in the streets. Water wheels fed into factories. I could smell leather. From open windows, I saw men and women in gray robes, shuffling about large tubs or stretching a wet yellow material over large stones, then pi
“Parchment.” My eyes were wide. “They’re making parchment.”
“Oh, Bartholomew.” The gargoyle took my hand. “For writing stories.”
“Histories, more like,” Rory said. “Medical discoveries, star charts, architecture and invention—you name it, it’s been scribbled on a leaflet somewhere in this city. They love that, the scribes. Learning, and scribbling.”
I watched a row of women through an open window as they sewed, then pressed, stacks of parchment together. “You sound disapproving, Myndacious.”
“Not at all. Knowledge is a wellspring, and I happily drink from it.” He scowled up at a ba
“You mean the ways you are meant to defend as a knight? My ways?” My wonderment was doused in irritation. “You think that because someone embraces i
Rory retrieved the scribe’s stolen stylus from his pocket and set it on a windowsill. “Clearly you don’t.”
“You said it yourself. Two things can be true at the same time—people can believe in more than one thing at once.”
“Like what is young, and also that which is rather old,” the gargoyle offered.
The streets were wriggling snakes, and so were the river cha
I heard the sweet, unmistakable sound of children’s laughter. The brick building’s door was open, and from it, I glimpsed hair, swinging arms, churning feet, rosy cheeks. Children, gleefully chasing one another. One of them, who seemed no older than eight, caught the open door, shut it—and I noted an inscription painted upon the wood.
Pupil House III
A School for Foundlings
Oh. This was where Diviners were chosen from. Where One or Two or Three or Four or Five or I might have begun, before Aisling. I took a step toward the house—
Someone stomped on my bare foot. I yelped, knocking into a short, burly man with several inkwells in his arms. “Oi! Watch where you’re going.”
I checked my shroud was still in place and muttered an apology. The man’s eyes widened as he took me in. His mouth turned. “Get away from me, bitch.”
The gargoyle made a shrill noise of affront and shoved the man. He tumbled onto his bottom, dropping his inkwells, which shattered on the cobbled street. Ink pooling beneath him, the man struggled to his feet, shouting profanity so decorative I didn’t know what half of it meant, only that he thought me an Omen witch and a whore—
Rory leaned down. Cracked him over the jaw with an open palm. “Watch your fucking mouth.”
The man slipped on his own ink and fell a second time. When he scrutinized Rory—the charcoal around his eyes, the rings in his ear—he clearly didn’t know whether to spit out another slur or flee.
But the Seacht was indeed a city of intellects. The man raised himself out of the ink and ran.
“You can be happy now, I suppose,” I said through tight lips. “Clearly not everyone in the Seacht falls prey to the old ways.”
Rory pushed his hair out of his eyes. “That didn’t make me happy at all.”
“Oh, look—a Diviner!”
Pith. A crowd was already forming. “Did someone show you their ink?” a woman asked me, dragging a man who looked about one hundred years old with her. “Pray, Diviner, will you read mine?”
“Oh. I’m sorry, that’s not how it w—”
More onlookers pushed forward, and suddenly there were two, three, four more inkwells in my face. “Read my ink! Please, Diviner, what signs do you see? Good or bad?”
I was jostled, my bare feet trampled, and then a warm arm was around my shoulders and I was being moved through the crowd, through the marketplace, far quicker than before.
“And to think,” Rory said in my ear, “it might have all been avoided had you been wearing shoes.”
The Seacht’s streets narrowed as we turned east. The crowd was thi
They walked close to each other, the hoods of their cloaks pulled up like mine.
Rory watched them, a crooked smile slithering over his mouth. “Well, well.” He retracted his arm from my shoulders and pressed ahead. Soon he was directly behind the hooded figures, walking on silent step, reaching a hand into one of their cloaks like a common pickpocket.
I balked. “What are you doing, Myndacious?”