The Knave and the Moon — Chapter no 19

CHAPTER NINETEEN

HIT ME AS HARD AS YOU CAN,

SECOND ENCORE

Maude hadn’t returned to the table, and Benji had dozed off in his chair.

Hamelin, wearing a grin, escorted me to my quarters.

“Where’d you get that?” he asked, looking down at the hammer in my hand. “Did the knave give it to you?” He shook his wrist, rattling the gold bands he’d taken from Rory. “Shame he likely stole it.”

“Which would make you and him the same.” We climbed stairs, stone leaching warmth from my bare feet. “Except the knave remains within the depth of his skill. You, on the other hand, think yourself competent enough to kill your king and steal his wife.”

“My mother told you, then.” Hamelin’s cheeks paled. “You must understand, nobles are always looking for a reason to find a newer, more useful king. One that will serve their hamlet best. Kings come and go, and my mother is a pragmatic woman.” He tried to put on another smile. “You must think me a poor friend to Benedict.”

“On the contrary. I think you’re exactly the kind of friend he deserves.”

We reached a long corridor, candles flickering from iron claws upon the wall. A dozen doors, like dark gaps in a long mouth of teeth, waited.

“Which room is mine?” I asked.

Hamelin didn’t answer. He took a step toward me, the Ardent Oarsman’s

oar swinging on his belt. “Will you take up her offer?”

Revulsion was like a fever. I burned hot. Turned to Hamelin. Considered ripping off my veil and showing him the contempt on my face. Would he even know it to look upon me how sick he and his mother made me?

No. Benji had been right. Sybil Delling’s faithlessness and despair never touched the hamlets or anyone in them, because Sybil Delling did not exist.

No matter what I did, the only things people like Hamelin saw when they looked at me were their own ambitions and desires and beliefs; their own hunger, and the food to sate it.

Down the corridor, a door swung open, hitting the wall.

Rory ambled out, eyes unfocused, skin wan. He shook himself, looked up, saw me. The sound of his inhale echoed—it took him a decent moment to rearrange his face, affection smoothing into deference. The knave and I were supposed strangers, after all. He bowed his head low. “Diviner.”

“Keep walking, knave.” Hamelin’s mouth turned. “We were discussing an intimate matter.”

“Were you.” Rory straightened, his attention locking onto Hamelin. For a blissful second, I thought he’d crack the knight over the mouth.

He held out his hand instead, took Hamelin’s, and shook it heartily.

“Good luck in the feats of strength tomorrow, knight. I’m sure you’ll do your hamlet proud.”

Hamelin grimaced, struggling to pull his hand away. By the time he did, I’d already reached one of the chamber doors. It was unlocked, the room empty. When I looked back, Rory was disappearing down the corridor, leaving Hamelin gawking, unsure where or to whom to throw his ire, his arms hanging dumbly at his sides.

The three gold bands on Hamelin’s wrist were gone.

I couldn’t sleep. There was pain in my abdomen—and an ache everywhere else.

The first of my clothes to come off was my woolen tunic. Next, my crown—and the veil beneath it. All I wore was a thin chemise that fell just

above my knees.

The room I had was spartan. There was but a narrow bed, a creaking chest with a threadbare blanket within it, and a shuttered window that did little to lock out the sound of the rushing Tenor River. I put my hand on my neck. A cluster of scars sat beneath my ear, markings from where the Ardent Oarsman had once bitten me. I wondered if this was how the Omen had spent his long life: sitting in drafty rooms and haunting windows, listening to the mournful call of the water and imagining himself the master of it.

What a waste.

I waited for Maude or the gargoyle—for Rory—listening for a rattle upon my door. None came.

Three insistent raps, tap, tap, tap, sounded upon my window instead.

I sprang out of bed. When I slung the shutters open, Rory was there, still wearing armor, a new sword on his belt.

I pressed my lips together. “There’s a door, you know.”

He leaned in. “Guards in the hall. Too many bodies to drag away.”

“You always did need me for the heavy lifting.”

Rory grinned, caught my chin with his thumb, pressed it down until my lips parted, and kissed me. “Still got decent balance, or are we out of practice?”

“Does walking all over you count as practice?”

He laughed in his throat. “Get your hammer, you twit.” He kissed me again. “And come with me.”

He took my hand, and together we dropped out of my window and onto the wooden hoarding four feet beneath it. It was a feat, keeping steady on the boards slick with rain, but the years strolling the length of Aisling’s wall hadn’t left me, and together the two of us worked window casements and hoardings alike until we were near enough to the ground to jump, both of us landing heavy on our feet.

Rory nodded at the nearest cliff face on the north side of the castle.

“Let’s go.”

“Where?”

“Somewhere we can be loud.”

I knew where we were headed five minutes before we reached it. A plateau among jagged peaks. “You remember the last time we were here?” Rory asked.

Of course I did. This was where we’d trained for my match with the Ardent Oarsman. “History has a habit of echoing.” I sighed. “Though my strength may have lessened since then. I’ve been stagnant.”

Rory gave his usual half shrug. “The body remembers.”

He nodded at the blacksmith’s hammer. “Thought we could have another little encore. You, me—and hitting things as hard as we can.”

“You can’t participate in the event tomorrow. You’re already a champion.”

“But you can.” He looked me up and down. A drizzling rain had wet my silk chemise, making it cling just as my Diviner gown had that first night he and I had traded barbed words outside the Diviner cottage.

It took him a minute to haul his gaze back up to my face. “You’ll destroy the oar. Win the feats of strength. If you break Hamelin Fischer’s teeth in the process, well. I won’t shed a tear.”

“He’s a prick.” I spun the hammer in my hand, wrist flexing. “At least you got your rings back.”

“He really did try his best.” Rory’s pallid eyes rose to mine. “But he’ll never have what’s mine.”

Heat bloomed in my cheeks. I kept spinning the hammer, a low, appreciative hum in my throat. “Where’d you get this?”

“Victor gave it to me.”

I nodded at the sword, newly adorning his belt. “And that?”

“Maude.”

I extended my arm, pressing the head of the hammer against Rory’s dark breastplate. “The armor, too? Russeted, unknightly—fashioned for a knave.”

“He fashioned it so that when I came for you”—Rory gripped my hammer and pressed it even harder over his breastplate, just above his heart —“I’d be impenetrable.”

My gaze jerked to his side, where Benji’s sword had hit its fatal mark.

Rory watched me. “Try the hammer out.”

“On what?”

“Anything. The cliffside. These rocks.” He ran his tongue against the

inside of his cheek. “On me.”

“I don’t want to hurt you.”

“Which implies you’re fast enough to do so.”

I swung at him and he danced away on his toes, grinning. Then he moved to the side of the plateau, lifting a rock the size of a boar and hauling it over. He dropped it in front of me. “Go on. Have at it.”

I stepped up to the rock. Squared my stance and bent my knees. Hauled

in a deep breath— And swung.

A resounding bang, like thunder, filled the air, reverberations jumping up my arm, catching in muscle. The rock, decimated by a ruinous fissure down its middle, broke open into halves.

I shattered them, too.

Rory watched, thumb tracing his bottom lip. When those stones were in

pieces, he brought me another one.

I broke it as well.

But then the third rock came. I squared my stance. Bent my knees.

Hauled in a breath— And felt a white-hot pain shoot through my abdomen.

I dropped the hammer and bent over, eyes squeezed shut.

“Sybil?”

“I’m fine.” I fumbled for the hammer. Picked it up and slammed it back down.

The rock did not break. I tried again, then again, earning little but dust and a feeble cluster of cracks.

I choked the neck of the hammer. Swore under my breath.

“I drank ox-eye,” Rory said behind me.

When I turned, he was watching me, eyes keen as they traveled the length of my body. “Everything you said—it happened. I lost my senses, my mind. There was a white light, then a voice, telling me the past was a portent.” Steam shot from his nose. “It showed me the cathedral. You, drowning, beneath the abbess’s hand. It showed me us, too. I was looking up at you and Benji and Maude and Bartholomew and myself, just before the cathedral fell. Then stones fell on me, and I was in darkness, barely

clinging to hope.”

I waited, chest heaving.

“It reminded me of you. Of what you said in the Seacht, about me taking care of Bartholomew. It’s been chipping away at me, Sybil.” He took a step forward, then another. “Tell me what it means.”

The rain fell harder, ricocheting off stone and hitting me in the face.

“Rory.”

“Tell me.”

I held my ground. Looked him in the eye. “Strange that you, a heretic, should suddenly have faith in visions.”

“I don’t believe in anything I can’t see. But I have seen such strange things…” When he reached me, he stood as he had upon the tor—a shield against the rain. “Tell me what you’re not saying.”

He might as well have taken the hammer to me. After so long of being looked at and not seen, Rodrick Myndacious’s knowing gaze felt like an attack. “Taking up the mantle, killing the Omens, searching for Diviners I would never find—it was for nothing. For all the lies she told, the abbess got one thing right: The story does not change. The Stonewater Kingdom clings to its signs, its hierarchies—its stone objects. History is a circle, and things don’t get better.” I gestured to the fractured mountains beyond. “The world falls apart, and there is nothing we can do about it.”

That pulled a noise out of him. “Sybil.”

I didn’t let him speak. My hopelessness was like armor, and if he tried to take it from me, he’d rob me of my final strength. “Don’t you see? Even if Maude convinces the nobles to strip Benji of his crown, they will choose another just like him—a pious pretender who capitulates to their wants and whims and beliefs, and the shadow of Aisling will continue to loom over the hamlets. The story will not change.”

Hand on my chest, barely breathing, I said, “But if the stone objects go, and I go with them, then perhaps the lie might end. If I am gone, nobles and kings and craftsmen might finally look for faith within themselves and not within the empty cathedral of my eyes. Perhaps then things might finally get better.”

He knew what it meant, and still he did not say it. Martyr. No. Rory did not accept my resignation; I saw it in his face, his body, his inhuman eyes.

Chest heaving, shoulders a rigid line, Rory caught my hand. Brought it to his mouth and kissed it, the action so instinctual it caught us both by surprise. “You’re beautiful, Sybil Delling,” he said, brimstone in his voice.

“You’re strong and smart and clever.” He grasped the nape of my neck and held me like he needed to. “But I like it best when you’re wrong. And you are wrong to think the Stonewater Kingdom would be a better place without you in it. So entirely wrong.”

I held his gaze, neither of us able or willing to raise the pale flag of surrender. I did not concede, and neither did he, a taut, familiar vigor passing between Rodrick Myndacious and me. “You still want me to hit you, Rory?”

His gaze traveled down my body and landed on my bare feet. “Should I remove my armor? My boots? For the sake of fairness.”

“As if you cared about fighting fair.” I grasped the hammer in my dominant right hand. “It’s a fine instrument.”

Rory stripped his gauntlets, his gloves. Rain pinged against armor, and when he drew his sword, cutting through that rain, the sound was a beckoning ring. “Do your worst, Diviner. Hit me.”

We began to circle each other. “As hard as I can.”

The dance began.

We were like the storm that had not yet come—lightning, and the following thunder. I swung the hammer, and he struck, his sword answering my blow, so violently defensive it might have been offense. A resounding bang answered; the impact sent tremors up my arm.

Rory backpedaled, lithe as a lure through water as he drew me forward. I sprang after him, blood pumping in my ears. We parried, his footwork cleaner than mine. Rory wasn’t unbridled—but fighting me was different from when he’d sparred with Benji. Then, he’d held himself back. Now, he was egging me on. Trying to let me loose. Fluid and fast, he dodged me, then struck out, careful of the edge of his blade, smacking my thigh with the broad side of his sword. “Move those feet.”

I’d have told him to fuck off had I the capacity to do anything but wheeze. I hadn’t moved my body without tether, without ox-eye, without a locked door, in what felt like an age. I’d been in a grave and this—turning and hitting and slamming my way through a yard—was like digging through dirt back to fresh air.

My hammer nicked against his rerebrace. And I couldn’t help it. I almost smiled.

“That’s it.” There was red in Rory’s cheeks again. A pulse, jumping in

his neck. “Just like that.”

I struck again. My hammer hit his left pauldron, causing him to stagger.

We crashed together, and I felt myself push him with all my strength, not knowing if I wanted to flatten him upon the ground or against my own body.

I withdrew, then swung at him again, the clang of my hammer hitting his breastplate cataclysmic. I let out a triumphant sound, raised my arms in victory— Another bout of pain shot through my abdomen. I gasped. Dropped the

hammer.

Rory froze.

And it was enough.

I lunged forward. Caught him around the waist. Slung us both into the ground. We hit the hard face of the plateau with so much force I heard stone crack. Breath shot from both our lungs, coming out as lurid, wanting gasps, and the ghost of my former self took over. I clambered over Rory. Dragged my chemise up my legs and threw them astride his hips, pressing my pelvis down over his.

And Rory, whose body seemed to understand the rhythm mine struck, reached up, took me by the hips, and pressed me down even harder. I let out a rough noise, grinding against the cold iron of his armor, watching in perverse delight as Rory’s lips parted. His hands flexed around my bottom, fingers pressing possessively into flesh.

Nothing hurt. Everything did. I put my hand over his chest. Pressed him back until his back was flush against the ground. “Do you acquiesce, knave?”

Rory held my eyes, reached out, and tapped three times against the wet stones beneath us, signaling his surrender and a new, unspoken challenge.

And I couldn’t stop myself. I surged forward, kissing him with bruising force. Rory answered in kind, pulling me against him, our breath ragged like we’d been underwater, our lips warring as they pressed together. My fingers dragged tunnels through his hair. Rory caught my bare thigh, pushing the wet silk of my chemise all the way up to my hip. When he found nothing beneath it, he made a profane noise in his throat. “Tell me yes first.”

I pressed my teeth over his bottom lip. “Yes.”

He looked at my mouth like he wanted to do unspeakable things to it, reached down, and slid his hand between us. I knew what he would find: the evidence of my desire. “Rory.”

He seemed lost for words, his expression a muddled translation. There was pain and pleasure, wonderment and want. Hunger—but none like I’d ever seen on anyone’s face but his when he looked at me.

Rory dragged his thumb over swollen, tingling nerves.

I jolted, anchoring my hand to his shoulder, our faces drawing closer, our lips brushing. I shut my eyes, boring down on Rory’s hand with new fervor, searching for oblivion—but I couldn’t find it. There was too much pain in my abdomen.

Rory must have felt it, that sudden, intrusive strain in my body, because when he pulled back to search my face, his breathing was less ragged, his focus sharper.

“I’m sorry,” I managed. “I don’t think I can…”

He nudged my chin up with his nose. Ran the edges of his crooked bottom teeth over my throat. “You don’t have to come.” He cupped my pubis, then withdrew his hand, swallowing my whining protests with a kiss.

“It doesn’t have to be like how it’s been. It can be something new.”

He put the hand he’d plied me with to his mouth. Just like he had when I’d Divined for him, he put his thumb between canine teeth. Held my gaze.

Bit down.

Blood, a beautiful crimson, bloomed. The familiar scent of spring water perforated the cold, the rain. My mouth began to water. I sighed, and Rory gripped my hip with one hand and my cheek with the other. “You seemed to like the taste of it back in the Seacht.”

He held my gaze as he slipped his thumb between teeth and pressed it over my tongue.

A desperate noise crawled up my throat. I nipped at Rory’s finger.

Lapped at it. His blood coated my mouth, tasting of spring water, and it felt perverse. Glutinous. Iniquitous and wrong, so far bad it ended up good.

“I’m sorry,” I said again, shame a cold compress against the heat in my body. “I don’t want to be like an Omen.”

“You’re nothing like them. You never will be.” He pinched his finger, more blood blooming over the surface and trailing the labyrinthine mark of his thumbprint. “Let me help you.”

Hesitant one moment and ravenous the next, I ran my tongue over the blood. Warmth bloomed in my abdomen, and for a moment I thought I was coming undone, but it was simply the utter ecstasy that came with a lack of pain.

I made a low, contented sound, and Rory swore, watching me. When the blood was gone, swallowed down my throat like an offering, the pain in my

abdomen was almost silent.

It wasn’t oblivion.

But I was full of relief, panting, heart pounding, as if it had been.

Rory wrapped his arms around me, pinning me against his breastplate, where his own heartbeats drummed. “Even like this,” I said, “I can smell the spring water in you.” I pressed my teeth into his neck hard enough to make him moan. “You make it smell good, Myndacious.”

Rory let out a hot breath, knotting my hair in his fist and pulling my head back, exposing my own neck to his mouth. He kissed the hollow of my throat, then drew his nose all the way up to my jaw, taking a long, steady breath. “You smell as you always did. Pompous, pious… the only smell I ever liked.” He sucked the skin beneath my ear. “Especially on my bedsheets.”

I smiled, and the sight caught Rory so off guard his own smile bloomed, his eyes softening around the corners. Slowly, then all at once, adoration unveiled over his face, tender and unguarded—he was the most beautiful man in Traum, sculpted anew and yet just the same. The effect was a spear, truer than the one that had struck me at the wedding, piercing me directly in the heart.

I kissed him, our lips whispering together like a breeze over flower petals.

“You will destroy the oar tomorrow,” Rory murmured into my mouth.

“We’ll go to the Chiming Wood and the Cliffs of Bellidine after, and we’ll find a way to destroy the chime and coin, too. Benedict Castor the Third will meet his end, but you need not find yours.” Quiet as it was, his beseeching was desperate. “Remain. Remain with me, and you will see.” He stroked my hair. Held me so tightly I couldn’t breathe. “Things can be better than they’ve been.”

We slipped back to the castle together, light-footed as sprites in a glen.

When we reached my room, Maude and the gargoyle were there, waiting.

“Pith,” Maude said, taking in our wet, flushed faces. “What have you two

been up to?”

“Training,” Rory said.

“Nothing,” I blurted at the same time.

Maude and the gargoyle shared a glance, she expectant, he practically

brimming with delight—

A knock sounded upon the door.

All four of us froze.

“Avice?” Maude whispered.

“The Ardent Oarsman?” asked the gargoyle.

“If it’s Hamelin,” Rory hissed, “I’m ripping his intestines out.”

Another knock sounded, followed by a thin, sheepish voice. “Six?”

It was Benji.

Rory tensed, his expression darkened by the same heinous loathing it had worn when he’d first seen my wound.

Again, Benji knocked. “I know you don’t sleep. Let me in, Six. There’s

something I’d like to discuss.”

“See what he wants,” Maude whispered.

Rory’s grip on me tightened. “No.”

The king knocked twice more, the door handle groaning as it turned.

“Give me a moment, Benji,” I shouted over Rory’s shoulder. “All of you —shut up and get beneath the bed.”

They piled on the floor, Maude stern, Rory seething, and the gargoyle still delighted. When I moved to the door and looked back, the only remaining sign of them was a shadow in the dim, unfriendly room.

I yanked the door open.

Benji looked into my eyes and jumped. He was at the threshold, wearing a plain sleep tunic and no crown. He smelled of wine but carried none; the only thing in his hand was the Artful Brigand’s coin. He held it long enough that I should see, then put it snugly in the pocket of his tunic, as if to show me he could have used it to go through my door had he wished to—and had exercised gallant restraint in not doing so.

“What?” I snapped.

“May I come in?” The king put his weight on his left foot, then his right.

“It will only take a moment.”

I pushed the door open.

Benji entered, his gaze lifting to my hair, then dropping down to my chemise as he stepped into the room. “You’re breathing hard.” His eyes narrowed. “Why are you wet, Six?”

The door slammed. “I stuck my head out the window. Thought about jumping. Wondered if the fall would kill me.”

It didn’t seem to bother Benji that there were no torches, no candles lit in the room. Perhaps this was the environment he associated me with—dark and locked. “I think about that every time I go to a tall, looming place,” he murmured. There was a creaky wooden chair near the bed. He sat upon it.

“The Cliffs of Bellidine, the top of the stairs at Castle Luricht or Petula Hall —” He swallowed. “The tor. I always wonder, ‘If I fall, would it kill me?’ I think it so fervently I begin to suspect I actually want to fall, that I might finally answer the question.”

I watched him, jaw tight. “What did you want to discuss, Benji?”

He sighed. “The tournament.”

I stood before him, looming like I was the tall place that might kill him should he fall. “What about it?”

“The knave has won his event, and so has Maude. Whatever her game, whatever her intent to undermine me…” He shuddered, shaking off a ghost.

“Neither of them will compete again.” He looked up. “The feats of strength are without a doubt better suited to you than the joust or the melee—but

you will not be competing, Six.”

“Oh, but I will, boy-king.”

He rolled his eyes. “Trust that I would enjoy seeing Hamelin outdone, he’s gotten so bloody peeving. And of course folk have come to see you— paid for the privilege to win a Divination or vie against you. But you can’t compete. You’re injured, pained, turning into stone. Even if you weren’t, I cannot risk spending another noble’s gold on my tournament only to lose it.

The winnings will go to Hamelin, then back to his mother, and I shall keep her support.”

When I said nothing, his voice thinned, a thread of his confidence pulled away. “Don’t be obtuse. You’re the creature who drowns—a martyr. Your job is to show Traum there is sacrality in service and sacrifice. Of course I cannot make a champion of you. Your power comes from the fact that you give it away.”

Tory Bassett’s words echoed. The cathedral fell. It will join Der ewige

Mond in the annals of time as another looming creature whose power, whose lore, was made all the more fantastic for being conquered.

“You never intended to let me compete, did you?” My throat clogged.

“Was it you who told Dedrick to come to my room the night before the melee?”

There was a creak beneath the bed. Benji turned. Saw nothing. “You got your revenge,” he said. “I know it was you who destroyed the inkwell, Six.”

He went suddenly still. “Pith. Was it you who broke the loom stone?”

I said nothing.

“It was, wasn’t it?” He made a noise between a laugh and a cough. “You really do hate me, don’t you, Six? And here I am, bending over backward to keep you out of harm’s way. Oh, don’t make that face, you ungrateful bit —”

He caught himself. Hauled in a breath. “Just because folk will pay to challenge you in the arena does not mean I would let them hurt you. You may be a martyr. A conniving, hateful woman, too.” His voice quieted. “But I still want to keep you safe.”

My voice was coated in vitriol. “If you never wished for me to join the tournament, why let me think I could?”

“I don’t know.” He shuffled his feet. “It seemed good for you, having something to believe in again.”

I went to the door. Opened it. “Tell Tory to bring my armor, will you?

I’m well enough to wear it.”

The king’s gaze narrowed. It fell to my abdomen, and the signs were plain enough: I was more fortified than I’d been since the wedding. My back was straight, my stance squared, my fists locked. I could still taste the spring water in Rory’s blood on my tongue.

“You do seem stronger,” the king said warily. “But there will be no need to wield that strength—you certainly won’t need your armor. I’ve spoken with Avice, and we’ve agreed. To break, throw, and haul stones is not an enticing enough spectacle. The feats of strength have been changed.”

He gripped the Artful Brigand’s coin harder and gave me a pointed look.

“There will be the breaking of stones, the lifting of stones, and a race across the basin. A swimming race.”

Then, ignoring the open door, he threw his coin, flickered through the wall, and was gone.

I stood in a hollow silence, unmoving and unblinking. Slowly, Maude and Rory and the gargoyle lifted themselves from beneath the bed, their faces marked with the same unwashed dread I felt in my body.

“I can still do it.” I slammed the door, my voice threadbare. “How hard can it be to swim, really?”

“You drowned in this basin six weeks ago.” Maude crossed her arms over her chest. “Had lots of free time to practice your stroke since then?”

“Fuck that,” Rory snapped. “She’s never drowning again. I’ll do it. I’m a good swimmer—”

“You can’t compete.” Maude blew out a hot breath. “The king has lost the joust, the melee, the loom stone, the inkwell—and Regius Ormsby’s and Otto Lange’s fortunes along with them. His list of allies is thin. So far, everything we’ve wanted has come to fruition.” She ran her fingers through her hair, making it stand up. “What’s a single loss? Folk of the Peaks can celebrate Hamelin Fischer, Avice will take the winnings, and the oar will remain a little longer. It will not be the end of the world.”

“Perhaps it will.”

We all turned and faced the gargoyle. “Did you know,” he said, his voice easy and conversational, “that gargoyles are long thought to be sprites? An old kind—the only one thought to be domesticated?”

“Yeah,” Rory said plainly. “We all knew—”

“And did you also know,” the gargoyle carried on, “that, while the body prefers its traditions, to be made of stone is a very peculiar thing?”

“You’ve demonstrated that fairly clearly,” Maude deadpanned.

I leaned in. “What are you getting at, Bartholomew?”

“Only that, in a place like the Fervent Peaks, where strength is the greatest marker of merit and cruelty against sprites made commonplace, wouldn’t it be a curious thing if a creature like me defeated these oarsmen

at their own crafts?”

Rory and Maude and I shared a glance.

“For what is the end of the world, really, if not a total disrespect for life?

A single loss may be nothing to you or me, but to the hungry or small or childlike, it may cost everything. And I, who saw many losses upon the tor, have decided not to concede even once more to the perpetuators of grievous harm.” Oh no. He was trilling his fingers again. “Yes, I will compete. I think I will greatly enjoy flexing my feet of strength over these witless

sprite-killing trawlers.”

He came up to Rory. Took the hammer out of his hand and weighed it in his own. “Once, a very long time ago, I used a tool like this. And while the mind so often forgets, the body…”

We waited for him to finish. “The body what, Bartholomew?” I asked.

“Hmm? Oh.” He waved the hammer in my face. “The body is good for smashing things.”

Maude and Rory shared another glance, their faces less clouded than before, but I was shaking my head. “No. Absolutely not. Your cracks will deepen. The effort will hurt you.”

He shrugged, swatting away my complaints like he was shooing away a fly. “It is the duty of a squire,” he said, “to stand in when needed. And I will always be your squire, Bartholomew.” He looked up into my face. “I will shoulder any weight you give me.”

I felt my heart fissure. “But you were a Diviner, too. You were never taught to swim.”

“That is true. I do not know how to swim. But since I am hewn entirely of stone… well.” He grinned. “I suppose I don’t know how to breathe either, do I?”

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