Filed To Story: The Knight and the Moth Book PDF Free by Rachel Gillig
The woman’s eyes moved past her son, slamming directly onto me. Then the gargoyle. Then me again. “There’s a Diviner in your midst.”
“Yes.” Hamelin stepped aside. Looked me over the way his mother had. “This is Six. She’s a friend.”
Three horses over, Rory snorted.
Hamelin bit the inside of his cheek. “The king’s friend.”
Maude tapped Benji’s shoulder. He cleared his throat, addressing the nobles in a tone so polished the words sounded rehearsed. “Circumstances have brought us together. The Diviner will be traveling with me as I visit the hamlets. A good sign from the Omens.”
“How do you imagine that?” Another noble-a tall, elderly man with a thin face. “Indeed, there are rumors that you garnered five ill portents from the Omens not so long ago at Aisling Cathedral, King Castor.” He looked down his nose at Benji. “Perhaps you are too much like your grandfather.”
The knights went quiet. Maude and Rory had twin reactions, both bristling, leaning forward, jaws taut-
“I don’t like your tone.”
It was the gargoyle who’d spoken. All eyes turned to him. And while his batlike face remained cold, his fingers trilled excitedly behind his back. He was enjoying this. “Swords and armor are nothing to stone. A Diviner has chosen to walk beside the king, and to question her methods is to question Aisling-and thusly the Omens themselves. Is that what you are doing, or is it the altitude that makes you such a mad apple?”
Bad apple, I mouthed.
The man paled. “I meant no offense to the Diviner.” He bowed his head. Said, through his teeth, “Nor the king.”
Rory leaned against Fig. “Is she the only Diviner you’ve seen of late?”
The nobles exchanged glances. “Yes,” Hamelin’s mother answered. “Should we expect more?”
My stomach fell.
“Unlikely.” 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.”
The knighthood formed a line and moved through the village, the gargoyle and I at the back. We passed between mountain rocks and under torches. I could tell which stones were young and which were old by their smoothness, time and weather and the constant assault of rain as effective as a grindstone.
Torch flames flickered and an enormous canvas banner of the oar caught the wind, beckoning us with the whipping sounds of flagellation. Benji and his knights moved in a practiced pattern-a dance I did not know the steps to. They made half a circle, Benji in the heart of it, and the five nobles faced him.
“Torrid and unforgiving,” one of the nobles called, fingering the net upon his shoulders, “the river carves a path, always. Only the oar, only vigor, can Divine.”
Avice Fischer spoke, holding out her net. “We are said to be the most rudimentary of the hamlets-that our Peaks are without gentleness, and so too are we. Perhaps that is true. But to be hardened by our landscape, to know discomfort, and to prevail through it with vigor, is to be close to the Ardent Oarsman.” Her eyes turned to me and she nodded, like my presence had assured her. “What is harrowing is hallowed, is it not, Diviner of Aisling?”
Everyone turned to me. “I-“
Benji’s brows perked.
“That is…” I cleared my throat. “It is true. What is harrowing is hallowed.” I pitched my voice low in my finest impression of the abbess. “May you, here in the Fervent Peaks, be witness to the wonders of the Omens. Pupils of their portents. Ever but visitors to their greatness.”
The nobles nodded. Avice Fischer raised her hands to the starry sky. “Ever but visitors.”
“Ever but visitors,” Benji repeated.
“Ever but visitors,” the knighthood echoed.
Everyone began to move. We descended crude stairs cut into the rock, so wet and precarious I had to catch the gargoyle’s arm to keep from slipping. I heard a low, steady roar.
The waterfall. The basin.
There were no torches down by the water-only moonlight lit our way. More than one knight stumbled over rocks as we came to the lip of the basin. When we stopped, the knighthood spread into a line. One by one, the five fishermen threw their nets into the basin.
Benji began to strip his armor.
First off was his helmet. Then his gauntlets. His vambraces and pauldrons and breastplate. He set the pieces of his armor on the ground, and one by one the knights picked them up, as if guarding pieces of him.
When Benji wore only his padded shirt and pants, he looked like a boy who’d snuck out of bed to meet his first lover under the night sky. But his face was pale, the ruddy quality of his cheeks diminished. He had none of a lover’s mischief or ardor-all I could see was dread in his eyes.
He stripped his shirt, then lastly his pants, shivering.
“What the hell is he doing?”
“Prostrating himself.” Maude’s voice was hard, and so were her eyes.
The king stood before his knighthood and the Fervent Peaks’ nobles, stark naked. I wanted to turn my head. Wanted to look anywhere but at his cold, vulnerable flesh. And I wondered-
Is this how he felt, watching me in my wet robe, standing in the spring at Aisling?
Benji got into the basin. The fishermen’s nets were there. Wordless, he swam out to them. Wrapped himself within them.
“That water must be freezing,” the gargoyle said.
“This is what the king is,” Maude murmured. “Subservient-bereft of any creed except to be a witness, a pupil, a visitor to the Omens. A symbol of faith.”
I shook my head. “The nobles make a spectacle of him.”
“The hamlets care about their spectacles. Their gods, their ceremonies. And Benji wants to please them. So for now, that means making a show of playing along.” She never took her gaze from the king. I hadn’t noticed before, but the straps of her armor were loose. As if she needed to be able to tear it off at any moment. “He won’t freeze. He’s stronger than he looks.”
“How long will the ceremony last?”
“He’ll be in that water an hour.”
I wrapped my arms around myself, cold to my bones. Then-a warm presence moved to stand behind me, and a hand pressed against the small of my back. I knew without looking who it was.
Rory carried a silver flask. Even with its stopper in, I caught the faint scent of its contents. Sweet rot-Aisling’s spring water.
Rory dropped his mouth to my ear. “Time to be a good little soldier.”
I shivered. Turned to the gargoyle. “I’ll return shortly.”
Rory took my arm. An unreal whooshing feeling seized my body, and Rory and I went utterly invisible. When we reappeared, we stood away from the basin. Rory set the silver flask upon a stack of shale rocks, undid its stopper, then grasped my arm again, and his coin flew.
We landed high upon a ridge between rocks. It had an impressive vista and kept us deep in shadow, directly above the shale where he’d placed the flask.
“Our little lure.” Rory let go of me. Settled against rocks. “Now, we wait.”