Filed To Story: The Knight and the Moth Book PDF Free by Rachel Gillig
It was my first time on a horse.
I hated it.
“You’re too rigid,” Rory called over his shoulder. “You’re going to knock the wind out of yourself. Relax, Diviner.”
Relax. Sure. Maybe in my next life.
All I could think about was Rory’s coin. The
Artful Brigand’s coin.
How many times had I dreamed of it, hovering, turning this side or that? Smooth side up, a good sign. Rough side up, a bad portent. The Omens were my life-I’d read those signs thousands of times.
Still. I wasn’t blind to the fact that the lore of the Omens, like a Diviner’s eyes, was shrouded. Even if they did hide in the hamlets as the abbess said, killing sprites and swaying the fate of Traum with their magical stone objects, no one had actually met an Omen.
That was part of their appeal. Gods that couldn’t be seen, even in dreams, were effective. You never knew when they were watching.
But this was no dream. This was a coin, wholly corporeal, with the ability to destroy-to shatter stone gargoyles-or transport its users through doors, through walls. I’d never heard of magic like that in Traum. Hardly believed it.
But I’d seen it. And if the Artful Brigand’s coin lived on the other side of dreams, perhaps he did, too. Which meant Rory was-
Oh gods. The foulest knight in Traum… was an Omen.
I nearly fell off the horse.
“Pith.” Rory reached back. Caught my thigh just below my hip and yanked me forward. “Put your arms around my chest.”
When I didn’t, he took my arm and slung it over his shoulder. We rode on. Once, twice, thrice I opened my mouth to ask about his coin-and snapped it shut every time.
No, I reasoned.
There must be an explanation. A coin forged to look like the Artful Brigand’s-some magic or trickery that I, within Aisling’s cloister, knew nothing about. Rodrick Myndacious was many things, and two of them vital. He was a blasphemer, and a mortal one at that. Flesh and blood and bone.
Decidedly not a god.
Better to ride along, say nothing, and see what answers awaited with the king.
Overhead, the gargoyle was soaring and spinning, bidding “welfare” instead of “farewell” to the fading night.
When the sky grew pink and the first fingers of sunlight made their way through the trees, I heard the rushing sound of water.
“Is that-are we-“
“The Tenor River,” Rory said through a yawn.
The holloway roads sloped, then leveled, and when the hills opened, I sucked in a breath.
I’d never seen water like that. Hurried, torrid; the antithesis of the Aisling’s fetid, stagnant spring. This water heaved, sang, danced.
Across the Tenor, stretched out like a reaching arm, was a bridge. And beyond-
A city. The Seacht.
Clay rooftops caught the fledgling daylight, painting the Seacht a bright orange hue. Even at a distance, I could see steam from its factory pipes, water wheels turning in the river, gray banners, catching the wind. The same banners that decorated the bridge at my feet.
All of them depicted the same thing.
A stone inkwell, brimming with black ink. Above it, the hamlet’s creed was writ:
Nothing but ink and the persuasive quill can devise what is true.
Rory dismounted at the mouth of the bridge. A man waited there, seated in a painted stall. He wore gray robes and crooked spectacles, and held a graphite stylus over a long scroll. Eyes shut, head slumped upon his shoulder, a whistling snore rose from him, stirring the coarse ends of his beard.
“Incompetence,” Rory muttered. He slipped the stylus from the man’s hand. Examined it, then dropped it into his pocket. “Scribe.”
The man slept on.
“Scribe.”
The man jolted so violently he was nearly upended. “Not asleep!” He swung in his stall and blinked, staring up into Fig’s nostrils. “Dear me.” He fumbled with his parchment, adjusting his spectacles. “How many travelers? Oh-I seem to have misplaced my stylus.”
“Take mine.” Rory handed the man back his own stylus and drummed his fingers along the stall. “Two travelers.”
“Much obliged.” Letters scratched onto parchment. “Occupations?”
Rory looked back at me, lip curling. “A knight and his lady.”
“That,” I snapped, slipping from the saddle, “may be the worst thing you’ve said of me.”
“That you know of.”
“You’re from Aisling.” The scribe adjusted his spectacles. “You’re-you’re a Diviner. I’ve never seen one of you this close.” His watery eyes took an inventory of me, then he was unraveling his scroll, retrieving an inkwell from within his stall, and pouring ink upon it.
He got down low, spectacles practically upon the parchment. “The ink travels fast over the scroll. A good sign, yes, Diviner? And you, being here at my bridge-it’s a sign from the Omens that good news is coming my way, isn’t it?”
The appetite in his voice made me take a step back. I pulled on the hood of my cloak. “Perhaps it is.”
He let out a long breath. “Thank you. Thank the Omens.”
Rory glowered at me.
“So you have not-” I swallowed disappointment. “You haven’t seen any other Diviners pass by this last week?”
“Not on my shift, I’m afraid.”
Rory pulled three silver coins from his pocket, then a gold one. “You didn’t see her, either.”
The scribe weighed the coins in his palm. Pocketed them. His eyes darted between Rory and me, then lowered to his scroll once more. “Any other goods besides the horse? For my toll?”
Rory looked up. Made a complaining nose in his throat.