Filed To Story: The Knight and the Moth Book PDF Free by Rachel Gillig
What has been done to us?
I shoved the king’s notebook back at him. “I’ve been drinking that water since I was a girl.
All Diviners drink it.”
The king fumbled with his cup. “Y-yes.”
“What’s going to happen to us?”
Red in the cheeks, Benji avoided my gaze. He looked like he wanted to throw himself into his ale. “I can’t be certain. But the Artful Brigand and the Faithful Forester and the Harried Scribe were, in some part, made out of stone-“
“You’re saying I’m going to turn into stone
?”
He shook his head so forcefully the table wobbled. “I didn’t say that.”
“What does your grandfather’s notebook say becomes of Diviners after their service?”
“Very little.” Benji drank, pressing his hand over the notebook. “His obsession was with the Omens, I’m afraid. I was hoping-” He looked up. “I was hoping we could find out together. That you’d help me achieve what my grandfather never realized.” He tried to smile. “I want you to help me take up the mantle.”
I stared. “That’s asking me to betray everything I’ve ever believed in.”
“Yes.” Benji peered across the table at the snoring gargoyle, then me in turn. “You believed a story, and that story was a lie. The Omens are not divine. They are mortals who are paid like kings to live like gods. Imagine where all that money for Divination might go if it wasn’t spent filling Aisling’s coffers or wasted in the hamlets on the Omens.”
I thought of the impoverished, wandering the Seacht’s streets at night. “But doesn’t some of Aisling’s money goes to-“
“Foundling houses. It does.” Gentle, his gaze. “Have you considered that may not be such a fine thing? Foundlings are but another source of income for your abbess-to keep the facade going.”
I hadn’t thought of that.
Benji leaned forward. He was young and a little unsure of himself, but I was learning by the second that he was not stupid. He could sense that I was beginning to crumble. “The Faithful Forester, the Artful Brigand, and now the Harried Scribe have been killed, their wealth distributed in a way that will grant me favor when the time comes. I can change the hamlets with that money, and my own reputation as a Castor as well. But if your abbess is indeed the sixth Omen, I will need more than money, more than Rory and Maude, more than a magic coin and inkwell, before I return to Aisling to confront her. She has her gargoyles-and hundreds of years of trust-beneath her hand. If I am not very careful,
I will meet the same untimely end as my grandfather.” He smiled. “But then, he never had a Diviner at his side, did he?”
The king read a final passage from his grandfather’s notebook. “‘Faith requires a display. The greater the spectacle, the greater the illusion.'”
He snapped the notebook shut. Pinned me with his blue eyes. “Come with me to the other hamlets,” he said. “Wear your shroud. It will lend you an air of prominence. Speak those pious words-ever but visitors. No one will suspect me of anything untoward if a Diviner of Aisling travels with me. Folk of the hamlets might even look upon me with respect I don’t often garner.”
“Because you are young.”
His cheeks reddened. “Because the name Castor is of a deposed king. And I was likely chosen by the knights-and by extension, their noble families-to replace Augur when he grew too old because they believed I would work hard to rewrite my grandfather’s blasphemies.”
“But you’re determined to do the opposite.”
“I want to replace false gods. To be a ruler unbeholden to Aisling. Maude is my right hand, a knight of noble birth with great sway over the other knights and nobles of the hamlets. Rory is my disrupter, my heretic, my fearless sword. And you-” He looked less boyish. More cunning. “You could still be a harbinger. A holy signet of portents, of truth.”
“But for you instead of the Omens.” I sat very, very still. “So that you can kill them.”
“What the Omens are doing is not living.” The king’s eyes flickered to the pitcher of ale, but he did not pour himself another cup. “I’m going to reclaim their objects and sever their power. In time, I hope to reclaim the kingdom’s faith from the Omens as well.”
It was a compelling story. But it was hard to see myself in it. “I just want to find my friends.”
“Then come with us. Wherever we seek the Omens, we’ll seek your Diviners as well. The Fervent Peaks. The Chiming Wood.
The Cliffs of Bellidine. In the meantime”-Benji put his hands together-“I can dispatch ten knights, today. They will venture forth with the sole intent to find your Diviners. How does that sound?”
I’d had mutton easier to chew on. “And if we cannot find either? Omens or Diviners?”
“Have a little faith, Six.”
As if he hadn’t just annihilated it in the Harried Scribe’s lair and here again at his table, with ale and a prolix tale of false gods. But the king seemed without malice-young and a little drunk, but determined. Indeed, the nervousness he’d carried into the room was gone, as if, in proving the story of his grandfather to me, he’d proven something to himself.
I stood from my chair. “You’ve given me a lot to think about. When would you need my answer by?”
“We leave for the Fervent Peaks tomorrow.”
I nodded, then stalled. “If you manage to overtake Aisling Cathedral, what do you plan to do with it?”
“Shutter it.” For the first time, the king spoke sharply. “There will be no more Diviners. No more dreams, no more signs.”
I frowned. Tapped the gargoyle’s shoulder. He stirred, half-awake, but accepted my hand without fuss. I led him to the door, stalling one final time. “There is a part I still don’t understand, King Castor.”
“Benji. Please.”
“Benji.” I paused. “Why did the Harried Scribe lick my blood off his floor?”
A cloud passed over the glass ceiling, marring the light and the illusion of a gold crown upon Benji’s head. “No one should live for hundreds of years,” he said. “The Omens may be mortal, but they have no humanity left. They desire Aisling’s spring water, and they’ll have it.” His voice quieted. “By any means.”
The room was wide, but its walls felt tight around me. “Then wherever they are, the Diviners are in terrible danger.”
The king nodded. “I hope we find them, just as I hope you will help me defeat the Omens.” He smiled, easy and boyish once more. “And I hope, in the vastness of the hamlets, you will stop thinking of signs and start looking to your own future, now that you are finally free of Aisling.”
Benedict Castor was too courteous to despise. But I resented that he was younger than me and had so much more knowledge of the world, and that clearly I, in my shroud and stupid white dress, bore only the appearance of insight.
I led the gargoyle out of the room.
Maude waited on the other side of the door. “Well? How did it go?”
“I’m going to look for the Diviners in the hamlets.” My voice sounded far away. “By taking up the mantle.”
The lines in her face tightened. “You don’t seem very sure about that.”
I handed her the gargoyle’s stone claw. “Will you find a quiet room for him and put a blanket over his head? He’s liable to break something if he doesn’t get at least eight hours of sleep.”
“What are you going to do?”
I picked my fingernail with the edge of the chisel. “Wander.”
It was early afternoon when I returned to the yard, the knell of swordplay drawing me like Aisling’s beckoning bells.