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“All that matters is that I know it and they did not know it.” The Omen rolled his jaw, his shoulders, joints cracking, pointing to his shelves. “Knowledge is mine to bear, and theirs to beg. Even if they manage to get the next one right”—his lips peeled back in a grotesque smile—“they are condemned.”
I looked down at the others and felt as though I was dreaming—prickling, sweating, afraid. “Please. You must be aware that Diviners have gone missing from the tor. I’ve left Aisling in search of them—”
The Scribe threw his ink before I could finish and vanished, then appeared on a shelf across the room. “My final inquiry,” he called down to the king and Rory and Maude, “is a riddle of war.”
“Another lovely poem, I hope,” Rory deadpa
“The Seacht keeps its books, but also its forges, its armories and arsenals. This composition, I pe
A moth.
Once more, the Omen cleared his throat and read.
Not hefty in weight or long in the arm, it’s thin as a reed in the ground.
Kept sharp or kept dull, however you’re fond, its customs and merits abound.
So, too, is it stocky—a blunt heavy head, with sturdy wood handle to grasp.
With bodily might, it swings and it splits, with one fist or two to hold clasp.
In battle or field or wherever you stray, keep fixed in slack loops on your belt.
For breaking and beating, passion or labor, there ne’er was a blow thusly dealt.
The Scribe’s stone eyes lowered. “Well, king? What weapon does this poet describe?”
The king, Rory, and Maude all wore the same heavy brow, as if burdened by their own contemplation. But I—I was back on the tor, back to my chores, back to the stone wall. I’d spent days feeling ignorant and unworldly and helpless, a victim of my own occupation and the cathedral’s tight fist.
How fitting that the answer to the Harried Scribe’s riddle should be that which I took from Aisling itself.
My posture went rigid, and Rory’s gaze shot up. He studied me a long moment, as if unfurling the riddle of me and not the one the Harried Scribe had posed. His lips pulled back in a smile and then he was leaning over, whispering in King Castor’s ear.
The king let out a fraught sound of relief, then straightened himself. “It’s not a singular weapon,” he said to the Scribe. “It’s two. A hammer, and a chisel.”
The Omen went still, and so did the sound in his cavernous room. He vanished—appearing once more on the shelf next to me. This time when he dipped his finger into his inkwell, he stirred it counterclockwise. “What would you ask me then, king of Traum?” he challenged. “To beat me at my craft?”
King Castor stepped closer to Rory and Maude. “Allow us a moment to confer.”
“Never say I am not a generous god.” The Harried Scribe watched them, drawing near to me—petting my head like I was a dog. “Do not worry,” he murmured. “They will not ask a question I have not already pe
“If you know all,” I said, trying again, “you must tell me what has happened to my lost Diviners.”
The Scribe pulled away. I felt a sharp sting, several strands of my pale hair caught in the cracks of his aged hand. He brought them to his nose. Inhaled. “Your Diviners?” His mouth opened, a wide, black hole, and then he was tossing my hair into his mouth. Groaning in ugly ecstasy. “You belong to Aisling. To the Omens. That’s what I know, and what I know is ever the truth.”
Below, Rory and Maude and the king were looking up once more, eyes darting between me and the Harried Scribe. “Speaking of Diviners,” Rory called. He said it idly, but the line of his shoulders was drawn tight as a bowstring. “Tell me, Scribe—do you favor them? Aisling’s holy dreamers? The hard-laboring harbingers of the Omens?”
The Scribe spat dark phlegm at the king. “I favor my Diviners more than you your gods, heretic.”
The phlegm fell, missing King Castor and landing on Rory’s boots. He glowered at his feet. “Will everyone kindly leave my fucking boots alone—”
“Our question is rather simple, Omen,” King Castor said in a rush. “Since you claim divinity—the god of all knowledge—tell us.” He nodded at me. “What’s her name?”
The Harried Scribe’s teeth groaned as he bit down. When he turned to look at me, his eyes bore a lifelessness not even the stones at Aisling’s wall, with their lichen and weather-worn flaws, possessed. “She is a daughter of Aisling. She has no name.”
Sybil came the faintest whisper deep within me. “Everyone has a name,” I murmured. “Even foundlings.” Then, with sudden, biting clarity, “If you were truly a god, you would know it.”
They knew then that they’d beaten him. Rory, Maude, and the king were gri
The Scribe knew it, too. I could see it, even in the emptiness of his stone eyes, the moment he realized that his magic inkwell was forfeit. The Omen dipped his gnarled finger into his inkwell, stirring it counterclockwise with a sudden fury. Then, with the same revulsion I’d seen the scribe at the bridge display when he’d attacked the sprite, he turned his inkwell over, upending its ink onto Rory and Maude and the king.
This time, the ink was not transportive.
It was a weapon.
It landed on the arm of Maude’s cloak. She let out a sharp noise and shoved King Castor and Rory back. The ink on her sleeve turned a molten red, burning like coal through the wool. Maude flung her cloak off, but the unmistakable smell of burnt fabric—and burnt flesh—lingered in the air.
The Harried Scribe laughed, and then he vanished, appearing on a shelf across the room—throwing ink once more.
“What are you doing?” I cried.
The Omen did not answer but to bark at me. “Stay as you are, Diviner.”
It was terrifying, watching him vanish and reappear—invariable in his movements and the flinging of his ink. Smells of burnt paper or wool and even hair filled the room; Rory and Maude and the king were fast on their feet—eyes up and weapons drawn—but Maude’s axe and the king’s sword were nothing to the ink. They were struck, burned, several times.
But they did not flee.
Maude’s voice ripped through the room. “You are defeated at your craft! Where is your honor?”
“You’re hurting them!” I screamed, watching as spots of ink burned King Castor’s hand. The boy-king winced, dodging the rest of the ink, swiping at the Harried Scribe with his sword and hitting nothing but air.
The same terror I felt dreaming, the keen sense of entrapment, was upon me. I wanted to fall into darkness and find myself somewhere else—to wake the fuck up. Only this wasn’t a dream. If I shattered my body falling, there was no waking up whole. One wrong move and I would plummet, thudding upon the floor like one of the Scribe’s books.
I began to climb down from the shelves. Closer, closer to the ground I got, until I was but ten hands from the floor.
A cold hand caught my arm. I looked into stone eyes.
The Harried Scribe bared his teeth. “I told you to stay—”
It wasn’t a conscious effort, what I did next. More like instinct, like muscle memory—the will to live. Strong and exact, my palm collided with the Omen’s inkwell, knocking it from his grasp. He let out a wretched sound, swiping at air, but the inkwell was already falling. It fell and fell until it clattered upon the stone floor, ink spilling like a great black wound.
The Harried Scribe’s hand, now empty, began to shake. He turned it on me, striking my face, his blow so vicious my lip split. I lost my grip upon the shelf. And then, just like his inkwell—
I fell.
My back slapped against stone as I hit the floor, wind shooting from my lungs. I coughed, blood spraying from my split lip onto the floor.
A grotesque noise, a cry and a moan, sounded above me. The Harried Scribe let go of the shelf, falling, then landing with a horrible crunch next to me. I flinched, expecting another blow.
He fell to his knees instead. The Scribe lay out upon the ground, prostrating like an overturned book, like a supplicant. He stuck out a mottled tongue.
And began to lick my blood from the floor.
I tried to get away, but the Omen’s horrible eyes wheeled onto my bloody lip. Springing to his knees, he crawled like a beast toward me. He looked possessed, as if he’d forgotten his surroundings—his vast stores of knowledge—reduced to a primal urge to chase me.
His cold hand closed around my ankle. Pulled me toward him. “I can smell it,” the Harried Scribe hissed. “It’s in your blood. Aisling’s waters—”
Rory caught the Scribe’s collar in an iron fist. He yanked the Omen away from me, then threw him upon the floor in the heart of the vast room. Rory stood with King Castor and Maude, who leered over the Omen, their faces painted with disgust. “What do you think?” the king said, his cheeks speckled with burns.
“His hands?” Maude offered. The fabric of her sleeve was in tatters, the skin beneath angry and red. “Or his throat?”
Rory was without burn. He reached into his pocket. Extracted his coin. “Why not both?”
The room was split by a thunderous crack.
My knees buckled, red dust filling the air. The Harried Scribe was no longer in one piece, but hundreds—like the mirror I’d shattered in my bedroom. Only the pieces of him were not glistening.
They were thick and weeping, as if the Scribe had been composed of but two things: bloody flesh, and stone.
I swallowed sickness and fled.
I made it to the dark corridor, ru
He didn’t fight me. I could tell by the tilt of his head against the wood panel that he’d expected my ire.
What he hadn’t expected was my hand, diving into his pocket. The front one along the left side of his waist, the one his fingers fidgeted in—that’s where he kept it.
Rory’s eyes widened. He wrenched me away by the wrist. “I’ll likely regret saying this—but keep your hands out of my pants.”
“That coin.” I was shaking. Seething. “Where did you get it?”
He didn’t answer. He just kept glaring down at my shroud like he wanted to rip it off.
“The inkwell is to the Harried Scribe, and that coin is to the Artful Brigand. You’re him, aren’t you?” I recoiled until my back hit the opposite wall. “You’re an Omen.”