That did not mean the roads were empty. People milled about, awake despite the hour, different from the folk I’d seen in the Seacht in the light of day. Children in rags, men and women digging through scraps and washing their clothes in the canal.

I was stricken by shame when I caught myself staring. I’d never seen poverty before.

We carried on, entirely without aim, though at some point I slid both hammer and chisel into my left hand so that the gargoyle could hold my right. My mind remained on the Harried Scribe, his stone eyes, the way he had eaten my hair—licked up my blood. I thought of King Castor, too. What it might mean, him taking up the mantle, challenging the Omens for their magical stone objects. I thought on the Diviners and how I was no closer to finding them.

I considered it all, a canyon worrying itself between my brows.

Meanwhile the gargoyle was practically skipping down the street, pointing and commenting on everything he saw. “You seem contented,” I said, peering over my shoulder. “Being away from Aisling.”

“Perhaps I am.” He pondered. “What does it feel like to be contented, Bartholomew?”

As if I knew. The only happiness I’d felt was with the Diviners, in the tales of what we might do when we left the tor. My stock of joy was held in the future, ever out of reach. “I think contentedness,” I said bitterly, “is just a story we tell ourselves.”

The gargoyle nodded. “It is all the same, then. Contentedness. Truth and honesty and virtue. Omens. They are all stories, and we”—he gestured to the Seacht’s climbing walls—“tread the pages within them.”

Our feet did indeed take us where we needed to go. When the sky was purple, clouds blushing from a dawn we could not yet see, the gargoyle and I came across a street with plain brick houses. The largest had an inscription upon its door.

Pupil House III

A School for Foundlings

“How quaint,” the gargoyle said. “I confess, I’ve always fancied myself a bit of a schoolmaster and you my pupil, Bartholomew, though you have never held the position with the respect it’s due—I say. What are you doing?”

“Wait here.” I rushed to the house, opening its gate and tripping over little shoes. “They’ll get a fright if a menacing stone bat knocks upon their door.”

“That’s derogatory,” he called after me.

I knocked three times. Waited. Knocked again, louder.

I heard creaking. The shuffling of footsteps. Then the door was opening, wrenched in by an aged woman in a nightdress with a lump of gray hair and deeply etched lines around her eyes and lips.

She thrust a candle in my face. “Who the hell are you?”

“Apologies for the intrusion, milady. I know it’s early.”

“Milady? What kind of twaddle is that? I’m the house mother. If you’re looking to drop off a foundling, we’re all full—”

“I’m not here for that.” I pulled my hood down. “I’d like to ask you a question.”

Her brows lifted into her hairline. “What’s a girl from Aisling doing at my door? Come to check on your investment?”

“What investment?”

“Your abbess is our patron.”

I’d almost forgotten. “Do the girls the abbess selects ever come back?”

“Here? Can’t see why they would.”

“So you haven’t seen any Diviners of late?”

“None save you, mourning dove.”

My chest fell. The woman crossed her arms, eyeing my split lip. “You look like you’ve had a time of it.” She sighed and pushed open her door. “Want a cup of something?”

“No—thank you.” I looked up at the dawning sky. “How many Pupil Houses are there?”

“Three. The other hamlets send their orphans here, but mainly the girls—especially the poor sick ones. Gives ’em a good shot to end up at Aisling as Diviners. Most of the boys run off and fend for themselves.”

“Can you tell me where I might find the next Pupil House?”

“Off the square. But you won’t find any Diviners there, either.”

“Off the square. Wonderful. Where’s that?”

Pupil House II had darkened windows. This house mother answered the door with a broom, and nearly fell over when she saw my shroud.

She hadn’t seen any Diviners, either.

A baker opening his shop, who dropped his flour at the sight of the gargoyle, pointed us to the final Pupil House. There, the house mother slept through my knocking, and her dog ventured out in her stead. The mutt chased us for three city blocks. All the while the gargoyle shouted, his voice ringing through the streets, “Fear not, Bartholomew! Every day has its dog.”

The Seacht was waking up, its impoverished citizens slipping into shadow. When dawn came, the gargoyle and I did the same, retreating into an empty alley and slumping to the ground, defeated.

I pretended One was there, sitting next to me. “I was so important at Aisling. Climbing the wall—looking out at the view—I thought it would be the same when my service was up. That for all the dreams I’ve endured, I’d be important in the hamlets, too. That Traum, its people, its Omens, would love me.” I traced the split in my lip the Harried Scribe had dealt. “But Four was right. We will only ever be Diviners. Harbingers of gods—not real women. People will want us without ever wishing to know us. A daughter of Aisling is not a real daughter, just as the abbess—” I swallowed. “Just as the abbess is not a real mother. Diviners are but the tools of the craft of Divination. Holy, not human.”

“The cathedral, its Omens, its Diviners sit on high,” the gargoyle said plainly. “If you only ever look up at something, can you ever see it clearly?”

“I suppose not.” I pressed the heels of my palms into my eyes. “But, really—I tried to be good. To be a perfect Diviner and do everything the abbess told me to. I never complained, never said no. My worth was written by the rules I followed. But then the abbess called me resentful—a martyr. And maybe I am. But didn’t I become that way because her love cost as much?”

The gargoyle took my hand. “That is a very sad story, Bartholomew. I wonder… how does it end?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know what to do or who to believe in or how to find my friends.” A sharp pressure began behind my eyes. “I don’t know who I am without Aisling.”

We sat in a silence he no doubt found contemplative and I oppressive.

An hour later, the streets now properly busy, a pair of girls came down the alley toward us. They wore simple garb and looked no older than twelve.

I thought of the Diviners. “How does the abbess choose the foundlings she brings to Aisling?” I asked the gargoyle as they passed.

He put a thoughtful claw to his stone lip. “All I know is that they are always girls. And often sick.”

“Why?”

“She told me once. I don’t remember when, or why.” The melodramatics he was so apt to show were nowhere upon his face. This time, the gargoyle seemed truly overcome by sadness. “She said that girls bear the pain of drowning better, and that sick ones always wake strange, special. And new.”

My throat tightened.

Meanwhile, the girls, passing in the alley, paid us no mind. Their pace hurried. I barely had time to pull my feet back lest they trip.

“Good morning,” the gargoyle said cheerily, his melancholy gone.

The girls didn’t answer. Their gazes were cast over their shoulders, their eyes wide and stricken—

There. Behind them. Three men, stalking forward. They made like they were casual, hands in their pockets, but I could see exactly what they were by their committed steps—the hungry, fixed line of their gazes.

Wolves, stalking mewling fawns.

They came past where the gargoyle and I were seated. With my cloak—and his tablecloth—we no doubt looked like a pair of vagabonds. The men did not ever look our way, watching only the fleeing girls.