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CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT THE HEARTSORE WEAVER
The air was close, smelling sharp like salt water and overripe like decay. I fell, heart in my throat, and then Rory was there, his strong arms folding around me. “I’ve got you.”
The gargoyle came next, though it took him a moment to squeeze his wings through the narrow hole. When he fell into the cavern, splashing Rory and me with water, he let out a raucous squeal. “And I thought flying was unsavory. But crawling in the earth like an insect—ugh, Bartholomew, look! A worm!”
Rory put his hand over the gargoyle’s mouth. “The point of a hunt,” he said, “is to catch your prey unsuspectingly. Be quiet or send yourself back up that hole.”
“And abandon Bartholomew to the Omen who tried to smite her last night?” The gargoyle batted Rory away. “What kind of squire would that make me?”
“A good squire is a silent squire.”
“Says the knight without one.”
“Both of you, shut it.” I squinted against darkness. The gargoyle had been right. There were worms in the cavern. Luminous green and blue and purple worms that lit the darkness, clinging to dripping mossy walls, climbing over lichen, over rocks. And while the dissonance of lapping water blighted most of the sound around us, I heard a small hum. The barest hint of a noise, coming from the worms.
“They’re sprites,” I whispered. “Tiny silkworm sprites.”
Rory and the gargoyle raised their eyes to the looming walls of the cavern. Pitch-black, it stretched on and on, and would have been impossible to navigate at night without a lantern. But the sprites, their small glowing bodies, cast an ethereal glow, like stars punctuating a moonless sky, affording us a view of a wide, vast space.
“Look out below!”
Benji didn’t jump. He traveled on the magical tide of the inkwell, appearing before us. Maude came after him, and Rory caught her, and she winced in pain. “It’s massive.” She peered at the walls around us. “It must have taken centuries for the sea to wear down all this rock.”
“How could someone live like this?” Benji asked, the cave throwing his echo back at him. “Ever in the dark?”
“You’d be surprised,” Rory murmured.
We struck out. Rory led, coin in hand, and I followed closely, gripping my hammer and chisel. Behind me was Maude, then the king, then the gargoyle at the rear.
“So you’re really not going to tell us how you knew this was here?” Maude asked him.
“I should think it rather obvious.”
“I promise,” Benji said, “it isn’t—”
“Quiet.” I perked my ear. “Listen.”
There. A harsh sound, and its echoes. Clack, clack. “Do you hear that?”
Rory’s gaze narrowed. “Yes.”
The cavern was widening. Diverting. We passed pools of dank, stagnant water. Ahead, the sprites glowed fewer, scattered. Everything was colder. Darker.
Rory stopped. Ahead, three separate tu
“Which way now, all-knowing gargoyle?” Maude said.
He made a contemplative hmm. “Perhaps those weavings will instruct us.”
I hadn’t seen them at first. They were worn and wet and growing velvety moss, just like the walls of the cavern. But the closer I got—yes. There were weavings on the wall. Three of them, each the size of a child’s blanket.
Worn down by time and the salt in the air, the colored dye had all but faded, the thread long frayed. Still, I noted how fine the stitches were—how intricate the braided patterns.
“They’re pictures,” Rory said.
So they were.
The first was of worms. Hundreds of them, crawling over walls.
The second picture was of small pale clusters, hanging from thread over a fire.
The third—
I felt my pulse kick.
The third was of moths, fluttering over a stone slab.
“She’s a silk weaver.” Benji pointed at the weavings. “The worm grows. The cocoon is boiled. Those that remain become moths.”
“Grotesque, educational, yet uninstructive,” Rory said. “We still don’t know which path to take.”
“There are five of us.” Maude’s knuckles were white as she leaned on the stone oar. She nodded at the first tu
“No one travels alone,” I said. “The gargoyle comes with me.”
“The moth,” the gargoyle whispered, turning to the third tu
It was the darkest of the three paths. The tightest. When I stepped toward it—breathed its damp air—it was as if someone had put wet cloth over my mouth and nostrils.
“Meet back here in twenty minutes, and we’ll explore the final tu
Benji’s eyes lowered to our hands together. “Twenty minutes.”
Maude gave us one of her reassuring grins, and then she and the king were disappearing down the first tu
Darkness closed its fist around us. The path sloped downward, deeper into the earth. I could touch both sides of the tu
“You all right?”
He didn’t answer. Then—“Just stay close to me.”
The gargoyle, undisturbed by the gloom, hummed to himself. “She did her best to spruce the place up, didn’t she? The old Heartsore Weaver?”
I peered over my shoulder. He was ru
A deep groan sounded from above. Rory and the gargoyle and I went rigid. I heard, then smelled, water rushing, far away at first, then closer, closer, until it was right behind us. We turned.
A wall of water came careening toward us.
Rory was shouting and I was ushering the gargoyle forward, and then all three of us were sprinting into darkness. But whatever pool had been emptied into our tu
And then we were falling.
We hit something hard, a loud ting sounding. Gold, I realized. We’d fallen onto a vast bed of gold at the bottom of a pit—a hole in the tu
But the water kept rising.
I choked on Rory’s name. The water held me down, and so did my armor, and I was seized with the vibrant horror that I might easily drown like this. Weighed down without purchase, unable to stand, unable to swim—
A hand found the nape of my neck. Pulled me up.
Rory was coughing, too, struggling like me to keep his feet in the pit of slippery coins with water pressing down on him.
He shouted over the din. “Are you hurt?”
I shook my head. We held on to each other, steadfast as we pulled, each the other’s perfect counterbalance, until we found our feet. When I looked up, I saw that the water was not so torrid as before, ru
“I say, Bartholomew,” the gargoyle called from the lip of the pit. He hadn’t fallen in. He’d flown to the other edge, the prat—and looked furious to be wet. “Are you quite well?”
“Right as rain,” I snapped. I looked to Rory.
And let out a sharp cry.
I could see it, even in the dim light—even with water in my eyes. A massive dent in Rory’s breastplate.
He gasped for air. “Keep your balance. There are pikes at the bottom of this pit.”
I swore, then shouted once more at the gargoyle. “Throw something down to us.”
“There’s a hefty weave of rope here—oh, but Bartholomew!” He screamed. “There are worms on it.”
“Gargoyle!”
“Must I always save everyone?” He let out a string of language so jumbled not even a scribe of the Seacht could make sense of it, retrieved the rope, and threw it into the pit.
Rory and I hauled ourselves out.
“Well.” Rory lay on his back and wheezed. “At least we know we’re in the right tu
“That pike might have killed you.” I leaned over him and ran my hand over the angry dent in his breastplate. “Gods, I could kiss your armorer.”
“What about me?” The gargoyle was seething. “Is no one going to kiss me?”
Rory reached for his face—kissed his stone cheek. “Help me get this off.” He winced. “It’s getting hard to breathe.”
I helped the gargoyle undo the straps and hauled the breastplate off. Rory coughed, then went suddenly pale. “Fuck.”
He looked down at himself. At the tu
All three of us peered into the pit. The torrential current that had knocked us from our feet was now a steady drip. But the remains of it were still there—a black pool of water deeper than I was tall.
“All the armor comes off, then,” Rory said.
“You can’t jump in there,” I cried. “What about the pikes?”
He stripped his gauntlets. “I’ll avoid them.”
“There must be thousands of coins at the bottom of that pit!”
Off came his vambrace, pauldrons. “Gold ones. Mine’s stone.”
“And that shiny new bruise on your chest—no doubt over your lungs? What about that?”
Next were his cuisses and greaves. “I’m a good swimmer.”
“No, no, Bartholomew, better that I take the risk. I am very good at saving people, after all.” The gargoyle stretched his wings, suddenly heroic after his kiss. “What exactly am I looking for again?”
Rory shot me a heavy-lidded glower.
I bit down. “Do you really need the coin?”
“As much as you need your hammer and chisel.” Off came his chainmail.
I wasn’t going to win this. “Just… be careful.”
Rory stood before me in his under armor. Hooked my chin. “It means something that you care enough to argue.”
Breath fluttered out of me. “Maybe I just like fighting with you.”
“I’m sure that’s the only reason.” He brushed his thumb over my lips. Dropped a kiss onto my mouth, pulled back—then kissed me again, like he couldn’t help himself.
The gargoyle sighed. “Really, Bartholomew, when are you going to put her out of her misery and tell her you love her?”
Rory’s dark eyes roamed my face. He gri
Then disappeared down the rope into the pit.