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.