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CHAPTER FIVE

SPRITES IN THE GLEN

W e smoked all the idleweed.

Four danced around the room, her white dress and a trail of smoke billowing behind her. “Where did you get this, Six?”

I held a sprig of idleweed in the crease of my lips and brought a candle to it. Fire, smoke, inhale. This time, I didn’t cough. “You’ll meet him soon enough,” I muttered, passing candles to Two, then Three, while One did the same to Five. A minute later, our entire chamber was clouded in smoke and lit by a lavender sunset, the effect deliciously hazy.

“Whoa.” One’s voice was awestruck. “There goes my nausea. Will it make me tired?”

I’d stayed up well enough the night before, seething over Rodrick Myndacious. “Shouldn’t.”

Three grinned at Five, who opened her mouth with a wolfish smile and swallowed the smoke Three blew into it. Two lay back on her mattress, limbs loose, and stared up at the ceiling. Of all of us, she was the least unlikely to say, “Let’s do this when our service is up. Lie in bed. Smoke. Drink. Eat. Do absolutely nothing.”

“Absolutely nothing,” Three agreed, raising her twig of idleweed in a salute.

Four moved to the center of the room. “And when we need money we’ll work and when we get bored we’ll play with knights or whomever we please, but we’ll never give them anything. We’ll only love one another.” She looked around at us, and I wished then I could see her eyes, because I knew they were wide and feverish and full of assurance. “Because out there, even when the shroud is off”—she pointed out the window to Traum’s sweeping hills—“we will be daughters of Aisling. Diviners, harbingers of gods—not real women. People will want us without ever wishing to know us.” She came round the room. Kissed each Diviner plain on the mouth. “But we’ll always be so much more than that to one another.”

When she came to me, I lowered the idleweed from my mouth and felt Four’s lips in its place. “Promise me it’ll be like that,” she said.

I had no right to promise. I knew, just like the other women in the room, that Divining—reading the Omens’ signs—gave me no sway over their enactment. There was no telling what tapestry the future would weave for us. Still, I said with my whole being, “I promise it will.”

“Me too,” the Diviners replied, our voices catching in the smoke.

A knock sounded upon the cottage door.

Four banished her intensity with a final puff of idleweed, then pinched her cheeks in the cracked looking glass and pushed up her breasts. “Well, shrews. Shall we don our cloaks?”

They were for winter months, our cloaks. Wool and undyed, they’d been traded by a weaver from the Cliffs of Bellidine for a Divination. And while they were heavy and hot for late summer, when we drew the hoods up, we were Diviners no more, our dresses covered, our faces and shrouds perfectly obscured by shadow.

Five chuckled. “We look like the statues in the courtyard.”

“Remember,” One said at the door. “No eyes, no names.”

We shuffled down the stairs on a tide of smoke and slipped outside into the night.

The grounds were still, the gates closed—the outbuildings darkened. The gargoyles would be asleep. The abbess, too. The only movement was the wind, breathing through the grass.

The six knights, leaned up against the cottage, made no sound at all.

Two jumped, then swore. The rest of us went still at the cottage door, save Four, who ran headlong into the company. “Which of you is buying my first drink at the Faire?”

The knights grinned in her wake.

“Gods, I envy her,” One murmured. “I never know what to say to these eager, puppy-dog knights.”

“They’re not all puppies.” Even in the dark, I could see the faces of the knights. There were men and women in their ranks, all wearing armor and the same awestruck expression as they surveyed us in our hoods.

All, save the tall one with three gold bands in his ear, smiled at us.

Rory leaned against the cottage wall, scanning the line of Diviners. He had no business telling me from the others, my face hidden in the shadow of my hood, but his gaze halted the moment it crossed me, dark eyes narrowing in an unspoken challenge.

I raised the remains of my idleweed. Shot smoke out of my mouth at the sky.

Rory itched his nose with his middle finger.

Maude came to stand before us. I could tell by the way the other knights made room for her that she was in charge. “All right, Diviners,” she said in a low voice. “There are rules to this happy little jaunt. Each of you has been assigned a knight. That way, if we split up, none of you are lost or unprotected. Keep those hoods up—folk of Coulson are grabby at the best of times. Don’t tell anyone who you are.” She paused. “In fact, don’t talk to anyone, full stop. Last thing we want is a rumor that the knighthood is somehow undermining the abbess.”

She turned to her fellow knights. “Don’t embarrass yourselves. Don’t drink too much or gamble or fight—Tory, I’m looking at you. If we split up, meet near the king’s pyre. Keep a close eye on your Diviner, and get them back here before dawn.”

Unlike Rory, Maude had some difficulty finding me in the crowd. “Is that acceptable?” she said pointedly. “Per our agreement?”

“Yes.” I cleared my throat. “We’re even.”

“Fan-fucking-tastic,” Rory muttered behind her.

Maude sighed, waving the company forward. “Try to have fun.”

We walked in silence, but there was a loudness to our verve—a buzz within us. We followed Maude down the tor to the west wall. I looked back only once at Aisling Cathedral, who, cold, beautiful, and disapproving, watched us disappear into the night.

The road was called a holloway—a sunken, tunnel-like road that led away from Aisling’s tor into the vast fields of Coulson Faire. Grass and shrubs, green and brimming with life, grew at a curve, and the leafy tops of trees let in only the barest glimpse of moonlight. It was like stepping into a living tunnel. A hollow, blooming log.

There was a secret spot on the west wall the other Diviners always used when they snuck away from the tor. One that was not such a high drop onto the holloway road below.

I was a little insulted how, without instruction, the knights found it. They climbed over first, then caught the Diviners as they dropped to the other side. I went last, climbing up, then over the wall.

I didn’t need anyone to catch me. Still, just before my feet touched the ground on the other side of the wall, hands encased in gauntlets braced my hips.

“All good?” said a voice.

My feet hit the road and I turned. The knight who held me had short blond hair and a smile wide enough that I was afforded a view of all his straight white teeth. “I’m fine,” I answered, brushing him off.

“My name is Hamelin Fischer, Diviner. If it’s all right by you, I’ll be your escort for the evening.”

Anyone but Myndacious. Again, I said, “Fine,” and we continued on.

Not ten minutes later, a noise began in the trees.

I startled. There it was again—a harmony of tiny voices, laughing. The clamor grew, echoing through beech trees, through ferns and ivies and nettle brambles. I turned to One. “What’s that?”

High in the trees, something flittered. I looked up, and my hood fell back.

There were creatures above us. Small, quick-moving. They looked like hummingbirds, their bodies brightly feathered and iridescent, only they bore no beaks, just slat-like nostrils, thin purple lips, and round, inquisitive eyes. Their jointed arms and legs were as purple as burdock flowers. When they opened their mouths, I could see rows of pale, jagged teeth.

They sat on leaves and twigs, watching us.

“Sprites,” One whispered, her gaze lifted like mine.

A few little creatures dropped down from the safety of the trees, hovering, then darting over the knights ahead us, hissing. I could hear their bodies tinging against armor as they swiped again and again at the knights.

A sword was drawn. In a single blow, the pommel collided with one of the sprites, knocking it from the air, like a fly swatted. The sprite fell onto the side of the road, where it lay, shaking, then still, upon the grass.

I gasped. “Why did he do that? It’s just a little thing!”

“Beastly creatures, sprites,” said a voice near my ear.

I’d forgotten Hamelin. He walked with another knight behind One and me, looking up at the sprites in the trees, hand lowered to the hilt of his sword. “Creatures of the land can’t be trusted. There’s no room for mercy, even for the little ones. Large or small, handsome or monstrous, all sprites are violent and impossible to control.”

“Not true,” One countered. “The gargoyles are sprites. Ancient ones, trained by abbesses of old to serve the cathedral. They heel well enough.” She looked up at the trees. “These little ones seem harmless. No need to be brutes.”

The knights were clearly not of the same mind. “All respect, Diviner, but you’ve never been to the Chiming Wood,” said the man behind me. “Or the Fervent Peaks.” He glowered up at the trees. “There’s nothing redemptive about creatures who would happily eat you for breakfast.”

We passed the fallen sprite, its little body unmoving, as if asleep. I had the intrusive desire to lay my palm on it. “He shouldn’t have killed it. It’s lovely. Even in death.”

“Not as lovely as you, Diviner,” Hamelin said.

One snorted and looked over her shoulder. “Didn’t I kiss you last night?”

The second knight laughed. “That was me.” He wielded his smile as well as Hamelin. “I’m Dedrick Lange, from the Seacht. Remember?”

“Oh… yes. Sorry.” One waved a hand in his face. “All you seem the same to me.”

The knights eyed each other, like she’d said something funny, and I knew it was she and I, not themselves, they found indistinguishable.

The abbess strips you of name, face, clothes, distinction… Careful, Number Six. Someone will accuse you of having too much fun up here on this god-awful hill.

I shook my head, but Rory’s voice persisted, a grating tune that didn’t end.

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.

… You call wasting your time dreaming of signs living, Diviner?

“Are you married?” I asked abruptly.

Hamelin laughed, drawing looks. “Not even close—”

“Fantastic.” I turned to One. “I’m taking a turn in the grass. Don’t wait for me.”

Her brows lifted over her shroud. “Really?”

“Really.”

I took Hamelin’s hand. He followed me without question, grinning, and the two of us trampled off the road through greenery, slipping away between trees like we, too, were sprites in the glen.

The Diviners whistled, a few knights applauding, as they watched us go.

I doubted Rory was one of them.

I hopped over a fern, lost sight of the road, and then my back was being pressed into a particularly wide beech tree. Hamelin dropped his helmet in the grass, and I withdrew my cloak.

When I kissed him on the mouth, he seemed dazed. Awestruck. Then reason caught him up. He kissed me back, then down my neck, his mouth a stranger upon my skin. “I meant it,” he said, lips drawing up my throat. “You’re lovely. Yesterday’s Divination—” He cupped my breast through my dress. “You looked mythical—practically fearsome. I couldn’t look away. No one could.”

It was a nice thing to say, and it, along with his touch, did nothing to stir me. “Do you need help out of your armor?”

He shook his head. “Wouldn’t be knightly of me, begging your assistance.”

“I don’t mind.”

He reached down and caught one of my legs, hooking it over his hip as he pressed me harder into the tree. “Why did you ask if I was married?”

“Wouldn’t want to lie down with a married man.”

“Do Diviners marry?”

Did we? “If we wish to after our ten years are up, I suppose. I haven’t really thought about it—”

Hamelin cut me off with a kiss. Our tongues touched. It was warm, and so was the night air. “Imagine the influence,” he murmured against my mouth, “being wedded to a daughter of Aisling.”

“Perhaps we shouldn’t talk.”

He chuckled breathily, his hand rising up my leg. “Sorry. I’m a little overwhelmed.” His teeth grazed my bottom lip. “No one back home in the Peaks is going to believe I fucked a Diviner.”

What little desire I felt fled my body. How rough the tree suddenly felt against my back. How cold his gauntlets over my skin, how brutal his armor between my legs.

I pulled away from the tree so abruptly Hamelin had to brace himself to keep from falling. “What—” His nostrils flared, pupils wide in the dim light. “Are you well?”

“I was under the misconception that it would be good for me, having a bit of fun.” I scrubbed my hands down my wrinkled dress and picked up my cloak. “But I can see I am not suited for this variety of it. Besides”—I kept my voice cold—“I’d rather remain practically fearsome than be someone you fucked in the glen.”

Hamelin tried to grin. “Surely you could be both.”

“Would you still be able to take pleasure, knowing I was not enjoying myself?”

That shut him up, virtue muzzling his desire. He looked so disappointed I almost apologized, but then he said, “Can I at least see your eyes? Or have your name? Some token to prove we were together?”

I left him panting in the glen and hurried back to the road, the colored tents of Coulson Faire beckoning in the distance.