The Knight and the Moth (The Stonewater Kingdom, #1)

by Rachel Gillig

I’ll tell it to you as best I can and promise to be honest in my talebearing. If I’m not, that’s hardly my fault. To tell a story is in some part to tell a lie, isn’t it?

signs. You learned how to dream— And how to drown.

One statue held a coin, another an inkwell. One bore an oar, another a chime, and the final a loom stone.

A coin, an inkwell, an oar, a chime, and a loom stone. The sixth and final window was centered on the east wall—an enormous rose window, fixed with thousands of pieces of stained glass. Its design was different than the others, depicting no stone object, but rather a flower with five peculiar petals that, when I studied them, looked all the world like the delicate wings of a moth.

“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 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.”

“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.”

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

And what a useless thing pity is,

“Vile, loutish prat.

Coin. The only portent, the only prosperity—the only god of men—is coin.

There was no telling what tapestry the future would weave for us.

Only life did not go back to normal. I knew the second I woke the next morning that something wasn’t right.

“Which is more intricate?” he mused. “The designs of men, trying to reach gods, or that of gods, trying to reach men?” My hammer collided with a chunk of granite. “What is either to the intricacies of women, who reach both?”

“Fear is not an outward-pointing compass, my girl. You should not let it guide your way.

Ink. Nothing but ink and the persuasive quill can devise what is true.

“Two things can be true at the same time,

Knowledge is a wellspring, and I happily drink from it.”

My inkwell is a portent of things good or bad, but I have ever been an idol of knowledge. A symbol of truth. What is a god, if not that?”

histories are forged by those who benefit from them, and seldom those who live them.’”

‘It’s the folk of the field or kitchen or the beggars on the street who know how to read the signs of life—not

I have nowhere to go but forward.”

Chime. Harken to the chime in the Wood. There, the wind tells us how to feel what we cannot see. Only the wind can say what is to come.

And maybe, in all the forgetting… I wanted to remember who had come before.

But if the creature was a monster, it was because it was made that way.

“If you value your friend when he fights your battles for you—when he is rogue and ruthless—you must value him when he is gentle, too. Otherwise you do not value him at all.”

“The whole world is a wood, Bartholomew, and everyone in it is fashioned of birch bark. Frail as paper.”

Sadness, like birch bark, had all the appearance of frailty. And yet… The tree prevailed.

It is easier, swearing ourselves to someone else’s cause than to sit with who we are without one.”

exquisite—

Loom stone. Only love, only heartbreak, can weave the thread of all that came, and all that is yet to come.

People who love you for your usefulness don’t love you at all.”

We grow up, searching our guardians for what is right and what is true, thinking they have all the answers, like they already understand the signs of life. But they don’t. No one does.”

“When you do the right thing for the wrong reason, no one praises you. When you do the wrong thing for the right reason, everyone does, even though what is right and wrong depends entirely on the story you’re living in. And no one says they need recognition or praise or love, but we all hunger for it. We all want to be special.”

“I am a battlefield of admiration.” He nodded at the horizon. “I cannot decide which I like best. The sunrise, or the sunset. They are like life, and her quiet companion, death.”

But is it godly to punish your subjects for questioning you?

You’ve seen this world for what it is. A tale of lurid contradictions—a true story, and also a lie.