Filed To Story: The Knight and the Moth Book PDF Free by Rachel Gillig
“What investment?”
“Your abbess is our patron.”
I’d almost forgotten. “Do the girls the abbess selects ever come back?”
“Here? Can’t see why they would.”
“So you haven’t seen any Diviners of late?”
“None save you, mourning dove.”
My chest fell. The woman crossed her arms, eyeing my split lip. “You look like you’ve had a time of it.” She sighed and pushed open her door. “Want a cup of something?”
“No-thank you.” I looked up at the dawning sky. “How many Pupil Houses are there?”
“Three. The other hamlets send their orphans here, but mainly the girls-especially the poor sick ones. Gives ’em a good shot to end up at Aisling as Diviners. Most of the boys run off and fend for themselves.”
“Can you tell me where I might find the next Pupil House?”
“Off the square. But you won’t find any Diviners there, either.”
“Off the square. Wonderful. Where’s that?”
Pupil House II had darkened windows. This house mother answered the door with a broom, and nearly fell over when she saw my shroud.
She hadn’t seen any Diviners, either.
A baker opening his shop, who dropped his flour at the sight of the gargoyle, pointed us to the final Pupil House. There, the house mother slept through my knocking, and her dog ventured out in her stead. The mutt chased us for three city blocks. All the while the gargoyle shouted, his voice ringing through the streets, “Fear not, Bartholomew! Every day has its dog.”
The Seacht was waking up, its impoverished citizens slipping into shadow. When dawn came, the gargoyle and I did the same, retreating into an empty alley and slumping to the ground, defeated.
I pretended One was there, sitting next to me. “I was so important at Aisling. Climbing the wall-looking out at the view-I thought it would be the same when my service was up. That for all the dreams I’ve endured, I’d be important in the hamlets, too. That Traum, its people, its
Omens, would love me.” I traced the split in my lip the Harried Scribe had dealt. “But Four was right. We will only ever be Diviners. Harbingers of gods-not real women. People will want us without ever wishing to know us. A daughter of Aisling is not a real daughter, just as the abbess-” I swallowed. “Just as the abbess is not a real mother. Diviners are but the tools of the craft of Divination. Holy, not human.”
“The cathedral, its Omens, its Diviners sit on high,” the gargoyle said plainly. “If you only ever look up at something, can you ever see it clearly?”
“I suppose not.” I pressed the heels of my palms into my eyes. “But, really-I tried to be good. To be a perfect Diviner and do everything the abbess told me to. I never complained, never said no. My worth was written by the rules I followed. But then the abbess called me resentful-a martyr. And maybe I am. But didn’t I become that way because her love cost as much?”
The gargoyle took my hand. “That is a very sad story, Bartholomew. I wonder… how does it end?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know what to do or who to believe in or how to find my friends.” A sharp pressure began behind my eyes. “I don’t know who I am without Aisling.”
We sat in a silence he no doubt found contemplative and I oppressive.
An hour later, the streets now properly busy, a pair of girls came down the alley toward us. They wore simple garb and looked no older than twelve.
I thought of the Diviners. “How does the abbess choose the foundlings she brings to Aisling?” I asked the gargoyle as they passed.
He put a thoughtful claw to his stone lip. “All I know is that they are always girls. And often sick.”
“Why?”
“She told me once. I don’t remember when, or why.” The melodramatics he was so apt to show were nowhere upon his face. This time, the gargoyle seemed truly overcome by sadness. “She said that girls bear the pain of drowning better, and that sick ones always wake strange, special. And new.”
My throat tightened.
Meanwhile, the girls, passing in the alley, paid us no mind. Their pace hurried. I barely had time to pull my feet back lest they trip.
“Good morning,” the gargoyle said cheerily, his melancholy gone.
The girls didn’t answer. Their gazes were cast over their shoulders, their eyes wide and stricken-
There. Behind them. Three men, stalking forward. They made like they were casual, hands in their pockets, but I could see exactly what they were by their committed steps-the hungry, fixed line of their gazes.
Wolves, stalking mewling fawns.
They came past where the gargoyle and I were seated. With my cloak-and his tablecloth-we no doubt looked like a pair of vagabonds. The men did not ever look our way, watching only the fleeing girls.
My foot shot out.
The first man went down hard, landing on his forearms near the gargoyle’s feet, blocking the alleyway with his body.
The man behind him swore-kicked my leg out of his way. “Clumsy bitch.”
I rose to my feet. “Why are you chasing little girls down the street?”
“Get out of my face.” He stamped his palm over my cheek and shoved me into the alley wall. My other cheek scraped against brick, cutting my skin, stirring my shroud.
And I did not think. I just…
Swung.
And all hell broke loose.
My hammer made no noise, save the sick crack of bone. The answer was a bloodcurdling scream, and the alley became a knot of limbs, shouts, and blood.
The gargoyle rose to his feet, trampling the first man I’d hit, trying to get to me. Meanwhile the third man, shoving past his friend-whose elbow I’d decidedly shattered-levied his fist. He landed a weak punch to my stomach-no follow-through, because the gargoyle had him by the back of the neck, claws digging into flesh as he wrenched him back.
My hood dropped and the gargoyle’s tablecloth fell. When the man saw who exactly he was kicking and thrashing at, he went still. “Diviner. Please. We didn’t want anything with the young girls. Just a friendly-“
“I’m friendly, too,” the gargoyle said. “So is Bartholomew.” He looked at my hammer, held once more at the ready, and winked. “Aren’t you?”
He pushed the man toward me.
I dropped him with a horrible thwack of my hammer, right in his ribs.
“Guards!”
One of the men was screaming. The first one-the one I’d tripped-who’d been clever enough to stay down. He was screaming out the mouth of the alley. There, two armed guards wearing gray sashes had stalled, looking at us with narrowed eyes.