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

by Rachel Gillig

To the child in each of us, yearning to be special. Take my hand, you strange little creature, and together we shall walk beyond the wall.

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?

“I washed the Divining robes this morning.” The gargoyle led me down the nave. On the final pew, six silk robes waited. “It was an abundant chore. I am within myself with fatigue.” “Beside,” I murmured, peeling off my clothes. “‘Beside myself with fatigue’ is the proper expression.” The gargoyle’s stone brow knit. “If I were beside myself, there would be two of me, and the washing would have taken half the time.”

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.”

“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?”

“Which one, Diviner?” Rory’s voice was deathly calm. He looked over his shoulder at me. “Which one marked up your face?”

Rory’s gaze flickered to my face. “She’s a guest of the king’s. Affront her in any way, the knighthood will answer. Attempt to look beneath her shroud, she and the gargoyle will respond as they see fit. With full immunity to any carnage tended.” The gargoyle batted his eyes. “Oh, Bartholomew. He’s dreamy.”

“I don’t.” Rory’s voice was gravel. “I was wondering what it would be like. Watching you unravel.”

“Bested by a shoe.” He shuffled over. “I realize we are beginning to lose our faith in signs, but really, Bartholomew, this does not bode well.”

“The Diviner, wearing shoes. My faith is restored.”

“Apologies if your heavy-footed lumbering puts a sour look on my otherwise perfect face.” I pulled myself upright. Reached for his cheek—dragged the corner of his mouth up with my thumb until he wore an absurd half smile. “That’s better. Still foul and unknightly, though.” “Just the way you like me.” Rory nipped the pad of my thumb. “Now run it again.”

“Where would you bite me, knight?” “Wherever you told me to, Diviner.”

“If you have imagined portents, let me dispel them. The only thing that matters in this world is the effort you exact, Diviner. And you have been working harder than anyone I’ve known. So, please—don’t look to dreams, and don’t look for signs. Just look forward. Tomorrow will go well.”

“The thing is—I think I’d do anything you asked of me.”

“It is not like me to be the bearer of bad tidings,” the gargoyle said. “Bartholomew does not know how to swim. But worry not—” He looked up at me. Smiled proudly. “She has always excelled at drowning.”

“Wake up, sweetheart. Wake. Up.”

The gargoyle sprite has no discernable home, save the tor, for their bodies are composed of the same limestone as the spring in which the Diviners dream.

“I’d have come for you. I’d have killed or stolen or done any ignoble thing to see you free of that place. You are more special than you realize. I don’t even know your name”—he drew in a breath—“and I would do anything for you.”

He knew. He always seemed to open a door to himself the moment I needed somewhere to go.

“Anger is a fine weapon, Diviner,” she said, quiet enough so the others wouldn’t hear. “So long as you don’t point it at yourself. Now have some soup.”

“I wouldn’t call you a useless spectacle,” Rory said, throwing his arm over Benji’s shoulder. “Just a happy little distraction.”

“For the sake of my sanity, put Bartholomew out of her misery. Tell her you’re in love with her.”

“An entire branch of idleweed?” I quipped. “Little sounds?” came his slow, mirthful reply.

“I’m about to pass my own wind if they don’t wrap this up,” the gargoyle muttered.

“Don’t fucking touch her again.”

“My mind is playing tricks on me,” said the gargoyle at my side. “What is magic, what is memory, and why are both so haunting?”

“That is unkind and unworthy, Bartholomew.” He’d been quietly crying in the corner of the room, and now appeared the spirit of righteous anger. “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.”

“This armor fits me better than my Divining robe ever did,” I said abruptly. “It’s an honor to wear it.” I reached up. Grazed the rim of my shroud. “But I’ve sworn to Aisling, and I’ve sworn to the Omens, and I’ve sworn to my friends, who are now forever gone.” I drew in a long breath. “I think I would like to stop promising myself away, or else there will be nothing left of me to give, King Castor.”

“First, you unravel,”

“You could walk over me, Sybil Delling. Throw me down until I am dust. I don’t know what to call it, but I want it. I want you.”

“If I was fixed on being the most useful version of myself”—she gestured at her bandages—“it would be all too easy to hate my body when it was not. I don’t. People who love you for your usefulness don’t love you at all.”

“Because my mother killed sprites, and her mother did, too, and they were noble women. 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.”

“It’s hard to see who I am when I am lost in what’s expected of me.”

“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.”

That I had to suffer to earn a home at Aisling Cathedral—that I had to hide my face and name to be useful, to be strong, to be special. That the Diviners and I would spend our lives together—that our sisterhood was eternal.

“You needn’t all be here. I told you last night, I’m f—” “Say fine, and I’ll combust.”

“Grotesque, educational, yet uninstructive,” Rory said. “We still don’t know which path to take.”