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CHAPTER FOUR

BLACKMAIL, FOR INSTANCE

D awn came, and the wind drifting through the cottage window traveled on a mournful note. Breeze always caught along the tor—and Traum was a windy land at that. I wondered if all of the hamlets sounded wailful when the wind blew.

The cottage door slammed. Voices reached the bedroom landing, and the staircase began its usual chorus of creaky complaints. “I still think we should castrate him.”

I smiled.

One and Three and Four had not been on their mattresses when I’d come to bed last night. They’d been out all night and were now hauling themselves into the large bedroom that hosted all six of us Diviners, throwing their cloaks down—looking like droopy flour sacks in their wrinkled white dresses. Four’s nostrils were flaring, her hands spinning. “It’s no less than he deserves.”

I sat up. Stretched my arms over my head. “Who are we castrating?”

“Don’t ask,” Three groaned, plopping onto her mattress.

Four turned to me, drawing in an affected breath. “He’s married . Wentworth is married.”

“And Wentworth is…?”

“The knight who all but pleaded for my attention yesterday. Obviously, I snuck out to see him—”

“And dragged the pair of us.” One yawned, her short brown hair pointing in all four cardinal directions as she dropped onto the mattress next to me. “She’s mad because my knight told me her knight had a wife and two little Wentworth pups back at home.”

“Something the bastard conveniently failed to mention while his mouth was between my legs,” Four said, braiding her hair with furious fingers.

Two and Five sat up, rubbing sleep from their eyes. “The first man in history to lie about being married,” Two muttered, pulling back the blankets so Three could collapse next to her on their shared mattress.

“But he’s a knight!” Four’s cheeks went a deeper shade of scorn red. “ My armor may dent, my sword may break, but I will never diminish. Isn’t that their creed?” She stalked to the opposite side of the room, where a small wooden table was fitted with a cracked looking glass, and sat on its lip. “They’re supposed to keep rules. You know, be good at love and faith and war and inane things like that.”

“Of course knights keep rules.” One rubbed her eyes. “The utmost being never mention wives . The next—”

“ Don’t talk with your mouth full ,” I offered.

Five chuckled, lay back down, and immediately began to snore.

Four peered at her reflection in the looking glass, pushing the corners of her downturned mouth up into an uncanny smile. “I hate that we have to sneak around for a little fun. It attracts the truly idiotic.” Her eyes found One in the mirror. “Was yours any good?”

One shrugged. “He mainly rattled on about his family’s factory in the Seacht. I had to kiss him to shut him up. The evening slightly improved after that.”

Only the gargoyles traveled into Traum to do the abbess’s bidding. We Diviners weren’t permitted visitors to our cottage, and we certainly weren’t permitted to leave the tor until our ten years of service were up.

Not all of us took those rules so acutely to heart.

If we wanted a bedmate, we could easily have one. Aisling Cathedral was never bereft of visitors, and the tor was vast. We could lay in the grass with someone. The bolder Diviners—not me, mind; namely Four and Three and sometimes One—even left the tor on occasion, sneaking down the holloway road to a nearby glen or Coulson Faire for a night of happy impiety. But just as we hid our eyes, our names, and the illness we felt after dreaming, it was important for us Diviners to hide our hearts from the strangers we bedded. To encourage the air of detached mysticism our profession required—oracles, seen and revered but never known.

Divine in public, human in private.

The first stranger I’d laid down with in the tor’s grass was young and green like me, and we built up far more sweat getting his jerkin off than during what happened after. The second was a woman, and she kissed me so well beneath my dress that I thought myself in love—but then she tried to take off my shroud after I told her I could not, and I lost all my ardor.

The third was over a year ago, one of King Augur’s knights, and he was all that a knight should be. I can’t remember his name, but he was rugged and respectful and knew exactly how to touch me. He laid me down on the grass and I kept still, waiting to feel the things Four talked about. Inhibition lost to desire. Tenderness, and the little death that followed.

They never came.

After, the knight withdrew, like he knew he had not done a task well. It made me feel so rotten to be a task to him, and a failed one at that, that I had stopped taking strangers to the grass. I told myself it was better sharpening the qualities that made me divine than those that made me human, even if, in a deep, ugly place, I worried I’d made that choice because I did not know how to be human. I was the most uncomplaining Diviner, ever good in the eyes of the abbess—Aisling Cathedral’s best daughter. But when it came to being worldly or vulnerable or even fun , I was an abysmal failure.

Something Rodrick Myndacious had so graciously pointed out the night prior.

“Speaking of knights and rife misconduct,” I said to the Diviners, “you won’t believe the absolute boar I met last—”

The door to the cottage banged open. Two gargoyles, the falcon and the wolf, trudged in, their heavy steps kicking up dust.

The abbess trailed behind them. She tutted, a brief hem and haw, like she already knew the merit of the conversation she’d interrupted and wanted to sponge it from the room. “Well.” She knit her gloved fingers in a basket. “Yesterday was rather eventful.”

We let out a collective sigh.

“Five bad portents.” One shook her head. “Poor King Castor.”

“He’s only just been chosen by the knights. Surely the nobles in the hamlets will want to meet him.” Two’s back was straight, a pupil desperate to impress her tutor. “How can they respect a king whom the Omens frown upon?”

The abbess came into the room. Chose my mattress over the others and sat next to me upon it, her fingers soothing knots from my hair. “Do not trouble yourselves with the world beyond our wall. Kings come and go. Benedict Castor is not worthy of respect, or even mention. The politics of the hamlets, and the crown that answers to them, do not touch Aisling.”

She said our creed. “Swords and armor are nothing to stone.”

There was nothing to do after that but to agree. But I couldn’t scrub Rodrick pissing Myndacious from my mind.

You know of the Omens and signs and how to look down your nose at everyone, but nothing of what really goes on in the hamlets. Nothing of the real Traum that awaits you the moment your tenure is up.

The abbess finished combing my hair. “The gates will open in an hour for Divination. One. Two. Three. Put on your robes and meet me in the cathedral in twenty minutes. Four, Five”—her voice warmed—“Six. Assume your usual tasks. Join us in the cathedral after the twelfth bell.”

She placed her hand on my cheek, then moved to the other Diviners and did the same, gifting us her affection.

Then she was gone, taking her gargoyles with her.

“Last time I let you drag me out all night, Four.” One pushed to her feet. “I’m a worn-out rag—”

I was out of bed, throwing on my chemise and overdress, practically knocking One over to get to the door before her. “I have a proposition.”

“Offering to dream in my place?” Three muttered. “Great. I accept.”

I pulled in a breath, suddenly wide awake. “How much longer is our service?’

“Two months, thereabouts,” Five answered.

“Forty-nine days,” Two corrected.

I kept going. “The abbess says not to concern ourselves with what’s beyond the wall, but our ten years at Aisling are almost over. And I want to know what it’s like out there. I…” It was uncomfortable, proposing we break the rules. Maybe that idleweed had destroyed all my good sense. “I’d like to leave the tor.”

I could feel their eyes prodding at me from behind their shrouds. “Sneak out?” Five asked, incredulous. “All of us at once?”

“Well, well, well. The abbess’s favorite, gone rogue.” Four clapped her hands. “I’ve been trying to convince you shrews to do this for years. I say we go to Coulson Faire and have a proper evening of debauchery.” She launched out of her chair. “I’m ready. Let’s leave right now.”

“Keep your underpants on,” One said. “We can’t miss Divination. The abbess will send the gargoyles after us.”

“Then we’ll go after dark.”

“You want us to leave at night?” Five was all limbs in her animation. “What about sprites? Or thieves, or, I don’t know—bad weather? It might rain.”

“People leave Aisling at sunset and walk to Coulson Faire in the dark all the time without being assaulted by sprites,” Two said, pragmatic as always. “Ergo we should have no trouble doing the same. If there are thieves, they’ll be sorry to learn we have nothing worth stealing. If the weather is bad, it’s a good job we’ll be wearing our cloaks with hoods to hide our faces.” She gave Five a pointed look. “Any other concerns?”

Four nodded vigorously, like it had been she who’d made the winning argument. “Yeah! Ergo. ”

One’s attention was still on me. “Not like you to want to break the rules, Six.”

I kept my face even. “I’m capable of having fun.”

“Who said you weren’t?”

Five kept frowning. “Really—six strange women in cloaks is hardly a disguise. What if someone corners us, demanding to look beneath our shrouds?” She wrapped her arms around herself. “It’s not safe without an escort.”

“We’ll take a gargoyle,” Four countered.

“Because that won’t be conspicuous,” Three muttered.

I looked out the window, finding the pitched roof of the dormitory. “Hold tight. There might be someone else who could escort us.”

I hurried down the stairs, out of the cottage into the cool morning air—

And ran headlong into the batlike gargoyle.

“Ahh, Bartholomew. You’re looking less green around the gut this morning. I’ve brought your tools.” In his hands were a hammer and chisel. He shoved them at me. “Come, come. The abbess has requested that we mend the south wall.”

“‘Green around the gills’ is the proper expression.” I peered over his shoulder. “Are the king and his knights still here?”

“Unfortunately, yes. They are partaking in breakfast.”

“Good.”

I left him on the path, my fingers wrapped around the hammer and chisel, hurrying to find the foulest knight in all of Traum.

It was still the breakfast hour, and the commons door was open. Strewn about in clusters, knights ate off tin plates. Many were already clad in armor. Or perhaps they’d never shed it.

One knight choked on a mouthful of rye bread as I approached. He elbowed the man next to him, the word Diviner a searing whisper on the breeze.

Heads turned—conversations halted.

I surveyed the crowd, frowned, then pushed into the commons.

There were more knights inside, seated at the tables or standing in a crooked line at the counters fixed with food. A few lingered by the hearth, but none near the feline gargoyle with human hands who cooked the food over the fire.

I sliced my gaze across the room. One of the wooden tables had been moved to the far side of the commons. At it, seated between Maude and the king, mouth turning in a sneer that was growing more familiar by the second—

Rodrick Myndacious. That boar.

I drew air into my nostrils and marched forward.

King Castor saw me coming, his porridge spoon halting halfway to his mouth. Maude’s brows shot into her hairline. “Did someone call for a Diviner?”

“Pardon the intrusion, King Castor,” I said, steeling myself. “I need a favor.”

“Oh—of course.” The king wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and smiled toothily, like a nervous dog. “What can I do for you, Diviner?”

“Not you, Your Majesty.” I pointed my chisel at Rory’s chest. “ Him. ”

The bastard didn’t bother lifting his gaze from his breakfast. “Awful demanding this morning, Number Six.” When he noted my tools, Rory bit the inside of his cheek. “I see you’re armed.”

He’d drawn fresh charcoal around his eyes and secured his black hair with a strip of leather. His clothes were clean, and there was even a whit of warmth in his cheeks. Daylight, and an obvious bath, had made a new man of him.

I had the rousing vision of crashing my hammer onto his skull.

“What you inferred after you gave me idleweed,” I said. “About me knowing nothing of Traum. Of fun. I’d like you to remedy that.”

The king hacked out a cough. “You gave her your idleweed? Isn’t that some sort of—I don’t know.” He continued to cough. “ Sacrilege? ”

“You dolt.” Maude reached behind Rory and smacked King Castor’s back until he stopped hacking. “Diviners can drink and smoke and fuck just like anyone else.”

An errant knight from another table chuckled—then pretended he, too, was in the throes of a coughing fit the moment he locked eyes with Rory.

I stared at the trio. Maude calling him dolt , Rory christening him Benji . These knights were closer to the king than mere soldiers, despite the age disparity between them—Benji boyish, Rory a young man, and Maude at least ten years older than he was. They were intrepid, somehow. Conspiratorial, all in a row on their side of the table against me, alone on mine.

“ Fun ,” Rory deadpanned, tapping his spoon on the table. “What did you have in mind?”

I looked over my shoulder. Lowered my voice. “I want you to escort the Diviners off the tor for the evening.”

The king’s eyes widened, and so did Maude’s. But Rory—he just kept tapping his spoon, chipping away the veneer of my patience. “Be your escort.”

“That’s what I said.”

He shrugged. “No.”

“What do you mean, no?”

“Just that.” He smiled. “You might have ridden other deferential knights hard and put them away wet—but I’m no one’s errand boy. Besides, we leave for Coulson Faire in an hour.”

The king went red, and Maude scrubbed a hand down her face. I heard a thump under the table, and Rory winced. “What he means, Diviner,” she said, “with the utmost respect, is we cannot oblige you. Every new king must visit the hamlets when his reign begins. There are ceremonies to attend. We are due at Castle Luricht this afternoon.”

I didn’t know much about Traum or its hamlets—but in this instance, I knew just enough. “Castle Luricht is within Coulson Faire and hardly any distance away. Your knights could easily make it back here by evening.”

Maude did not deny it. “I was under the impression it was forbidden for Diviners to leave Aisling Cathedral during their service.”

“It is also forbidden for anyone save the abbess, a gargoyle, or a Diviner to touch Aisling’s spring water. The same spring water I smelled here in the commons last night. When I ran into you three.”

Not a subtle accusation.

The king, Maude, Rory—they’d taken water from Aisling’s spring and didn’t want anyone to know. And while the why irked me, it was insubstantial to the what I could do with the information.

Blackmail, for instance.

My fingers danced along the necks of my hammer and chisel. “Do this for me, and I will forget to tell the gargoyles, who are known to be quite violent, mind you, that I ever saw that flagon of spring water.”

The trio watched me from their side of the table, their gazes all variant in color—black, green, blue—but the challenge in all three was the same. “Six Diviners, just… ambling down the road,” Maude said.

“Quite the spectacle,” Rory muttered.

“We’ll wear cloaks,” I bit back. “Obviously none of us want to be seen.”

The king leaned forward in his chair. “Forgive my curiosity, Diviner. If you are disallowed to leave Aisling, all of Traum must surely be a stranger to you. What happens when your service is up? When you are no longer required to—”

“Drown?” Rory offered, spinning his spoon between his fingers.

“ Dream ,” Maude corrected.

“We all have tasks. Crafts we learn to bolster us when we depart.”

King Castor nodded at my hammer and chisel. “You’re to be a stoneworker?”

“Perhaps. If the pay is good.”

“The pay?” the king asked, incredulous. “The abbess doesn’t reimburse you for your time here?”

I bit down so hard my teeth hurt. “The Omens first appeared to a foundling, and every Diviner has been one since. That is why the money the abbess collects for Divination goes to the upkeep of the cathedral and the foundling houses we Diviners come from. She saved us from destitution. Gave us a home, a purpose—made us special. That is our payment. I wouldn’t have lived half the life I have without her.”

Tap , tap , tap went Rory’s spoon on the table. “And you call wasting your time dreaming of signs living , Diviner?”

I slapped the spoon out of his hand. It clattered to the floor, and I leaned in, lifting the dull end of my chisel to his nose. “What would a highborn prick like you know about it?”

Rory held perfectly still. He lifted his gaze to my shroud. He was looking for my eyes. For a target.

But he couldn’t find one.

He wrapped his fist around the chisel’s stem, dropping his voice to that low, gravelly rasp. “Point this thing in my face again and it’s mine.”

“I’d sincerely enjoy watching you try to take it.”

I could feel the eyes in the room on us.

“Whatever Aisling or Diviners or the Omens have done to garner your hatred, well done.” My voice was shaking. “I’ve been duly insulted. Now—you’ve stolen Aisling’s spring water. I won’t ask why, and I won’t speak of it again, but I want something in return. So be a good little soldier, and escort. My. Diviners.”

King Castor and Maude and everyone else in the commons sat frozen, some mid-bite, transfixed by the Diviner and the knight putting on a proper show. The only noise that perforated the room was a loud clack , clack , then—

The feline gargoyle was there, putting its stone claw on my shoulder and glaring over my shoulder at Rory. It opened its mouth. Flashed its teeth.

Rory jerked his hand off my chisel, his entire face caught in an eye roll. “I’m not going to hurt anyone, you witless hunk of stone.” He leaned back in his chair, heaving his boots, which had been unmistakably polished, onto the table. “Sorry, Diviner—that was aimed at the gargoyle. I can see how you might be tempted to answer to that description.”

The gargoyle led me to the door, but I turned at the threshold. Faced the table one final time, hot with embarrassment. But for the Diviners, I would bear it. “Please.”

It happened quickly. A tightening of muscle in Rory’s brow, a flare in his eyes. A genuine shred of something , peeking through all his derision.

It was gone as quick as it came.

I spent the rest of the morning at the east wall. Breaking things.

“Knave.” Crash went my chisel into a heart of granite. “Vile, loutish prat. He won’t do it.”

The batlike gargoyle, who was supposed to be assisting me and mixing mortar while I broke stone away from the tor to mend the wall, was picking gowan flowers. “Who, Bartholomew?”

Crash. “Did the knights say anything particular? The ones you caught at the spring last night?”

The gargoyle blinked, like I’d tendered him an impossible riddle. “Knights all sound the same to me. Is that an ungracious thing to say?”

Crash. “Maybe.” Crash, crash. “But as horrible as it is to admit”—the stone cleaved in two—“this specific knight is revoltingly distinct.”

When Aisling’s bell chimed twelve, I put my hammer and chisel away in the toolshed and went to the cathedral, walking past the dormitory stables.

They were empty. So were the dining commons.

The king and his knights were gone.

Aisling courtyard was full, men and women come to say prayers to the Omens’ statues. Others jangling as they walked, coins in their pockets, vying for one of the limited Divining slots. Only those with the most coin would be chosen by the abbess. The rest would leave, invariably to return another day with more money.

There was still sweat on my brow from the stones I’d been hauling when I took off my dress in the dark sacristy and donned my Divining robe.

I waited in silence. Listened to Five dream. When it was my turn, the chancel was decorated with trails of water from the Diviners the gargoyles had carried away.

I stepped into the spring. An aged merchant approached. He gave me his blood, his name. I looked up at the cathedral window, and the abbess pressed me into spring water. I drowned—

And dreamed.

Coin. Inkwell. Oar. Chime. Loom stone. Good portent, ill portent.

I woke, the abbess’s shroud looming over my face. “Again, my girl,” she said, holding a woman’s bloodied hand to my mouth. It coated my tongue, and I was pressed into water once more.

When I finally made my wet, weary way back to the Diviner cottage, it was almost suppertime. Visitors had been expelled from the grounds—the echoes of their voices were gone, and the wind along the tor spoke in its usual mournful refrain.

I stopped twice to vomit.

A pale figure waited near the cottage gate, sitting in grass and leaning against the fence. “Pleasant afternoon?” One asked.

I slumped to a seat next to her. I wouldn’t say it to anyone else. But One never made fun of me for being the abbess’s favorite, for trying so hard to be the best Diviner I could. It was just… easier, saying shameful things out loud to her, so I whispered, “I can’t wait until we’re free of that spring.”

One put her hand over mine. “Are you still up for sneaking off the tor?”

“No.” I looked at my feet. “It was a stupid idea.”

“Tell me a story, then.”

It made me a little sick to talk. Still—“We’ll go to the Cliffs of Bellidine and look out over the Sighing Sea, all six of us. We’ll shout so loud and long that our echoes will sound behind us. We’ll lie under the stars on beds of pink thrift flowers and stain our teeth with wine. We’ll sleep, but never dream.”

One inhaled slowly, like she was breathing it in. “That’s a good story.” She turned to me. “I’m sorry you had to Divine for the king. You draw the short straw so often, don’t you, Six?”

Her grip on my hand slackened, and I looked up. “One?”

There were wrinkles on her brow, the telltale sign of a furrow. One tilted her head to the side, her shrouded gaze fixed on something in the bushes near the gate. “What’s that?”

On first glance, it seemed no more than a stack of twigs. But the closer I looked, the better I could see that the stack was perfectly balanced. Six twigs that smelled sharp as nettle, wrapped in a leather strip.

Idleweed. Tied around it was a note.

Be ready by nightfall.

—R

(The idleweed is to spare my fucking boots. Don’t smoke it all.)