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One of the figures turned. I saw a sharp face fitted with green eyes with charcoal drawn around them.
Maude.
She caught Rory by the wrist, denying him her pocket. “Nice try, little thief.”
Rory looked at me like he’d picked me out from between his teeth. “Spoilsport.”
The second figure, who turned on his heel, was none other than the king of Traum himself. When King Castor saw Rory, he smiled so widely I could count his teeth. “We found him, Rory. He was hiding in plain sight. We followed him and—”
The king stopped short, his eyes finally catching up to his mouth. “Oh—a Diviner.” His cheeks went ruddy. “My Diviner.”
“Six,” I reminded him. It would have been proper to lower my head. But the boy was in common garb—leathers and an undyed cloak. He looked so ordinary I forgot he mattered enough to bow to.
“I am here, too, Bartholomew,” the gargoyle said, clearing his throat. “You may greet me as well.”
Maude went still. “Pith,” she muttered. “I didn’t know gargoyles spoke.”
“Who’s Bartholomew?” the king asked.
“Unimportant.” Rory’s posture had changed. He wasn’t slouched or lazy or perked for enjoyment. His back was stiff, his shoulders inflexible. “You found him. And you were going after him—without me?”
“Who?” I snapped.
They turned, six eyes combing me. They were like the three leaves of a clover, conspiratorial and exclusive in their trio. There was an arduous pause, then Rory looked at Maude. Said something to her with the wiggle of his eyebrows.
Maude shook her head. “No.”
I crossed my arms. “No what?”
Rory scratched his jaw and ignored me. “It’s a two birds, one stone situation.”
“It’s risky and thoughtless,” Maude bit back.
“My specialties.”
I was going to break something with my hammer if these idiots didn’t stop acting like I wasn’t there. “Ahem.”
King Castor looked from me to Rory to Maude—then back to me. Slowly, he shrugged. “I say we bring her. She could be useful.”
The gargoyle puffed his chest out with pride. “Bartholomew is a daughter of Aisling, a harbinger of gods—the most dedicated dreamer I know.” He patted my shoulder. “But no, I’m sorry to say she is not especially useful. I, on the other hand—”
I put my hand over his mouth. “Whatever you are doing, I will come along. But immediately after, I require your ear, King Castor.” I tried to be like the abbess when she was cross—like Aisling Cathedral itself. Cold, beautiful, and disapproving. “And I will have it.”
The king gri
“Easy, Your Majesty.” Rory threw an arm over the king’s shoulder, steering him away from me. “It’s hardly a marriage proposal. Now”—he gestured to the street ahead—“let’s go see an old friend.”
Maude was not pleased. I could tell by the way she censured Rory with relentless glares as she led us down dizzying streets that she did not want me along for whatever ill adventure lay ahead.
Too bad. I wasn’t letting the boy-king out of my sight until he promised he would help me find my Diviners.
We stopped abruptly in an ivy-laden alley that was almost too narrow for Fig. Maude looked over her shoulder. Satisfied we were alone, she began peeling back the ivy, revealing a small wooden door in the alley wall. “Right.” She turned to me. “We need to go over a few things before we bring you in.”
“In…” I looked up at the ivy wall. It didn’t look like a barracks or anywhere the knighthood might be stationed. “Where, exactly?”
“We’re meeting with someone,” Maude said flatly. “A vestige of the Seacht.”
I crossed my arms. “You’re being cryptic. It’s obnoxious.”
“Hey.” Rory tapped my wrist. “Uncross those and listen. There’s a chance this man knows something of your lost Diviners. Seeing him may be a bit of a shock, but it’s important that you see him, understood?”
“Understood, Bartholomew.” The gargoyle straightened. “I will strive to be a pillar of decorum—”
“You will stay with Fig.” When the gargoyle’s bottom lip began to quiver, Rory hastily added, “She gets lonely.”
The gargoyle looked up at Fig, who was contentedly eating ivy off the wall, and sniffled. “Very well. If my presence will ease her suffering, I shall weather my own.”
“Fantastic.” Rory’s dark eyes returned to me. “Our business may get… animated. Stay close.”
My brows shot up. “Animated how?”
“Will there be kissing?” the gargoyle asked.
“What—no.” Rory made a face. “We’re going to…” He turned to Maude for help, but she offered none, gri
“We are taking up the mantle and challenging this man to his craft,” King Castor said, then blinked rapidly, as if surprised by his own exactitude. He looked to Maude, who patted him on the back, then focused on me. “Do you know what that means, Six?”
I didn’t. It sounded vaguely familiar—a memory stuck in a dark corner of my mind. But my pride was a formidable beast. I’d sooner go back to Aisling than give these idiots another cause to think me witless and unworldly. “Of course.”
I could see in the way they looked at one another that they thought me a prodigiously bad liar.
Maude wrenched open the alleyway door, revealing a dark corridor. “Then let’s go.”
King Castor followed, quick in his step, like he did not want to stray too far from Maude.
I handed the gargoyle my hammer and chisel for safekeeping. “You still haven’t told me this man’s name,” I said to Rory, stepping over a fractured wood threshold into the corridor.
“He’ll be more than happy to introduce himself.”
Rory shut the door behind him, expelling the echo of the Seacht and the gargoyle’s voice as he began to lecture Fig about varying sorts of ivy. The only thing I could hear now was the muffled patter of our steps on wool rugs. I peered at the surrounding walls, their height so vast I had to crane my neck. Upon then, obscured by dimness, were rows of elaborate paintings I could not make out. They looked like portraits with blurry faces—bent, unclothed bodies.
No lanterns were lit. The corridor stretched on, its end obscured by murky shadow. I walked behind the king, a step ahead of Rory, suddenly afraid I was being heedlessly led into the unknown.
Ahead, Maude’s and King Castor’s backs were rigid. Behind, I could hear the swish of Rory’s fidgeting fingers in his pocket. He was toying with his coin. An anxious habit, perhaps. His steps were unflagging, but his breaths were rough and uneven. “You lot seem tense,” I murmured. “Nervous about something, Myndacious?”
The fidgeting sounds stopped. “Do you have some moral compunction against saying my name?”
“Is Myndacious not your name?”
“I told you the night we met to call me Rory.”
“And I might have. But then we got to talking, and suddenly there was nothing about you that made me want to encourage familiarity.”
“Job well done. Vomiting on my favorite boots is a surefire way to keep things formal between us.”
I glared back at him. “You’re remarkably difficult to like.”
“You’d like me better if you called me Rory.”
“I’d like you better if you were on your back again.”
He smiled.
An unfamiliar heat burrowed into my face. “From throwing you and your inferior strength down, obviously.”
“Loud and clear, Diviner. I hear you loud and clear.”
A line of light drew before us, coming from the cracks in a wide oaken door at the end of the corridor. Maude put a hand upon it and pressed.
The door opened to a room with no windows, lit by sunlight cascading from a dome ceiling made entirely out of glass. Upon the walls, several stories high, were shelves stacked with books. Tens of thousands of books.
In the heart of the room, fixed upon fine woolen rugs, was a man.
An old man, with draping silken robes and long, gnarled fingers. He stood stooped, but his eyes were lifted. Lifted—and made entirely out of stone.
In his hand was the inkwell from my dreams.
He stared at me, drawing in a long, rasping breath. “A daughter of Aisling.” He lifted a hand, beckoning me. “Come in.”