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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2025 by Rachel Gillig
Cover design by Lisa Marie Pompilio
Cover photographs by Blake Morrow
Cover copyright © 2025 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.
Map by Tim Paul
Hachette Book Group supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.
The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
Orbit
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First Edition: May 2025
Simultaneously published in Great Britain by Orbit
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Gillig, Rachel, author.
Title: The knight and the moth / Rachel Gillig.
Description: First Edition. | New York : Orbit, 2025. | Series: The Stonewater Kingdom ; book 1
Identifiers: LCCN 2024037289 | ISBN 9780316582704 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780316573788 (ebook)
Subjects: LCGFT: Fantasy fiction. | Novels.
Classification: LCC PS3607.I44448 K65 2025 | DDC 813/.6—dc23/eng/20240816
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2024037289
ISBNs: 9780316582704 (hardcover), 9780316595728 (Target exclusive edition), 9780316597692 (international edition), 9780316573788 (ebook)
E3-20250416-JV-NF-ORI
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Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Map
Aisling Cathedral
Chapter One: Six Maidens upon a Wall
Chapter Two: Omens
Chapter Three: The Foulest Knight in All of Traum
Chapter Four: Blackmail, for Instance
Coulson Faire
Chapter Five: Sprites in the Glen
Chapter Six: Hit Me As Hard As You Can
Chapter Seven: The Moth
Chapter Eight: Gone
Chapter Nine: Time to Go, Diviner
The Seacht
Chapter Ten: Young, and Rather Old
Chapter Eleven: The Harried Scribe
Chapter Twelve: Our Feet Will Take Us Where We Need to Go
Chapter Thirteen: Take Up the Mantle
Chapter Fourteen: Wax
The Fervent Peaks
Chapter Fifteen: Mountain Sprites
Chapter Sixteen: What Is Harrowing Is Hallowed
Chapter Seventeen: The Ardent Oarsman
Chapter Eighteen: Hit Me As Hard As You Can, Encore
Chapter Nineteen: I Can’t Swim
Chapter Twenty: With Hammer, with Chisel
The Chiming Wood
Chapter Twenty-One: Sybil Delling
Chapter Twenty-Two: Feel, but Cannot See
Chapter Twenty-Three: The Chime
Chapter Twenty-Four: Take Off My Armor
Chapter Twenty-Five: Unraveling
The Cliffs of Bellidine
Chapter Twenty-Six: You Can Never Go Home
Chapter Twenty-Seven: Love and Heartbreak
Chapter Twenty-Eight: The Heartsore Weaver
Chapter Twenty-Nine: The First Diviner
Aisling Cathedral, Returned
Chapter Thirty: The End of the Story
Chapter Thirty-One: The Last Diviner
Acknowledgments
Discover More
Also by Rachel Gillig
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To the child in each of us, yearning to be special. Take my hand, you strange little creature, and together we shall walk beyond the wall.
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Aisling Cathedral
You know this story, Bartholomew, though you do not remember it. I’ll tell it to you as best I can and promise to be honest in my talebearing. If I’m not, that’s hardly my fault. To tell a story is in some part to tell a lie, isn’t it?
Once, you came upon Traum’s highest tor, where the wind whispered a minor tune. There, the gowan flowers were white and the stones were gray and both stole the warmth from your bare feet.
A cathedral was built there, and you tiptoed, small as an insect, through the narthex, into the nave, down the aisle. Blood stained your lips, and you fell into the spring that came from that ancient stone upon the chancel. When you looked up at the rose window, the light kissed stained glass. Your craft was obedience. You said the names of gods and how to read their signs. You learned how to dream—
And how to drown.
I’m sorry. I don’t care to go back to this part of the story either, Bartholomew. But I so often wonder…
Could the rest exist without it?
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CHAPTER ONE SIX MAIDENS UPON A WALL
The peculiar gargoyle, who spoke mostly in broken parables, shuffled to the dim corner of the ambulatory. There, strung between iron candlesticks, a spider’s web held a fly captive.
“Incessant buzzing.” The gargoyle wagged a limestone finger at the fly, his craggy voice echoing through the cathedral. “Serves you right. If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a thousand times, watch where you are going. Now”—he leaned close and peered at the web—“hold still. I’m going to extract you from this snare.”
