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CHAPTER TEN

YOUNG, AND RATHER OLD

R ory’s horse was called Fig, and Fig’s greatest flaw—or virtue—was that she refused to be rushed. She sniffed my face for five whole minutes before she let me sit on her back behind Rory, then took ten minutes more snaffling boysenberries from a bramble. It was only after she’d finished, when Rory’s threats had increased tenfold, that she began to idly trot down the holloway road.

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. “That.”

The gargoyle had dropped lower in the sky, making sweeps over the nearby hills. When he flew over us, the scribe cried out, ducking into his stall. “What kind of fowl-like sprite is that?”

There was a loud crash. The gargoyle landed upon grass. Sneezed, then toppled. “Did that man just call me foul , Bartholomew?”

“He mistook you for a bird.”

“An even greater slander!” The gargoyle wagged a stone finger at the scribe’s stall. “I shall destroy his little house.”

“Oh, stop it.” I took him by the shoulders—led him toward the lip of the Tenor River as Rory haggled with the Scribe. “Come look at the water with me, you ferocious beast.”

The river held the sky and rendered it something new, its swirls and ripples metamorphosing into the most imperfect, astounding painting. I crouched and slid my hand into the water. I expected a bite of cold, but the Tenor was surprisingly tepid, and I let it wash over my skin, my calluses and knuckles, the sensation so pure—so entirely new.

A blue hand reached out from the water.

I drew back, splashing myself. “There’s something there.”

The gargoyle leaned over my shoulder, and the two of us watched, drawing in breath at the same time, as purple scales rose to the river’s surface. The hand rose, and so did a head. Its skull was as large as a dog’s and hairless, fitted with deeply set eyes that were as pale and murky as a bowl of milk. Its snout was long, and when its purple lips parted, I was afforded a glimpse of a dozen wide, blunt teeth.

Its wide eyes searched me. It made a noise that sounded like the river itself—rippling and fluid.

A sprite.

I smiled. Put my hand into the river once more.

“Careful, Bartholomew,” said the gargoyle.

The sprite took my hand, coming farther out of the water. I noticed then how long and thin it was. I could see the contours of its bones—could count every rib. “Hello.”

It stared up at me.

“You haven’t happened to see women with these”—I touched my shroud—“pass by, have you?”

The sprite didn’t answer. It was inching my hand closer to its face. Slit nostrils flared at the end of its snout, and then it was opening its mouth, guiding my hand between its teeth.

It bit down.

I recoiled with a yelp.

The scribe rushed up behind me. “Away, you beast!” His inkwell bore fresh ink, and when he got to the edge of the river, face twisted by revulsion, he upended it into the water.

Ink, dark and viscid, splashed upon the sprite’s face. It let out a pained cry, then disappeared beneath the Tenor’s tide.

I stared after it. “You hurt it.”

“Forgive me, Diviner.” The scribe scrubbed a hand down his robes. “But the water sprites feast on pell—a plant we use to fashion our scrolls. Happily, our ink is poisonous to them. Still, they prove a persistent blight.”

The gargoyle tapped his stone chin. “I wonder, if it feasts upon your precious weeds, why then should the sprite bite Bartholomew’s hand?”

“Because it’s starving.” Rory knocked into the scribe’s shoulder as he came to stand beside me. “Let me see.”

I kept my hand tucked against my chest. “I’m fine.”

Rory frowned, but he didn’t push it. He moved to the scribe’s stall instead, wrenched a flowering grass from the ground, then marched back to the river, where he tossed the grass into the water’s depths.

The scribe cried out.

“Pipe down. I’ll pay you what it’s worth. After all”—Rory reached into his pocket and extracted a gold coin, then slapped it onto the scribe’s stall—“the only god of men is coin.”

The creed of the Artful Brigand.

My skin prickled.

The scribe returned to his stall, muttering about Coulson Faire being inferior to the other hamlets. I glanced down at where the sprite had bitten me.

A crescent moon of bruises was nestled in the heart of my palm. But the sprite’s teeth had been too blunt—it hadn’t broken skin—almost as if it had fought against its own nature trying to do so.

The scribe watched us, pushing his spectacles up his nose as the gargoyle and I followed Rory and Fig onto the bridge. He said Aisling’s creed with a reverent bow. “Swords and armor are nothing to stone.” Then, to Rory—“Don’t forget your stylus.”

“That was decent of you,” I said as we walked on, rubbing my hand where I’d been bitten. “Feeding the sprite.”

Rory kept his gaze ahead. “Knights are supposed to be decent.”

“Could have fooled me.”

“Violence is a craft. So is compassion. I tend to sway toward the latter. When it comes to sprites, at least.”

Folk were scarce on the bridge, the hour still early. But for every man or woman or child who passed, the gargoyle and I earned a wide-eyed stare. Some even stopped in their tracks or pointed, echoes of “Look, a Diviner!” following me across the bridge.

I pulled my hood tighter over my head.

“You’ll need more of a disguise than that.” Rory spun the pilfered stylus between his fingers. “The Seacht is dense. Populated. There’s no orderly queue like the one you’re accustomed to at Aisling. People will swarm you, just like that pathetic merchant from Coulson Faire. My advice?” He jerked his head at my face. “Lose the shroud. It’s too distinct.”

“Funny. Someone once told me it made me entirely in distinct.”

“Two things can be true at the same time, Diviner.” Rory glowered at a passing cart, and his voice lowered. “Take it off.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“ No is a sufficient answer.”

He rubbed his face. In the light of the day, even beneath smudged charcoal, there were impressive shadows beneath Rory’s eyes. I wondered when he’d last slept. “You left Aisling,” he said with the effect of a man invoking his last shred of patience. “Broke a few things on your way out. If you’re hoping the abbess will take you back—”

“That’s not why I won’t take it off.”

“Why, then?” He smiled without warmth. “What’s behind it?”

That was the trouble. I didn’t know. The gargoyles provided us with clean shrouds when ours grew dirty, and when we washed our faces, it was with discipline—always keeping our eyes shut and away from the cracked mirror in the Diviner cottage.

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.

But the Seacht was indeed a city of intellects. The man raised himself out of the ink and ran.

“You can be happy now, I suppose,” I said through tight lips. “Clearly not everyone in the Seacht falls prey to the old ways.”

Rory pushed his hair out of his eyes. “That didn’t make me happy at all.”

“Oh, look—a Diviner!”

Pith. A crowd was already forming. “Did someone show you their ink?” a woman asked me, dragging a man who looked about one hundred years old with her. “Pray, Diviner, will you read mine?”

“Oh. I’m sorry, that’s not how it w—”

More onlookers pushed forward, and suddenly there were two, three, four more inkwells in my face. “Read my ink! Please, Diviner, what signs do you see? Good or bad?”

I was jostled, my bare feet trampled, and then a warm arm was around my shoulders and I was being moved through the crowd, through the marketplace, far quicker than before.

“And to think,” Rory said in my ear, “it might have all been avoided had you been wearing shoes.”

The Seacht’s streets narrowed as we turned east. The crowd was thinner here, dispersed. I noted the exact moment when, just ahead, two figures slunk from an alley.

They walked close to each other, the hoods of their cloaks pulled up like mine.

Rory watched them, a crooked smile slithering over his mouth. “Well, well.” He retracted his arm from my shoulders and pressed ahead. Soon he was directly behind the hooded figures, walking on silent step, reaching a hand into one of their cloaks like a common pickpocket.

I balked. “What are you doing , Myndacious?”

One of the figures turned. I saw a sharp face fitted with green eyes with charcoal drawn around them.

Maude.

She caught Rory by the wrist, denying him her pocket. “Nice try, little thief.”

Rory looked at me like he’d picked me out from between his teeth. “Spoilsport.”

The second figure, who turned on his heel, was none other than the king of Traum himself. When King Castor saw Rory, he smiled so widely I could count his teeth. “We found him, Rory. He was hiding in plain sight. We followed him and—”

The king stopped short, his eyes finally catching up to his mouth. “Oh—a Diviner.” His cheeks went ruddy. “ My Diviner.”

“Six,” I reminded him. It would have been proper to lower my head. But the boy was in common garb—leathers and an undyed cloak. He looked so ordinary I forgot he mattered enough to bow to.

“I am here, too, Bartholomew,” the gargoyle said, clearing his throat. “You may greet me as well.”

Maude went still. “Pith,” she muttered. “I didn’t know gargoyles spoke.”

“Who’s Bartholomew?” the king asked.

“Unimportant.” Rory’s posture had changed. He wasn’t slouched or lazy or perked for enjoyment. His back was stiff, his shoulders inflexible. “You found him. And you were going after him— without me ?”

“Who?” I snapped.

They turned, six eyes combing me. They were like the three leaves of a clover, conspiratorial and exclusive in their trio. There was an arduous pause, then Rory looked at Maude. Said something to her with the wiggle of his eyebrows.

Maude shook her head. “No.”

I crossed my arms. “No what ?”

Rory scratched his jaw and ignored me. “It’s a two birds, one stone situation.”

“It’s risky and thoughtless,” Maude bit back.

“My specialties.”

I was going to break something with my hammer if these idiots didn’t stop acting like I wasn’t there. “Ahem.”

King Castor looked from me to Rory to Maude—then back to me. Slowly, he shrugged. “I say we bring her. She could be useful.”

The gargoyle puffed his chest out with pride. “Bartholomew is a daughter of Aisling, a harbinger of gods—the most dedicated dreamer I know.” He patted my shoulder. “But no, I’m sorry to say she is not especially useful. I, on the other hand—”

I put my hand over his mouth. “Whatever you are doing, I will come along. But immediately after, I require your ear, King Castor.” I tried to be like the abbess when she was cross—like Aisling Cathedral itself. Cold, beautiful, and disapproving. “And I will have it.”

The king grinned. “Ear, eye, hand—they’re yours.”

“Easy, Your Majesty.” Rory threw an arm over the king’s shoulder, steering him away from me. “It’s hardly a marriage proposal. Now”—he gestured to the street ahead—“let’s go see an old friend.”

Maude was not pleased. I could tell by the way she censured Rory with relentless glares as she led us down dizzying streets that she did not want me along for whatever ill adventure lay ahead.

Too bad. I wasn’t letting the boy-king out of my sight until he promised he would help me find my Diviners.

We stopped abruptly in an ivy-laden alley that was almost too narrow for Fig. Maude looked over her shoulder. Satisfied we were alone, she began peeling back the ivy, revealing a small wooden door in the alley wall. “Right.” She turned to me. “We need to go over a few things before we bring you in.”

“In…” I looked up at the ivy wall. It didn’t look like a barracks or anywhere the knighthood might be stationed. “Where, exactly?”

“We’re meeting with someone,” Maude said flatly. “A vestige of the Seacht.”

I crossed my arms. “You’re being cryptic. It’s obnoxious.”

“Hey.” Rory tapped my wrist. “Uncross those and listen . There’s a chance this man knows something of your lost Diviners. Seeing him may be a bit of a shock, but it’s important that you see him, understood?”

“Understood, Bartholomew.” The gargoyle straightened. “I will strive to be a pillar of decorum—”

“ You will stay with Fig.” When the gargoyle’s bottom lip began to quiver, Rory hastily added, “She gets lonely.”

The gargoyle looked up at Fig, who was contentedly eating ivy off the wall, and sniffled. “Very well. If my presence will ease her suffering, I shall weather my own.”

“Fantastic.” Rory’s dark eyes returned to me. “Our business may get… animated. Stay close.”

My brows shot up. “Animated how?”

“Will there be kissing?” the gargoyle asked.

“What—no.” Rory made a face. “We’re going to…” He turned to Maude for help, but she offered none, grinning as he struggled to articulate.

“We are taking up the mantle and challenging this man to his craft,” King Castor said, then blinked rapidly, as if surprised by his own exactitude. He looked to Maude, who patted him on the back, then focused on me. “Do you know what that means, Six?”

I didn’t. It sounded vaguely familiar—a memory stuck in a dark corner of my mind. But my pride was a formidable beast. I’d sooner go back to Aisling than give these idiots another cause to think me witless and unworldly. “Of course.”

I could see in the way they looked at one another that they thought me a prodigiously bad liar.

Maude wrenched open the alleyway door, revealing a dark corridor. “Then let’s go.”

King Castor followed, quick in his step, like he did not want to stray too far from Maude.

I handed the gargoyle my hammer and chisel for safekeeping. “You still haven’t told me this man’s name,” I said to Rory, stepping over a fractured wood threshold into the corridor.

“He’ll be more than happy to introduce himself.”

Rory shut the door behind him, expelling the echo of the Seacht and the gargoyle’s voice as he began to lecture Fig about varying sorts of ivy. The only thing I could hear now was the muffled patter of our steps on wool rugs. I peered at the surrounding walls, their height so vast I had to crane my neck. Upon then, obscured by dimness, were rows of elaborate paintings I could not make out. They looked like portraits with blurry faces—bent, unclothed bodies.

No lanterns were lit. The corridor stretched on, its end obscured by murky shadow. I walked behind the king, a step ahead of Rory, suddenly afraid I was being heedlessly led into the unknown.

Ahead, Maude’s and King Castor’s backs were rigid. Behind, I could hear the swish of Rory’s fidgeting fingers in his pocket. He was toying with his coin . An anxious habit, perhaps. His steps were unflagging, but his breaths were rough and uneven. “You lot seem tense,” I murmured. “Nervous about something, Myndacious?”

The fidgeting sounds stopped. “Do you have some moral compunction against saying my name?”

“Is Myndacious not your name?”

“I told you the night we met to call me Rory.”

“And I might have. But then we got to talking, and suddenly there was nothing about you that made me want to encourage familiarity.”

“Job well done. Vomiting on my favorite boots is a surefire way to keep things formal between us.”

I glared back at him. “You’re remarkably difficult to like.”

“You’d like me better if you called me Rory.”

“I’d like you better if you were on your back again.”

He smiled.

An unfamiliar heat burrowed into my face. “From throwing you and your inferior strength down, obviously.”

“Loud and clear, Diviner. I hear you loud and clear.”

A line of light drew before us, coming from the cracks in a wide oaken door at the end of the corridor. Maude put a hand upon it and pressed.

The door opened to a room with no windows, lit by sunlight cascading from a dome ceiling made entirely out of glass. Upon the walls, several stories high, were shelves stacked with books. Tens of thousands of books.

In the heart of the room, fixed upon fine woolen rugs, was a man.

An old man, with draping silken robes and long, gnarled fingers. He stood stooped, but his eyes were lifted. Lifted—and made entirely out of stone.

In his hand was the inkwell from my dreams.

He stared at me, drawing in a long, rasping breath. “A daughter of Aisling.” He lifted a hand, beckoning me. “Come in.”