My brows rose. “Myndacious?”
“Good ole Rory.” Benji poured himself another drink and topped off mine, though I’d only managed a sip and a half. “He was only a child, and my grandfather caught him thieving in the gutters of Castle Luricht—”
“I’m sorry. What do you mean, gutters?”
Benji said it plainly. “He’s a foundling.”
It took me five seconds to speak. “But he’s a knight!”
“Who began as a lowly little thief—just the kind my grandfather liked to talk to.” The king drank, then coughed in an attempt to hold in a burp. “He often said, ‘It’s the folk of the field or kitchen or the beggars on the street who know how to read the signs of life—not those heavy-pocketed nobs who go to Aisling for a Divination.’ No offense.”
I glared from behind my shroud.
“My grandfather gave Rory three gold rings and asked him if he knew anything of the Omens, here in Traum. And what would you know? Rory’s very master, who dwelled in Castle Luricht’s locked chambers on the castle’s highest floor, was an exceptionally singular man. He had fearsome stone eyes and stole all manner of coin and goods from Coulson Faire but was never caught on account of the tool he used. One that could send him through walls—or topple them.”
“The Artful Brigand,” I murmured. “And his coin.”
Benji drank. “A bona-fide Omen.”
“What did Rory do for him?”
“A number of things. Using said coin on the Artful Brigand’s behest, for one. Stealing spring water from Aisling Cathedral, for another.”
My mouth fell open, and the king grinned. “He was a cruel master, I’m told. But the Artful Brigand’s one redeeming quality was that he was a boast. He told Rory as plain as day that while Traum did indeed benefit from faith, it was the Omens who truly reaped the rewards. That as long as they had Aisling’s water to drink, they would live forever, doing whatever they liked. That the abbess paid them to walk the shadows of their hamlets, cloaked and mysterious, like mercurial gods might.”
I felt sick. “The abbess pays the Omens.”
“That was how my grandfather found them. First he smuggled Rory away from Castle Luricht, then he started his investigation. He tracked a shipment of gold from Aisling to a secluded spot in the Chiming Wood. Can you guess who the recipient was?”
This guessing game was infantilizing. “The Faithful Forester,” I snapped.
He noted my tone, eyes wide like a nervous dog. “She was a grotesque figure, the Faithful Forester. Woman, but also twisted—inhuman. Her eyes were hewn of stone. My grandfather demanded answers from her, but she would not heed him until he defeated her at her own craft. Which was… a problem for him.”
“How so?”
“Listen. I’ll be lucky if I end up half as clever as my grandfather was. But in one way, I am entirely like him—I’m useless in a fight. Which is why it’s important to have useful friends. And my grandfather did. A new knight from an old, noble family. A talented hunter, truly gifted with an axe.” He grinned. “Maude.”
My brows rose. “Maude killed the Faithful Forester?”
“My grandfather told her everything.” Benji drew his finger in a line over his throat. “And off went the Omen’s head. Only they never found that magic chime. To this day, it remains missing, hidden somewhere in the Chiming Wood.”
Benji’s cup was empty now, his hesitance to speak without his friends cured by the ale. He poured himself another. “After that, my grandfather was determined to unravel the conspiracy of Aisling Cathedral. To kill all the Omens, starting with the Artful Brigand. Naturally, the nobles of the hamlets did not like that their king was profaning the Omens. It implied that their beliefs, their creeds, their money, had all been spent on a lie. And since the sons and daughters of the nobles compose the knighthood, my grandfather’s own knights turned against him. Called him a heretic—accused him of taking up the mantle.”
And suddenly I remembered where I’d heard that phrase before.
The abbess spoke it before every Divination.
The king swore to be more supplicant than sovereign, that he would never take up the mantle of his faith for personal gain—never seek the Omens or their stone objects for his own power or vanity.
The king let out a labored breath. “My grandfather was brought to Aisling. Forced to endure a Divination. Five bad portents were Divined. After”—his blue eyes went cold—“he was stoned in the courtyard by the knights and the gargoyles.”
I bit down. Looked at the gargoyle, snoring next to me. “I’m sorry.”
He nodded. “He was Maude’s mentor. Rory’s deliverer.” His blue eyes flared. “And my namesake. So you see, Six, our hatred for the Omens is historical. Professional. Personal.”
I tapped my fingers on the table. “Say your grandfather is right about everything—that the Omens are mortal craftsmen who came to the tor two centuries ago and now playact as gods.” I spoke slowly, granting the question the import it was due. “How is it I dream of them in the spring?”
Benji thumbed through the notebook and found a page near the end, the scribblings faded with time. He pushed it in front of me.
I know not how the Diviners see the Omens in their dreams. It is a very strange kind of transportive magic. Indeed, there is very little I understand about Aisling Cathedral’s fetid spring. But the Artful Brigand, the beast, told young Rodrick Myndacious one essential thing:
There is eternal magic in the water upon the tor, and those who drink it are just that: eternal.
“It’s the spring, Six. That awful, rotten water. The Omens want it.” He nodded, as if coaxing me along. “That’s why I came to Aisling a week ago. It wasn’t for a Divination. We needed to get close to the spring. Rory stole the water like he used to for the Artful Brigand, and we used it to lure him out of Castle Luricht, then the Harried Scribe, here in the Seacht. The water…” He paused, his voice quieted by wonder. “It does something to the Omens, their bodies, maybe even their minds.”
What has been done to us?
I shoved the king’s notebook back at him. “I’ve been drinking that water since I was a girl. All Diviners drink it.”
The king fumbled with his cup. “Y-yes.”
“What’s going to happen to us?”
Red in the cheeks, Benji avoided my gaze. He looked like he wanted to throw himself into his ale. “I can’t be certain. But the Artful Brigand and the Faithful Forester and the Harried Scribe were, in some part, made out of stone—”
“You’re saying I’m going to turn into stone?”
He shook his head so forcefully the table wobbled. “I didn’t say that.”
“What does your grandfather’s notebook say becomes of Diviners after their service?”
“Very little.” Benji drank, pressing his hand over the notebook. “His obsession was with the Omens, I’m afraid. I was hoping—” He looked up. “I was hoping we could find out together. That you’d help me achieve what my grandfather never realized.” He tried to smile. “I want you to help me take up the mantle.”
I stared. “That’s asking me to betray everything I’ve ever believed in.”
“Yes.” Benji peered across the table at the snoring gargoyle, then me in turn. “You believed a story, and that story was a lie. The Omens are not divine. They are mortals who are paid like kings to live like gods. Imagine where all that money for Divination might go if it wasn’t spent filling Aisling’s coffers or wasted in the hamlets on the Omens.”
I thought of the impoverished, wandering the Seacht’s streets at night. “But doesn’t some of Aisling’s money goes to—”
“Foundling houses. It does.” Gentle, his gaze. “Have you considered that may not be such a fine thing? Foundlings are but another source of income for your abbess—to keep the facade going.”
I hadn’t thought of that.
Benji leaned forward. He was young and a little unsure of himself, but I was learning by the second that he was not stupid. He could sense that I was beginning to crumble. “The Faithful Forester, the Artful Brigand, and now the Harried Scribe have been killed, their wealth distributed in a way that will grant me favor when the time comes. I can change the hamlets with that money, and my own reputation as a Castor as well. But if your abbess is indeed the sixth Omen, I will need more than money, more than Rory and Maude, more than a magic coin and inkwell, before I return to Aisling to confront her. She has her gargoyles—and hundreds of years of trust—beneath her hand. If I am not very careful, I will meet the same untimely end as my grandfather.” He smiled. “But then, he never had a Diviner at his side, did he?”
