Текст книги "The Knight and the Moth"

Автор книги: Rachel Gillig

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CHAPTER TWO OMENS

The blade made no noise when King Castor cut himself. He did it over the heartline of his palm, then curled his fingers, holding the responding swell of blood in his hand like a chalice holds wine. It was a sacred act—giving a bit of oneself up for the art of Divination.

The abbess took King Castor by the wrist and brought his bloody hand to my mouth. The king went gray and turned his gaze to the wall, like he could not bear the sight of his blood—or me.

“Drink,” the abbess commanded.

I opened my mouth, and the king’s blood poured over my tongue, viscous and warm. It tasted vile. Blood always did.

I swallowed, straining against the urge to be sick.

The abbess began her oration. “Traum is an old name for an even older land. Its history is as outlandish, as lurid, as a dream. But in many ways, its true history began upon this very tor—”

She paused, turning to the king. “Though perhaps a Castor like yourself would not like to hear the story I tell before a Divination. Shall we simply proceed with the dream?”

King Castor shuffled his feet. “I would like to do things the proper way. Please, go on.”

The abbess touched my cheek, a familiar act of silent affection, then continued. “We know Traum and its hamlets like our own five fingers. Coulson Faire, the hamlet of merchants. The scholarly city-heart—the Seacht—the hamlet of scribes. The Fervent Peaks, near the mouth of our river, the hamlet of fishers. The cosseted birch forest, the Chiming Wood, where the foresters dwell. The florid Cliffs of Bellidine, occupied by weavers.”

The abbess sighed. “The old stories vary, of course, but in one way they are all alike. Traum was full of monstrous creatures. Sprites, who roamed the hamlets. Folk tried to fight them, but the hamlets were not unified, floundering without gods, without divine principles, without a ruler. And when none of those things exist—”

There are inevitable tragedies, I recited to myself.

“There are inevitable tragedies.” The abbess’s voice echoed. “Food and coin and children were stolen from the hamlets by sprites. Murder was committed. Crops died, boats crashed, wool was infested by beetles. Soon, Traum’s people were like sprites themselves—wild creatures, strange and ravenous and entirely without virtue.”

“Sounds like a good time to me,” one of the knights muttered.

King Castor managed a shaky grin. I glowered at him from behind my shroud.

The abbess continued. “The deaths grew, and so did discord between the hamlets.”

Until one night.

“Until one night. One dark, lonely night, when the air was so cold it painted the sky an incomparable purple hue, six gods visited Traum.”

A scoff echoed through the cathedral.

Armor rattled and low voices sounded, then one of the knights was pushing away from a pew, his steps loud on the stone floor. He shoved the cathedral door open, evening light flittering through dark hair and over three gold bands in his right ear.

The knight from the road. He cast one baleful look over his shoulder—

Then kicked the ancient wood door shut behind him.

The abbess waited for the echoes of his departure to settle, then continued, unperturbed. “One dark, lonely night, a foundling child left its hamlet and climbed a looming tor in search of food. The tor did not offer much life save whispering grass and gowan flowers and pale moths. But then—a spring! A strange spring at the top of the tor, leaching from a great stone. The child came to the lip of the water—drank deeply.” She drew in an affected breath. “And was swept into a dream.”

I’d heard the story so many times I could see it in my mind. A child, like I’d been when I’d come to Aisling Cathedral, lying in dark water before transfixed onlookers. It made me proud that a foundling—like me—should be the most important figure in Traum’s most sanctified story.

Even if that child didn’t have a name.

The abbess carried on. “When the child woke, sick and weak, it told passersby a vivid tale of six unearthly figures who had visited its wakeless mind—shadowy figures who bore stone objects, each object possessing unique power. The child’s tale grew legs, and folk of the hamlets came to the tor to see the spring. Again and again, the child drank the water and dreamed. In time, the child learned that the movements of the stone objects were presages. And so, the gods who wielded them were named.”

“Omens,” I whispered.

“Omens,” the abbess repeated. She lifted a finger, pointing to the windows on high, and every soul in the cathedral raised their eyes to the stained glass. “The Omen who bore a stone coin, the child named the Artful Brigand. The Omen fitted with the inkwell was christened the Harried Scribe. The Omen who wielded a stone oar was called the Ardent Oarsman. The Faithful Forester carries the chime.” She pointed at the last arched window. “And the Heartsore Weaver employs her sacred loom stone.”

The abbess directed her finger to the final window—the great rose window. “But the sixth Omen bore no stone object. It revealed nothing of itself at all, appearing only as a pale moth on tender wing. Some say it shows itself the moment you are born, others believe it comes just before you die. Which is true”—she opened her palms, like two pans of a scale—“we cannot know. We may read their signs, but it is not our place to question the gods. The moth is mercurial, distant—never to be known, even by Diviners.”

She put a gloved hand to her chest. “Of course, there are those of us who have long believed the Omens are vaster than the dreamscape they occupy. That the moth and the others exist—hidden in the hamlets, killing horrible sprites and swaying the fate of Traum with their magical stone objects. Ever present—always watching.”

Saliva pooled in my mouth, heavy and tasting of iron. It was almost time.

“And so,” the abbess said, “we find ourselves in the center of Traum’s greatest story. A great cathedral was built upon the spring’s tor, and more foundling children were brought there to dream, and they became daughters of Aisling, revered Diviners. A king was crowned, and Traum’s five hamlets were unified by belief, thusly named the Stonewater Kingdom. The king’s knights were tasked with defending the faith as well as they defended the hamlets against sprites.”

She paused, looming over young Benedict Castor, whose eyes were on his feet. “And the king swore to be more supplicant than sovereign, that he would never take up the mantle of his faith for personal gain—never seek the Omens or their stone objects for his own power or vanity.

“For in the end,” the abbess said, “we are all supplicants. Whether craftsman or a king, knight or foundling or Diviner—faith is the same. It, like Aisling Cathedral, holds up the hamlets. And while we all bear our own creeds, we must never forget—it is the Omens who rule Traum. Omens who scrawl the signs. We are but witnesses to their wonders. Pupils of their portents.” She raised her hands in beckoning. “Ever but visitors to their greatness.”

“Ever but visitors,” I called.

“Ever but visitors,” the king murmured.

“Ever but visitors,” the knighthood echoed.

The gargoyles closed in around the spring.

Breath shuddered out of me. “What name, with blood, would you give the Omens?” I said to the king.

He startled, as if he’d forgotten me. “Benedict Castor the Third.”

The abbess put her hands on my shoulders.

“Lie down,” she instructed me.

The smell of rotting flowers—the taste of blood—the slip of oily water—were everywhere. I lay on my back in the spring, looking up into Aisling’s reaching cloister and the windows therein, it in light, I in darkness.

The abbess leaned over me. “Dream,” came her final, resolute command.

She pressed down on my clavicle, hard enough to bruise.

I sank into cold, terrible water.

I shut my eyes, opened my mouth. Sucked water into my lungs and choked. My body spasmed once, twice—a ripple in the spring. Then I did what I’d always done since my very first day at Aisling Cathedral.

I drowned.

There was pain, pain, then—

Nothingness. A bright, pallid nothingness.

I lay on a clean stone floor, looking up at the same windows as before. Only now, it seemed much higher, the vaulted cathedral roof cloudy, as if far above me in the sky.

Gargoyles, Diviners—the abbess and the king and his knights—were gone. Not even the mahogany pews remained. I was alone in a pale, liminal version of Aisling that had never existed in my waking hours.

I got to my feet. My robe had disappeared. The only stitch of fabric I wore now was my shroud. I looked down at my nakedness, hair and flesh, fat, muscle, and bone. A strange laugh bubbled in my throat. I always felt a mile wide after swallowing blood and water and drowning in the spring. As if I were infinite, holding all that discomfort so well within my body. It made me sick with self-loathing—and flushed with pride.

A shadow shifted in the corner of my eye. I turned, but the shadow flickered, then vanished.

I was small in the vast space. “Omens,” I called. “I am your harbinger, your dreamer—ever but a visitor. I’ve come to Divine.”

Silence. Then—

The cathedral began to ripple. Light blurred away the details, pillars and windows and buttresses all caught in a strange, undulating glow. I walked through the pale nothingness, the world sluggish, but my heart upon a hummingbird beat.

The cathedral rippled in earnest. Dark spots, like stains upon fabric, perforated the wide white space. “I’ve tasted the blood of Benedict Castor the Third.” Once more, I said, “I’ve come to Divine.”

The cathedral rippled, rippled—

Then winked out entirely.

The floor beneath my feet gave way, and I fell through seams of light into darkness. My stomach lurched, hands and feet hollowed out as my body gave way to the sense of falling.

A flash of silver in the darkness. Then—

My knees hit first, then my hands, the substance beneath them cold and hard and unsteady. I swallowed a groan and teetered. Tipped, toppled, then rolled over myself like a pin over dough. There was a chorus of clinking, and when I stopped rolling, twisted and naked and already bruising, I braced myself and sat up.

Coins. I’d fallen upon a bed of coins. Hundreds, thousands of coins stacked in a dark room.

I scanned my surroundings. Looked up. There were purple banners in the room, long windows, and an illuminating blue sky. Still, I could see the ghost of Aisling’s buttresses, her vaulted ceilings—her cold stone innards.

They’d have dragged me out of the spring by now. Once rendered unconscious by the drowning, a Diviner was always pulled from the water and laid down to dream upon the chancel, set on her back with open arms, like an offering.

I could still hear what was happening outside my dream, but the sound was muddled. “Well?” the abbess’s faraway voice called.

I opened my mouth to answer—

Then saw it. A coin, different from the rest, suspended in air. One side was smooth stone, the other dark and rutted and rough.

“The Artful Brigand’s coin,” I called. “I can see it. The rough side is up.” I let out a breath. “A presage of bad fortune.”

If the abbess responded, I didn’t hear it. The floor beneath my feet vanished, coins raining into darkness and me with them.

I fell with an unceremonious oomph onto wool carpet. The coins were gone. I was in a new space—a dark corridor with high walls covered in paintings that, no matter how hard I squinted, I could not make out. They looked like bodies, naked like mine, contorted into all manner of shapes.

High above, nigh transparent, Aisling’s ceiling loomed.

My steps made no sound upon the carpet, but my heart was frantic. To drown in Aisling’s Cathedral’s magical spring, to dream of the Omens, was always like this. Painful. Eerie. No matter how many times I dreamed, I could not escape the keen sense of entrapment that settled over me, as if someone I could not see, a hooded figure, perhaps, was watching me—darkening the edges of my periphery.

My lower back, my underarms, the soles of my bare feet, dampened with sweat.

Then it wasn’t just sweat. Something wet leached onto my feet, cold as it burrowed between my toes.

I saw it then. An inkwell at the edge of the corridor, black ink spilling from it onto the carpet like a bleeding wound.

“The Harried Scribe’s inkwell,” I said, making my voice as loud as I could. “It’s overturned. Leaching black ink. A terrible sign.”

Whispers sounded above me. Then the ink, the carpet, the corridor were all falling away, and so was I. I plummeted through darkness, through nothingness, into wan gray light. A rush of air slapped me over the face. There were no coins, no carpet to catch me this time. Just jagged, unforgiving shale and mountainous stone. I put out my hands to catch myself—

And slammed onto a boulder, shattering my collarbone.

“Where are you now, Six?”

I gnashed and writhed and swallowed the overpowering urge to be sick, hot agony scraping over me.

“Six?” The abbess’s voice was an echo, but no less commanding.

I’d watched Four dream once. I’d been young and curious to know what I must look like while Divining, but seeing Four drown had unnerved me so acutely I’d nearly left. Then the abbess, who was so much stronger than I’d estimated, pulled Four out of the spring like she weighed no more than a broom and laid her down, supine, upon the chancel. I’d always imagined there was flailing—maybe even writhing—involved in the craft of Divination. To dream of the Omens was to fall into nightmares, and the pain I felt while unconscious was as real to me as the pain in my waking life.

But Four had just… lain there, looking peaceful. Only her voice, slipping from her parted lips, lent animation to her disquiet. She’d groaned—screamed. After, she’d told me that she’d landed on her back atop the Artful Brigand’s pile of coins and knocked the wind from herself. But all I’d heard was a gasp, and all I’d seen was a motionless girl in a wet silk robe, arms open in beckoning, lying upon the chancel.

And for some perverse reason, I liked that. Knowing I could hold so much pain without anyone being the wiser made me feel…

Strong.

Even if my broken collarbone fucking hurt.

With my good arm, I pushed myself to my knees. My breasts and stomach were covered with scrapes from the rocks. When I looked out it was upon a basin of water, surrounded by seven mountain peaks, each of them so sheer, so jagged, they looked like the storybook claws of an ancient craggy giant.

But it wasn’t them I was looking to. It was the water. The crystalline-blue water within the basin—and the large stone oar, suspended over it. “I’m in the mountains,” I said through clenched teeth. “The Ardent Oarsman’s oar does not touch the water—there is no current. Another bad sign for the king.”

There was a drop in my stomach—here we go again—and then I was no longer standing upon rocks or looking out on water, but alone in a woodland. My broken collarbone—the cuts in my skin—were gone. I stood in a wood of pale birch trees, nary a soul in sight.

But I was not alone.

Warm light flittered through a canopy of yellow leaves. The birch trees bore no branches and swayed on a breeze like sallow arms, grasping for the thin visage of Aisling’s ceiling.

I listened.

There. A chime, hung in the tree before me. A stone chime that called several high, unsteady notes.

“The Faithful Forester’s chime rings discordantly,” I called. “An ill portent.”

I couldn’t hear the abbess’s voice. I imagined her gloating behind her shroud at King Castor. Four stone objects—four bad signs.

Only one left.

The chime stopped short.

The wood went silent. And the birch trees—the trees stood tightly bound, nearer than before, like a pack of wolves tightening ranks around a lost deer. This close, I could see their pale bark was not translucent or papery as a birch’s might be. No. This bark was mottled. Heavy. Like old flesh. And the knots in the trunks, gashes of darkness in all that pale, sloughing bark—

Were eyes. Hundreds of black lidless eyes, watching me.

The wood disappeared. When the world righted, I lay upon earth that was hard and cold and slimy. The air was dank and close, and I could hardly see my own nakedness—everything was painted by blackness.

“I’m in the dark,” I called.

I’m in the dark, my echo recited from far away.

I knew what came next. I had dreamed of all the places I had visited hundreds of times over—the room full of coins, the carpeted corridor, the mountains, the birch forest, and now this, the dank darkness. And I knew what stone objects awaited me and how to interpret them. I was good at reading the signs. Which was why it shamed me, after all this time, that I should be so loath to do it.

That I should still be afraid to dream.

I got to my feet and shuffled forward, hands out in front of me. For a time there was nothing, just blackness and the sound of my pulse in my ears. Then—silver light. High above, moonlight filtered in through narrow cracks, as if I were looking out at the night sky from within a huge, dark egg.

It wasn’t much light. Just enough to keep me from slamming my shins into the stone bench stationed against the wall. Upon it sat a tapestry, faded and frayed. Tied to the bottom of its threads, weighing them down—

Was a loom stone.

“The Heartsore Weaver’s loom stone,” I called, stomaching the urge to whisper. “It hangs from frayed thread. The fifth bad sign.” I shook my head. “That’s an answer to King Castor’s question. The Omens do not favor him.”

Voices echoed from far away.

The dream had served its purpose. The abbess would wake me now—

A noise sounded. Footsteps in the dark. Not a thump like a cobbled shoe or boot or even a bare foot might make, but harsh. Like stone upon stone. Clack, clack, they went. Clack, clack, right behind me.

I whirled.

There was no one there.

My skin prickled, the cloying feeling that I was being watched heightening all my senses.

Clack, clack, near and far.

The silver moonlight blotted out, plunging me into true darkness. I bit down on a cry and did what I always did at this part of the dream.

Ran.

I fled through the dark innards of the dream until I was falling, plummeting into bottomless blackness, into nothingness. I fell, fell—

“Six,” came the abbess’s voice.

I woke with a wrenching gasp.

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CHAPTER THREE THE FOULEST KNIGHT IN ALL OF TRAUM

My name is Sybil Delling, by the way. Was Sybil Delling. I don’t remember who gave me that name, but I do remember the day that I lost it.

I was a foundling girl, held in strong arms, coughing on water that tasted of rotting flowers. I can’t recall how I found myself in Aisling’s spring, or anything of my life before it. But I do remember sobbing, and that my cries echoed near and far as if a hundred girls were wailing.

The woman who held me was shrouded, bearing the voice I’d come to know as the abbess’s. She loomed over me, telling me that the sick little girl I was before, little Sybil Delling, was gone. She asked if I wished to exact a divine hand over Traum. If I would give her ten years of my time in exchange for her love and care. What answer was there to give but yes?

And then she drowned me.

After, I was sick. The abbess held me in her arms and told me that the spring was holy and magical, and that by drowning in it I had become holy and magical, too, forever changed. That my memory had washed from me the moment the water had touched my lips, as if I’d been reborn. She called me strange, special, new. More importantly, she called me hers, and said it with such pride that I spent my days chasing her approval that I might hear it again. She soothed my stringy silver hair from my eyes and tied a strip of gossamer over them, telling me I would not be safe outside the cathedral, because people in Traum wanted holy things for themselves. She bade me to guard my face, my name, until my ten years at Aisling Cathedral were at an end.

I became a number. Six. But I promised myself I would not forget I was once a person with a name—Sybil Delling—and that I would call myself that name again when my tenure at Aisling Cathedral was up.

There were five other girls, all the same as me: a number. The abbess brought men and women to the cathedral to see us. Lords and layfolk, nobles and knights. They would ask us questions, and in the spring, with the blood of strangers on our lips, the Omens showed us the answers—good, or bad.

Diviners, we were. Holy daughters of Aisling Cathedral. Harbingers of gods.

The years came and went. Again and again, I stepped into cold, oily water. Looked up at the stained-glass window, petals and wings blending into a bizarre visage. Again and again, I drowned and dreamed. And in all that dreaming, in all the holy things that came of it, I broke my promise.

I forgot all about Sybil Delling.

“Settle yourself, Bartholomew. Your dream is at an end.”

In the sacristy, laid out on a bench behind a velvet curtain, I coughed. I was back at Aisling, back in my wet Divining robe. The cathedral was dark now, its windows inky. It was night, and I was alone. Alone, save for—

“Five bad signs.” It was the batlike gargoyle again. “I’m shocked the young king didn’t soil himself. I usually find abject humiliation a joyous affair, but watching young Castor—oh my. You are vomiting.”

I was. Hands locked in fists, I rolled over and spilled the meager contents of my stomach onto the sacristy floor.

The gargoyle let out a shrill noise. “I scrubbed those stones this morning.”

“I”—I clenched my eyes shut and heaved—“was the one who scrubbed them.”

“I labored to supervise.”

After the abbess shook me awake, the dream shut off, like a flame snuffed. But I was hazy after a Divination. Sometimes for hours. A gargoyle would carry me away from watching eyes to the sacristy, and I would lie in a foggy, sedated state. When my mind sharpened, I was always sick.

I draped myself over my knees. “What time is it?”

“Night,” said the gargoyle.

“I can see that. Are the others abed?”

“Indeed.” He grimaced. “The knighthood, too.”

I coughed. “The king is still here?”

“The abbess offered him the dormitory. Perhaps she pitied him. And what a useless thing pity is, for a guest is always a kind of trespasser. Why, just while you were lazing here in the sacristy, I caught a few errant knights lurking around the spring. Don’t worry—I set them right.” He tutted, then reached for a linen cloth and crudely patted the bile from my mouth. “Feeling better?”

Everything hurt. The muscles in my brow, my jaw, my stomach—sick from ingesting the spring water. There was no mark upon me for the injuries I’d incurred in the dream. But the pain from a broken collarbone, from wrung-out muscles, was still a ghost in my body.

“I’m thirsty,” I rasped.

The gargoyle glanced at the floor, desecrated with my vomit. “I would escort you to your cottage, but it appears I have swabbing to do.”

I rose onto wobbling legs. “Sorry for the mess.”

He stuck up his nose and didn’t bid me good night.

Outside, the air was chill. Not saccharine and putrid like rotting flowers, but fresh, its effect purifying. The tor boasted no trees—just gravel and stone and grass speckled with gowan flowers. Above, the moon was a pale fingernail in the sky, disinterested in lighting my way. It didn’t matter. Even with a damp shroud around my eyes and no lantern, I found the path through the grounds that led to the stone outbuildings that rested in the ever-present shadow of Aisling Cathedral.

There were six buildings besides the cathedral upon the tor. The largest was a two-level dormitory with attached stables that were often empty, but now smelled of manure from the knights’ horses. The second-largest building was an ivy-laden cottage where the abbess lived. Directly behind it was the dining commons, and then two more cottages. One for the gargoyles, who didn’t eat or drink but did enjoy sleep, and one for the Diviners.

The last building was a tiny stone cottage that sat far on the south side of the tor, where the wind was loudest. No one ever went there. The cottage had no windows, just an ancient iron door. A sad excuse for architecture, and utterly abandoned for it.

My walk through the grounds was quiet. I wound my way past the stables, the dormitory. All the windows were dark. Either the knighthood were somber for their king’s ill portents or they were abed. But then I rounded the abbess’s cottage, coming into view of the dining commons—

I blinked. The common windows were bright. And a knight, armed to the teeth, was stationed at its door, looking straight at me as I came from the darkness.

“Oi!”

I skidded to a standstill.

The knight, bearing a sword on her belt and a lethal-looking axe in her left hand, marched toward me, squinting against her torch. “Who’s that?”

My voice was a croak. “Six.”

“Who?”

“Six.”

The knight kept coming, aglow in the yellow torchlight. She had ornate bronze and gold and silver rings in her dark, cropped hair. A sharp nose. Lines between her brows and around her narrowed gaze that made me certain she was older than I was. Her green eyes had charcoal drawn around them; they widened as she looked me over. “Bloody pith, Diviner.” She lowered her torch. “You look like a ghost in that—that—”

I followed her gaze down to my Divining robes. The white silk, still wet, left no part of my body to the imagination. “I’m on my way to my room,” I said, clipped.

“At this hour?”

“I’ve been dreaming. Or have you forgotten the Divination?”

The knight stared. Not in the awestruck way strangers who came to Aisling often did, but more meticulous. “I haven’t forgotten. But everyone has gone to bed. Your Diviners and abbess included.”

“The gargoyle let me rest in the cathedral.”

She perked a brow. “You need rest after dreaming?”

“I doubt a simple soldier would understand the complexities of Divining.”

The knight’s brow rose. For a splintered second, I felt shamed, talking down to her like that. But then my good sense kicked in. She was, after all, a knight, serving a king whom the Omens clearly did not favor. No remorse was due. “I am thirsty,” I said.

“Well.” She tapped her boot over dirt. “It would be this simple soldier’s honor to walk you back to your dwelling.”

I nodded at the building behind her. “The kitchen is just inside. I’ll get water here.”

“I’ll bring you some.”

“Thoughtful.” I pivoted around her. “But unnecessary.”

“Wait, Diviner.” She reached for my arm. “Wait—”

I wrenched open the door to the dining commons.

Bent over, boots unlaced, another knight sat upon a long wooden table. He wasn’t wearing armor. Or chain mail. Or a tunic. He wasn’t wearing anything at all above the haphazard lacings that kept up his trousers.

He turned at the sound of the door, dark eyes skittering to a halt over me. Firelight caught along the three gold bands in his right ear.

The knight from the road.

He was smoking something, a small, smoldering twig that smelled sharp, like nettles. Just like when we’d locked gazes earlier, me on the wall, him upon his horse—

There was no warmth in his eyes.

Then he spoke. Not in curt hollers like he had from the road, but lower. And I thought maybe that’s where all the warmth of him lived. In the fervid, coal-stoked depths of his voice. “What’s this, Maude?”

The knight behind me—Maude, apparently—shifted. I’d stopped mid-stride over the threshold, leaving her half jammed in the doorway. “I found her stumbling in the dark.” She said the next words slowly. Pointedly. “She came to get a drink of water.”

“Hey,” another voice called.

I jumped. I hadn’t noticed the second figure in the room, near the fire, looking at me with rounded cheeks. “That’s my Diviner.”

King Benedict Castor.

He nodded at me in greeting, proffering a bright, boyish smile. Gone was the trembling king—this one, despite the abysmal portents his dream had yielded, looked entirely at ease. “Quite an experience, Divination,” he said. There was a large flagon in his hands he didn’t quite manage to hide behind his back. “Thanks for that.”

“You’re… welcome.” Maybe he was drunk. No sober man in his circumstances would smile so stupidly. I turned my attention to Maude. “I wasn’t stumbling in the dark. I was walking the grounds. Because I live here. You are the guests.”

The half-naked knight slid off the table. I kept my gaze stubbornly aimed at his face and nothing below it. Not the lean muscles etched into his abdomen, not the sharp V they made over his hips, not the line of dark hair that trailed from his navel into his waistband—

“Must be something special.” Smoke bloomed from the part in his lips. “Being a Diviner.”

He didn’t sound like he thought it was special.

“It’s a privilege to Divine. To be Divined for, too. You might know that, had you bothered to attend the ceremony.”

“You noticed me go, did you?”

“Difficult not to, what with the show you made.”

Maude cleared her throat. The knight turned, the two sharing a look I could not read. I saw it, then. The thing I’d missed with him turned only half toward me on the table. The reason his shirt was off.

A dark, vicious cluster of bruises, decorating the right side of his body. Damaged, mottled skin over what surely was at least one broken rib.

“What happened?” I blurted.

He looked down at his side. Peered at me through another plume of smoke. “None of your business.”

King Castor forced out a laugh. “Is there anything I can get for you, Diviner? That water, perhaps?” He bustled through the commons, placing the flagon he’d kept hidden behind his back on the table near a ratty old notebook, and I heard the glugs and sloshes of its contents.

A familiar smell touched the air.

I sniffed like a dog. I knew that damn smell. It filled the room—rising from the flagon. Not wine as I presumed, nor sharp like the knight’s smoke, but sweeter. More putrid. Like rotting flowers.

Aisling’s spring water.

The shirtless knight glowered. “Diviner?”

My stomach rolled. Bile I thought had all been spent on the cathedral floor returned, and before I could pay the knight’s impudence back with my own, I put a hand to my stomach. Heaved forward.

And was sick on his boots.