Filed To Story: The Knight and the Moth Book PDF Free by Rachel Gillig
I remembered One, searching her reflection in that same mirror two nights ago-her horrified gasp.
What has been done to us?
I turned my head away and said nothing.
Rory muttered beneath his breath. “Fine. Don’t take it off, then. But know it will be dangerous.”
“Isn’t that what my knightly escort is for? Besides, I have these for protection.” I wagged my hammer and chisel in his face. “And the gargoyle.”
We both looked over our shoulders. The gargoyle had taken Fig by her lead, his face close to her muzzle as he lectured her. “Never trust anything written in rhyme, Bartholomew. It is trickery-a pretty falsehood. That is something I intend to tell everyone when I pen my own book of tales. Firstly, of course, I must learn to read and write.”
Rory angled his brows at me. “An army of wits, you two.”
“Shut up. He doesn’t have much sense or memory or even a name-just a strange compulsion to serve Aisling. He’s a bit… peculiar.”
“You’re a pair, then.”
If I told him,
No, I’m not a pair-I’m one of six and there are five cracks in my heart for it, he would laugh at me. He’d remind me that the only reason I am distinct now is because there are no other Diviners around to make me indistinct.
I did not need a reminder of that.
When the silence hung too long, Rory pivoted. “Speaking of Aisling, there’s something I’ve been wondering. It involves you, me, my blood on your tongue-and the little matter of your dream.”
My stomach tightened. “What about it?”
“You didn’t say anything in the spring. The gargoyle pulled you out after you-” He exhaled sharply. “You know.
Drowned. He laid you on your back upon the chancel and said you were dreaming, but you didn’t breathe a word. Why is that?”
The last lie I’d told was to the gargoyle, and I’d had to feign a vomiting spell to be convincing. Better to aim toward the blurry truth. “I don’t know why I didn’t say anything.”
Rory’s stare warmed the side of my face, dark eyes mapping my every corner, as if he could almost hear me think,
I saw the sixth Omen, the moth-and horrible things have been happening ever since. I might have even said it out loud…
Were it not for that strange coin in his pocket.
When the silence became unpalatable, Rory said, “You’ve been Divining a while, I take it.”
“Nearly ten years.”
“How old are you?”
“Bartholomew is quite old,” the gargoyle answered behind us, drawing an idle finger though Fig’s mane. “Though in a sense, she is prodigiously young-“
“No one knows,” I interrupted. “I have no memory before Aisling. But my teeth are healthy and my skin is not so lined yet.” I looked to Rory. “How old do I look to you?”
“If I answer badly, are you going to pulverize my head with that hammer?” He studied me down his nose. “You look…” Was that red in his cheeks? “You look like a young woman. Not far from my age. But your condescension is perfected. Like that of someone old.”
I made a face. “What’s your age?”
“Twenty-six. But my youth felt so endless that perhaps I’m the exact same age as you.” He lifted one shoulder, like a full shrug was not worth the effort. “Young, and also rather old.”
We stayed quiet for the rest of the crossing. Rory did not ask me about my dream or to take my shroud off again. I listened to the sound of the Tenor and the beat of our steps upon the bridge-hooves and boots, stone and feet-thinking on the stories I’d told the Diviners of the things we’d do when we left Aisling, and how bare it felt, living one without them.
The Seacht was a roaring instrument. By the time we’d crossed the Tenor River it was full morning, and the city’s labyrinthic streets were bustling with people. Wedged between Fig and the gargoyle, I flexed my toes over cobblestones and threw my head back as I took in the city.
It was nothing like Coulson Faire-tents plopped haphazardly in rows upon an open field. The Seacht, its architecture, was a meticulous wonder. Every building, by wood or stone or brick, was built to an exact stature that allowed its neighbors light. There were culverts so no freestanding water remained in the streets. Water wheels fed into factories. I could smell leather. From open windows, I saw men and women in gray robes, shuffling about large tubs or stretching a wet yellow material over large stones, then pinning it to dry.
“Parchment.” My eyes were wide. “They’re making parchment.”
“Oh, Bartholomew.” The gargoyle took my hand. “For writing stories.”
“Histories, more like,” Rory said. “Medical discoveries, star charts, architecture and invention-you name it, it’s been scribbled on a leaflet somewhere in this city. They love that, the scribes. Learning, and scribbling.”
I watched a row of women through an open window as they sewed, then pressed, stacks of parchment together. “You sound disapproving, Myndacious.”
“Not at all. Knowledge is a wellspring, and I happily drink from it.” He scowled up at a banner of an inkwell. “I simply can’t fathom why, for all their learning, folk of the Seacht still lend credence to those old, superstitious ways.”
“You mean the ways you are meant to defend as a knight?
My ways?” My wonderment was doused in irritation. “You think that because someone embraces innovation they must scorn the ancient and ethereal?”
Rory retrieved the scribe’s stolen stylus from his pocket and set it on a windowsill. “Clearly you don’t.”
“You said it yourself. Two things can be true at the same time-people can believe in more than one thing at once.”
“Like what is young, and also that which is rather old,” the gargoyle offered.
The streets were wriggling snakes, and so were the river channels that wove beneath bridges, each pointing toward the heart of the Seacht-a bustling marketplace square. We passed more banners depicting inkwells, shops and tanneries, and tall, windowed archives. When we reached the lip of the marketplace, Rory pointed his finger over my shoulder, directing my gaze at a humble brick facade. “I imagine your Diviners came from one of those,” he murmured.
I heard the sweet, unmistakable sound of children’s laughter. The brick building’s door was open, and from it, I glimpsed hair, swinging arms, churning feet, rosy cheeks. Children, gleefully chasing one another. One of them, who seemed no older than eight, caught the open door, shut it-and I noted an inscription painted upon the wood.
Pupil House III
A School for Foundlings
Oh. This was where Diviners were chosen from. Where One or Two or Three or Four or Five or I might have begun, before Aisling. I took a step toward the house-
Someone stomped on my bare foot. I yelped, knocking into a short, burly man with several inkwells in his arms. “Oi! Watch where you’re going.”
I checked my shroud was still in place and muttered an apology. The man’s eyes widened as he took me in. His mouth turned. “Get away from me, bitch.”
The gargoyle made a shrill noise of affront and shoved the man. He tumbled onto his bottom, dropping his inkwells, which shattered on the cobbled street. Ink pooling beneath him, the man struggled to his feet, shouting profanity so decorative I didn’t know what half of it meant, only that he thought me an Omen witch and a whore-
Rory leaned down. Cracked him over the jaw with an open palm. “Watch your fucking mouth.”
The man slipped on his own ink and fell a second time. When he scrutinized Rory-the charcoal around his eyes, the rings in his ear-he clearly didn’t know whether to spit out another slur or flee.