CHAPTER THREE THE FOULEST KNIGHT IN ALL OF TRAUM

My name is Sybil Delling, by the way. Was Sybil Delling. I don’t remember who gave me that name, but I do remember the day that I lost it.

I was a foundling girl, held in strong arms, coughing on water that tasted of rotting flowers. I can’t recall how I found myself in Aisling’s spring, or anything of my life before it. But I do remember sobbing, and that my cries echoed near and far as if a hundred girls were wailing.

The woman who held me was shrouded, bearing the voice I’d come to know as the abbess’s. She loomed over me, telling me that the sick little girl I was before, little Sybil Delling, was gone. She asked if I wished to exact a divine hand over Traum. If I would give her ten years of my time in exchange for her love and care. What answer was there to give but yes?

And then she drowned me.

After, I was sick. The abbess held me in her arms and told me that the spring was holy and magical, and that by drowning in it I had become holy and magical, too, forever changed. That my memory had washed from me the moment the water had touched my lips, as if I’d been reborn. She called me strange, special, new. More importantly, she called me hers, and said it with such pride that I spent my days chasing her approval that I might hear it again. She soothed my stringy silver hair from my eyes and tied a strip of gossamer over them, telling me I would not be safe outside the cathedral, because people in Traum wanted holy things for themselves. She bade me to guard my face, my name, until my ten years at Aisling Cathedral were at an end.

I became a number. Six. But I promised myself I would not forget I was once a person with a name—Sybil Delling—and that I would call myself that name again when my tenure at Aisling Cathedral was up.

There were five other girls, all the same as me: a number. The abbess brought men and women to the cathedral to see us. Lords and layfolk, nobles and knights. They would ask us questions, and in the spring, with the blood of strangers on our lips, the Omens showed us the answers—good, or bad.

Diviners, we were. Holy daughters of Aisling Cathedral. Harbingers of gods.

The years came and went. Again and again, I stepped into cold, oily water. Looked up at the stained-glass window, petals and wings blending into a bizarre visage. Again and again, I drowned and dreamed. And in all that dreaming, in all the holy things that came of it, I broke my promise.

I forgot all about Sybil Delling.

“Settle yourself, Bartholomew. Your dream is at an end.”

In the sacristy, laid out on a bench behind a velvet curtain, I coughed. I was back at Aisling, back in my wet Divining robe. The cathedral was dark now, its windows inky. It was night, and I was alone. Alone, save for—

“Five bad signs.” It was the batlike gargoyle again. “I’m shocked the young king didn’t soil himself. I usually find abject humiliation a joyous affair, but watching young Castor—oh my. You are vomiting.”

I was. Hands locked in fists, I rolled over and spilled the meager contents of my stomach onto the sacristy floor.

The gargoyle let out a shrill noise. “I scrubbed those stones this morning.”

“I”—I clenched my eyes shut and heaved—“was the one who scrubbed them.”

“I labored to supervise.”

After the abbess shook me awake, the dream shut off, like a flame snuffed. But I was hazy after a Divination. Sometimes for hours. A gargoyle would carry me away from watching eyes to the sacristy, and I would lie in a foggy, sedated state. When my mind sharpened, I was always sick.

I draped myself over my knees. “What time is it?”

“Night,” said the gargoyle.

“I can see that. Are the others abed?”

“Indeed.” He grimaced. “The knighthood, too.”

I coughed. “The king is still here?”

“The abbess offered him the dormitory. Perhaps she pitied him. And what a useless thing pity is, for a guest is always a kind of trespasser. Why, just while you were lazing here in the sacristy, I caught a few errant knights lurking around the spring. Don’t worry—I set them right.” He tutted, then reached for a linen cloth and crudely patted the bile from my mouth. “Feeling better?”

Everything hurt. The muscles in my brow, my jaw, my stomach—sick from ingesting the spring water. There was no mark upon me for the injuries I’d incurred in the dream. But the pain from a broken collarbone, from wrung-out muscles, was still a ghost in my body.

“I’m thirsty,” I rasped.

The gargoyle glanced at the floor, desecrated with my vomit. “I would escort you to your cottage, but it appears I have swabbing to do.”

I rose onto wobbling legs. “Sorry for the mess.”

He stuck up his nose and didn’t bid me good night.

Outside, the air was chill. Not saccharine and putrid like rotting flowers, but fresh, its effect purifying. The tor boasted no trees—just gravel and stone and grass speckled with gowan flowers. Above, the moon was a pale fingernail in the sky, disinterested in lighting my way. It didn’t matter. Even with a damp shroud around my eyes and no lantern, I found the path through the grounds that led to the stone outbuildings that rested in the ever-present shadow of Aisling Cathedral.

There were six buildings besides the cathedral upon the tor. The largest was a two-level dormitory with attached stables that were often empty, but now smelled of manure from the knights’ horses. The second-largest building was an ivy-laden cottage where the abbess lived. Directly behind it was the dining commons, and then two more cottages. One for the gargoyles, who didn’t eat or drink but did enjoy sleep, and one for the Diviners.

The last building was a tiny stone cottage that sat far on the south side of the tor, where the wind was loudest. No one ever went there. The cottage had no windows, just an ancient iron door. A sad excuse for architecture, and utterly abandoned for it.

My walk through the grounds was quiet. I wound my way past the stables, the dormitory. All the windows were dark. Either the knighthood were somber for their king’s ill portents or they were abed. But then I rounded the abbess’s cottage, coming into view of the dining commons—

I blinked. The common windows were bright. And a knight, armed to the teeth, was stationed at its door, looking straight at me as I came from the darkness.

“Oi!”

I skidded to a standstill.

The knight, bearing a sword on her belt and a lethal-looking axe in her left hand, marched toward me, squinting against her torch. “Who’s that?”

My voice was a croak. “Six.”

“Who?”

“Six.”

The knight kept coming, aglow in the yellow torchlight. She had ornate bronze and gold and silver rings in her dark, cropped hair. A sharp nose. Lines between her brows and around her narrowed gaze that made me certain she was older than I was. Her green eyes had charcoal drawn around them; they widened as she looked me over. “Bloody pith, Diviner.” She lowered her torch. “You look like a ghost in that—that—”

I followed her gaze down to my Divining robes. The white silk, still wet, left no part of my body to the imagination. “I’m on my way to my room,” I said, clipped.

“At this hour?”

“I’ve been dreaming. Or have you forgotten the Divination?”

The knight stared. Not in the awestruck way strangers who came to Aisling often did, but more meticulous. “I haven’t forgotten. But everyone has gone to bed. Your Diviners and abbess included.”

“The gargoyle let me rest in the cathedral.”

She perked a brow. “You need rest after dreaming?”

“I doubt a simple soldier would understand the complexities of Divining.”