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CHAPTER TWENTY

WITH HAMMER, WITH CHISEL

B enji and Maude had joined Rory in a suspended state, staring, mouths agape, dread wafting off them like smoke. “What do you mean she can’t swim?”

“As I said,” the gargoyle remarked, “she is excellent at dr—”

“Outside of Aisling, it is not a good thing to know how to drown.” Maude’s shout echoed through the hall. “It is a very bad thing.”

The gargoyle recoiled, eyes wide, bottom lip quivering. He let out a terrible sob, turned to the open wall—vaulted past the columns and took flight.

I called after him, but my voice was swallowed by the oncoming storm. I glowered over my shoulder. “Don’t yell at him.”

“He’ll survive,” Maude said. “You, however…”

“Maude.” Benji so rarely raised his voice—so rarely tendered anything unpleasant. But now, hands locked in knots, I noted a tear in the visage of his good nature. A temper, lingering beneath. “You put your armor on her,” he snapped. “Now it’s time to put on your faith.” He turned to Rory, anger still fixed on his face. “She can’t use the coin. The inkwell, either. If they’re lost in that water, we’ll never get them back.”

Rory stood in the heart of the hollow room and for once did not fidget. His focus was tethered entirely to me. “It’s up to her.”

It was armor, only armor, that held me up. “I can move my feet. Keep my balance, even if that platform quakes.” I looked down at the coin in my hand. “But if I throw this—miss even once—”

There was a voice in the storm. A low, horrible rasp riding the wind. “Where is the Diviner, who thinks me nothing without her? Where is the Diviner, come to defeat me at my craft?” Then louder, as if echoing in the walls of my head. “Where is the Diviner, come to me for answers?”

I felt like a dreaming child, fallen and shattered within the mountain peaks, trembling. If I glanced up, I could almost imagine I saw Aisling Cathedral’s reaching vaults, where I’d spent my entire life believing in the story of the Omens.

But as I looked at the Ardent Oarsman, I felt my armor around me, so much heavier than gossamer, rooting me to the earth. This was not a dream, and he was not a god. The abbess’s story was fissuring.

And I would help break it.

I handed Rory back his coin and stepped through the columns into the rain.

The others called after me but did not catch me until I was already standing upon the lip of the basin, facing the Omen that waited.

There was a boat—small and wooden—a chain attached to its bow. The chain disappeared into water, then resurfaced upon the Ardent Oarsman’s platform. He reached down. Took it in his fist. Nodded at the boat.

Maude caught me before I could get in. “You need a weapon.” A weight slid into my hand. I didn’t have to look down to know it was her battle-axe. “I do have faith in you,” she said. “I think you would do anything for your Diviners. Even d—”

Her voice was drowned out by a new gust of wind. I looked up. Against the rolling gray sky a dark shape appeared, getting closer and closer. A voice, singing out of tune.

The gargoyle was back.

He landed with a huff, sticking his nose up at Rory and Benji and Maude in particular. But when he reached me, all haughtiness vanished. He looked up with an open face. In his hands, resting in the beds of his palms—

My hammer and chisel.

“It is important for a squire to carry a knight’s weapons,” he said, the words so stoic I wondered if he’d practiced them on the flight back. “I will carry them for you, Bartholomew. I will shoulder any weight you give me.”

Oh , I thought, a great swelling in my chest. To be a gargoyle. To be my gargoyle.

I set Maude’s axe down. Picked up the hammer and chisel. They bore no magic like the stone objects the Omens carried. But their weight was familiar, the feel of them in my palms assuring. With them, I felt strong.

The Ardent Oarsman pointed a gnarled hand at the boat.

“That’s your ride,” Benji said, coming up next to me. “No turning back now.”

“She’s not turning back.” Maude stood at my other side, rapping a knuckle over my breastplate. “I want this returned without a scratch.”

They both stepped aside, but not before Maude offered the gargoyle her hand in apology. He didn’t take it.

And then there was a deep voice in my ear. A steadfast presence at my back. “Nervous, Diviner?”

“No,” I said in a rush. Then, “Tell me—”

I swallowed.

“Tell you…” The warmth in Rory’s voice was dissonant against the sound of rain, pinging over our armor. He rounded my body, blocking my view of the Ardent Oarsman, and pulled Maude’s helmet from the crook in my arm. “What?”

“It’s stupid.”

“Then it should come easily to me.”

I bit down on a smile. “The Diviners asked for stories. When we were sick or tired or afraid. To calm us.”

“You want me to tell you a story?” He placed the helmet on my head, over my shroud. His voice, trapped within the iron, hummed in my ears. “Once, there was a foundling boy who didn’t believe in anything. He grew up, became a worldly knight, and still he struggled to believe. He bore hardly any hope, and a mountain of disdain. And that should have been the end.”

He took my hand, squeezed it, tightening my hold on my hammer. “But then he came to a cathedral upon a tor, and met a woman there. And all the tales he’d troubled himself with about cruelty, about unfairness and godlessness… he started to forget. He was afforded another chance, as if by magic, to believe in something. He’d never be a very good knight, but every time he looked at the woman, he had the distinct faith”—his eyes roved my face—“that things could be better than they’d been.”

I’d fallen through the seams of time into a place where there were no Omens or stone, no armor, no gossamer. There was just Rory, me—and a strange sacrality between us.

He lowered the visor of my helmet. “Can you still see?”

“Yes.”

“Good. If you fall in that water, I’m coming in after you.”

I stepped around him. Faced the basin, the Omen—but looked back to Rory. “It’s a good story, Myndacious. I liked it.”

He held me in his gaze like he needed to. “Do you want to know how it ends?”

“Does it end?”

He nodded. “It ends a handful of minutes from now. After you’ve won, and there is one less Omen in the world.” He grinned. “It ends when you kiss me.”

“You mean it ends after I’ve won, and there is one less Omen in the world—and I hit you as hard as I can.”

“With your mouth.”

I withdrew, tucking away my grin. When I faced the basin again, it was my spine, not my armor, holding me up.

I stepped into the boat.

The Oarsman was on his platform, watching. When I got into his boat he took the chain in both hands and began to yank. The water began to churn, the Omen pulling the boat, and me within it, toward his platform.

I wanted to look back. At the gargoyle and Benji and Maude. At Rory. I wanted to see the assuredness in their gazes. But all I saw, when the boat scraped against the side of the platform and the Ardent Oarsman offered me a gnarled hand—

Were cold stone eyes.

I ignored his hand, hauling myself up and moving to the opposite side of the platform, widening the space between us, ever wary of the water waiting just over the wooden lip.

The Oarsman surveyed me beneath his hood and smiled that toothy, jagged smile. He lifted his oar, pointed it at me like a threat, then swung it outward. His voice boomed over the water. “Any intervention on the Diviner’s behalf shall render the challenge lost and her life forfeit. No gargoyle, no king, no knight shall come to her aid.” His smile widened. “Agreed?”

I allowed myself a glance at the shore. The others were there, hands on their weapons, feet practically in the water, watching with such furious intensity they had the effect of an army awaiting the war call. And Rory—

His face was remade by hate. His black hair caught the wind, painting him wraithlike, a dark smudge in the storm. Maude came up next to him, and Benji as well, Rory and he holding out their stolen objects—the Harried Scribe’s inkwell, the Artful Brigand’s coin—like they were the severed heads of their enemies.

The Oarsman’s knuckles cracked as he strangled the neck of his oar. He pivoted—pointing that oar once more at me. “You little fool.” He made a low, horrible noise. “This will be the end of you.”

I kept my jaw hewn shut.

His stone eyes fell to my hammer. “What will you do? Crack my skull? Do you imagine the truth of your lost Diviners will fall like blood from my brow?” The platform groaned as he took a step forward. “They are to the wind, consumed by this starving world. You should not have come here.” He dipped the blade of his oar over the side of the platform. “But I’m very glad you have.”

The water around the basin erupted. Two waves rose, crashing down on me like cantering horses, dropping me to my knees. I gasped—braced myself. The wind picked up, a ripping force, and the rain hardened to hail.

I understood then the full magic within the Omen’s oar. When he dipped the handle into the water, the magic transported him. When he dipped the blade of the oar in, it became a staff of destruction, the water itself bending to his will. He stirred it, calling forth waves that crashed over the platform, splashing me, making me fall.

I tried to stand—was knocked down by another wave. The platform tilted and I rolled to the lip—the Oarsman suddenly on top of me. I rolled again, and his oar crashed just shy of where my head had been.

I heard voices on the wind. I was too busy trying to hold my hammer and chisel, too busy trying to hold myself from toppling over the edge of the platform, to heed them.

The first time the oar struck me was in the chest. Wind screamed out of my lungs. I faltered, gasped. The second hit was just below the rim of my helmet. Right along the jaw. So hard I fell onto my back and saw stars.

The voices on the wind were louder. Six! Bartholomew!

Move your feet!

Waterlogged, heavy in my armor, I dragged myself up. The Oarsman made a low, mocking noise and swung once more.

My hammer met his oar, the crash rivaling thunder. The reverberation sent us both back a step, fleeting surprise slackening the Oarsman’s glare. He withdrew his oar. Showed me his teeth. I struck again, and he did not block in time. My hammer hit his leg—exactly where I’d stabbed him with my chisel three days ago.

The Omen bellowed, and then he was coming full force—oar in the water, appearing and disappearing and shaking the platform, giving his all to put me once more upon my knees.

Every movement I tended, every breath, was spent defending my stance, my body. I met oar with hammer, kept my balance, tried not to slip—

But it wasn’t enough.

The Oarsman vanished over water, then reappeared right before me. There was a sharp ring. A horrible pain as the oar crashed, full force, into my left hip.

I clattered belly-down onto the platform, waves pummeling over me, filling my mouth with water. I was gasping, choking, trying to haul in air.

The Oarsman stalked toward me. “How easily you fall.” His steps shook the platform. “You believe it is me who is nothing? Look at yourself, Diviner—a child in armor—an insect next to a god .”

He wrenched me up by the back of the neck. Tore at my armor with bruising fingers. “Your conviction in yourself is profane.” He was gasping, ripping away my pauldron and exposing my shoulder, the curve of my neck. “You disgust me.”

He sank his teeth into my skin.

I screamed.

Out on the shore, four figures were a dark blur, a mess of limbs, tangling, struggling. Not against the storm, but one another. Benji, holding back the gargoyle.

Maude, holding back Rory.

The Oarsman made a low noise of pleasure in my ear. “Yes.” He ran his tongue over the bite in my neck, lapping up blood. “You’ve swallowed so much more of Aisling’s water than the other one. I can practically taste the spring.”

Another scream ripped up my throat. I bared my teeth against excruciating pain—

And slammed the back of my head into the Omen’s face.

He staggered back, grasping his oar for support. His face was painted with my blood, and so were his teeth. He opened his mouth, let out a vicious shout that came back a bellow, a chorus and fury over the water.

“What other one?” I was wet, trembling, blood in my mouth. Just like a Divination. “You’ve seen another Diviner?”

“She came as they always do. Utterly still.” The Omen came closer, his steps crashing over the platform. “Every ten years, they come.” He took another step. “It’s the only spring water I’m given—their blood.” Another step. “I have my strength to keep up. My hunger to sate. And so”—he was upon me now—“I take my fill.”

His oar collided with the side of my face.

Maude’s helmet was knocked clean off my head. With it came a desperate ripping sound. A sensation of wetness, like skin, sloughing off. I raised a hand to my eyes—but not fast enough. My shroud tore away. Caught the vicious wind.

Disappeared into the storm.

The ruination upon the Ardent Oarsman’s brow froze. Stone eyes wide, mouth a jagged, bloody hole, he gazed at my unshrouded eyes so intently it seemed to cast him into a dream. A fleeting, utter stillness.

It was enough.

I sprang forward. I had no oar, no inkwell, no coin, but I was across the platform in a flash. The Oarsman let out a rasping shriek—swung his oar. I ducked. Kept going. My vision was blurry, blotted out by rain and blood and the bruises that were already swelling around my eyes, but I kept going.

When we collided, the Ardent Oarsman and I, the clamor was of two undeterred forces—a seismic crash. He fell back onto his platform, and I landed on top of him. He prodded me with the blunt end of his oar, but I was already pressing my chisel over his chest.

He thrashed, frothing as he hit me again and again. But I raised my hammer. Harnessed all the strength I possessed—

And struck it directly into the Omen’s heart.

His cry filled the air, a violent calamity that echoed through the Peaks. The Oarsman looked down at his body—at my chisel, protruding from his chest. Blood oozed, seeping from his clothes onto wood, dripping through the platform’s slats into crystalline water.

I lay over his body. “I have defeated you at your craft, Ardent Oarsman. Matched your strength and overcome it.” Blood, like the rain, streamed down my face. “Where is the Diviner that was brought to you?”

His grip on his oar tightened, but he did not lift it. “Your eyes…” He peered down at himself. At all his blood, staining the basin’s water. “I did not know this could happen. I did not think I would ever die…”

Rage, revulsion, and the unspooling terror that he hadn’t been lying—that he’d sunk his teeth into past Diviners—it did something wretched to me. “Tell me the truth.” My gauntlets crashed into the Omen’s jagged body, hitting, breaking, again and again until my hands were screaming. “ Where is the Diviner? ”

“I already told you. She came barely a week ago, naked and still. I took her into my castle. Placed her upon my throne…” The Omen’s breaths grew shallow. “And drank her.”

When he looked at me one last time, his stone eyes held nothing. “Dead. Your Diviners are all dead.” A terrible gasp fled his mouth. “And so are you.”

He slammed his oar into the platform.

There was a terrible creak, wood splintering into a thousand pieces beneath me. I lost my balance, held to my hammer and chisel. Rolled, then fell.

Into water.