The Knave and the Moon — Chapter no 4

CHAPTER FOUR

COME ONE, COME ALL

The Chiming Wood was a vast expanse of birch trees, its treetops, its forest floor, a shocking display of color. Autumn had reared its head, and the trees waved their flags in accordance—every leaf was a brilliant shade of yellow.

When the wind blew through them, it sounded different than it had in the moorland. Less of a woeful hum, more of a delicate ringing sound.

Then, without warning, everything went silent.

A shadow moved in my periphery. I turned and searched the trees, the

spaces between them growing darker.

There was nothing there.

“Sprites,” Maude explained, hand on her axe. “Treelike. They move about, especially after dark. Those that remain, at least.” She took a narrow piece of charcoal from her satchel, rubbed it furiously on her pointer finger, then smeared the dark remnants over her eyelids. When the gargoyle hemmed and hawed, she did the same to him.

We made camp among the trees at sunset. When night fell we didn’t sleep, save the gargoyle, who was snoring and muttering to himself in turns of phrase I could not parse. I lay on my back and looked up the long, narrow necks of birch trees that swayed in the wind and felt afraid, which made me think on sprites. How could a creature that moved through the

land as I did, lost in strange perpetuity, without a home, hated, hunted, be a threat to the hamlets? What kind of kingdom had I woken to, where the privilege to exist was not guaranteed but granted, perhaps by those most unfit to bestow it?

Night slipped by, and I spent it somewhere between doubt and wonder.

“You don’t know how to get back, do you?” I turned to Maude, who sat, axe on her lap, with her back against a tree. “If you did, we wouldn’t be wasting time in this Wood of yours; we’d already be in Coulson Faire. You don’t know how to turn the nobles against the king or get past his knights or find the loom stone. You don’t know how to get my memory back.” My words cut through my teeth and came out oversharp. “You don’t know how to get to Sybil.”

“You’ll help me,” Maude said plainly. “You always were good at getting things.”

When I didn’t respond, Maude’s gaze rose to mine. “It will be all right.

Have a bit of faith.”

I didn’t need memory to know Maude Bauer was talking to herself as much as she was to me.

On we trekked through birch trees. Midday was much like morning—gray and cool, and soon it began to rain. The wind picked up, assailing our backs; the pelting rain was loud over my armor. I shivered and glowered at the mud that splashed over my boots, following Maude, who needed no road to make her way swiftly through the Wood.

After an hour’s walk, we came upon a castle in a glen.

Maude’s shoulders relaxed, the lines in her brow easing, and I knew it was her home. But then she saw the purple banners hanging from the windows. Horses, posted along the drive. A knight in full armor, guarding

the door.

Maude froze, and so did the gargoyle.

I didn’t take the hint. “There better be a tub in this Petula Hall. I smell like a donkey’s undercarriage—”

Maude shoved me.

I careered off the road, crashing and rolling through leaves, then dropping into a shallow ravine where I landed in a pile of roots, splayed out on the ground like a bird shot from the sky. “What the honest fuck?”

Above, the gargoyle was screeching. His stone head peeked over the lip of the ravine. “Oh, there you are, Bartholomew. What a clumsy clump of dirt you are—I say, madam. Madam! Unhand me!”

Maude was trying to shove him out of sight, though the force had a far weaker impact on his stone body. All she managed was to get him behind a shrub, where she let out a flurry of whispered threats. “Both of you—shut up. Those are the king’s men. We need to get out of sight.” She looked past me into the Chiming Wood. “This way.”

The sun was at its apex, yet it was dark when we slipped between birch trees. They grew too closely together, their canopies dense, smothering the daylight.

We were in a cloister: a tight grove that held the moisture from the rain like a hazy cloud. There, a splintered wooden dais stood, surrounded by more trees. Upon their limbs, dozens of chimes hung. So did animal bones.

“Love what you’ve done with the place.” I skirted around a pair of birches with antlers—and the rest of a skeletal deer—stuck between them.

“Really. High marks for decoration.”

“What are you talking about?” The gargoyle, still upset to be what he called hand-mandled, sniffed a bramble and let out an earth-shattering sneeze. “It’s as fusty as a tomb in here.”

“It’s a sacred grove.” Maude’s steps were silent as she moved between the trees. Several had fallen, the largest of them near the dais. Maude approached it. Dropped to one knee. She took off her gauntlet, her glove, and placed her bare hand on the tree. It wasn’t the sound of a palm hitting wood.

It was the sound of flesh touching flesh.

I prickled. “What the hell is that?”

“A birke,” Maude murmured. Her voice was like the air in the grove: tight and oppressive. “I killed it.”

“Take heart, Bartholomew,” the gargoyle said. “You can always console yourself with the fact that this particular sprite broke half your bones when it fell upon you. Doesn’t that make you feel a little bit better?”

Maude sighed. When she leaned close to the felled sprite, I noticed little gowan flowers sprouting from the gashes in its body. Maude murmured something I could not hear, then she was on her feet once more, axe gleaming. “There are answers I need. People in the Wood I must speak to.

You two—stay here.”

I made a face. “Why?”

“If you recall—”

“Which I don’t.”

Maude looked at the nearest trees, like lecturing a birch was preferable to talking to me. “Your eyes are too distinct.” She pointed at the gargoyle.

“And he’s a vestige of Aisling Cathedral. We don’t need anyone asking

questions about that at present.”

“Why?”

“Because we destroyed it.”

“Why?”

She’d have likely sent her axe into my skull had she not realized I was goading her. “Sorry.” I flashed a grin. “I’m just hungry.”

“This is why I never had children.” Maude turned, disappearing through the trees. “I’ll see what food I can bring back. Both of you. Stay. Put.”

For a time, everything was quiet, save the wind, which never stopped its distant chiming melody. I stared off into the grove, fiddling with the three bands in my right ear, determined not to be unnerved by the dead treelike creature at our feet.

“So this is your home?” I asked the gargoyle. “Here with Maude?”

“No. I am Bartholomew’s squire.” He was humming to himself, turning between the trees and nodding to each like it was a partner in a dance.

“Wherever she is, my home is there, too.”

I was about to tell him how strange I thought him, and how that was not a bad thing, when a twig snapped behind me.

I turned. “Did you hear that?”

Another twig snapped, this time in my direct line of sight. Not ten paces

away.

But there was nothing there.

I rubbed my eyes. Blinked. “Gargoyle?”

“Bartholomew?

“Is that tree moving?”

The gargoyle came up next to me. “No,” he said. “The trees are exactly as they were.” He levied a stone finger. “That is a birke.”

He was right. The closer the creature drew, the more plainly I saw that it was not covered in bark but rather pale, drooping skin. And the marks—the dark specks that should have been knots in a normal birch tree—were not knots at all. They were eyes.

Dozens of dark eyes, and all of them trained on me.

Whatever sound that came out of me, a swear, a gasp, I was not proud of it. “What do we do?” My hand fell to my belt, my sheath as empty an arsenal as my mind. “What does it want?”

“Likely to eat you,” the gargoyle said cheerily.

The sprite’s feet were like roots, long and wriggling as it stalked toward us.

How did one defend oneself against a bloody tree? I looked to the dais.

“Surely there’s a forester’s axe somewhere in here—”

The gargoyle caught my arm in an iron grip. “No, Bartholomew. You are not that kind of knight.”

There was nothing to say after that, because the sprite was there, stopping barely three paces in front of my trembling boots.

How tall it was—at least thirty feet, though not half as tall as some of the trees in the grove. Its leaves, its fleshy branches, swayed in the breeze, and when it stood before the gargoyle and me, the largest of its dark knotted eyes blinking, it proffered nothing. Not even a sound.

The gargoyle cocked his head to the side. He was looking the tree directly in its eyes—the center ones at least. “Bartholomew said that, once, these creatures walked freely in the Wood, feasting on idleweed. Now, they live in camouflage, searching for food, eating what they must.” He tapped his chin with the tip of his claw. “I wonder what it tastes like to eat an eye. I confess, no one has ever offered me one.”

“Eyes?”

“Pithy, Bartholomew—pay attention. Yes. This creature eats eyes.” He

waved a hand in my face, as if to fan away the stench of my stupidity.

“Which is why it doesn’t know what to make of us.”

“Pretty sure I have eyes.”

He shrugged. “Swords and armor are nothing to stone.”

The birke watched us, and we watched it, all of us breathing at different paces. Me, far too rapidly, the gargoyle with deep, contemplative sighs, and the birke in no identifiable way. The creature spoke no language, issuing no sound save the soft call of the breeze through its limbs. For a fraught second, it did nothing, then, slowly, it opened a dark hole within itself. A gaping mouth, filled not with teeth, but with more wet, blinking eyes.

I slammed my fingers into fists, locking myself into stillness.

“Rory?” A familiar voice called in the distance. “Bartholomew?”

I turned. Maude.

When I looked back, the birke was gone, blended seamlessly back into the grove.

Maude appeared ten seconds later, red in the cheeks and out of breath.

And she wasn’t alone. There was a man with her, aged and wide in the shoulders. He sported black leathers, an impressive gray beard, and the same charcoal around his eyes as Maude. He carried two things: a blacksmith’s hammer and a helmet slung under his arm.

“This is Victor, my blacksmith,” Maude said.

The man—Victor—nodded, staring at me as he scratched his cheek with the blunt end of the hammer.

“That,” Maude said, gesturing at the horse, “is Fig.”

Fig was a brown mare, and she was having trouble finding a suitable path through the trees on account of her rotund stature. When she made her way over, she set to nuzzling my face. Passionately. When I managed to pull away, I found three loaves of oaten bread, a jar of dried apples, five skins of water, and a haphazardly lidded flagon filled with stew in her

saddlebag.

“From the Eichel family,” Maude said.

I peered at the bottom of the bag. “Do you have a spoon? Silver, preferably.”

“I agree,” the gargoyle said, plopping to a seat on the ground. “Let us sit on ceremony. I am, after all, used to a certain level of sophistication.” He searched the dirt beneath his legs. “I seem to have misplaced my napkin.”

Maude snorted. “I’ve seen you eat from a trough, Rory. No need to stand on ceremony. You must be hungry.”

She had me there. I ripped a bite out of the bread and moaned. We ate, Maude and I with such fervor I was beginning to see the merits of a trough, Victor with idle slowness, and the gargoyle not at all. “So.” Crumbs flew from my mouth. “Learn anything?”

“Plenty.” Maude threw her head back, gulping soup. “According to the Eichels, I’m dead. At least that’s what that lot trespassing in my house are telling everyone.”

I scratched my nose. “Thought I was the dead one.”

“Oh, you are. The story goes that sprites destroyed the cathedral, killing the abbess, the Diviners, and the gargoyles. You and I were meant to be there as well—and apparently were crushed by debris.” She huffed out a

sigh. “A fine load of horseshit.”

“No offense,” the gargoyle told Fig.

“Dangerous to come back,” Victor said, stuffing a pipe with sharp- smelling shavings. “You’re better off staying dead. Adds the element of surprise.”

“I’ll surprise the king just fine. But I needed to come back.” Maude elbowed him. “Who else is going to make me a new suit of armor?”

Victor knocked a knuckle over the helmet he’d brought. “You’ve plenty of armor already.”

Maude raised her nose at me. “It’s for him.”

“And what do these robust stories say about me?” the gargoyle asked, fingers trilling excitedly in his lap. “What tales of delicious villainy am I said to have committed on the tor?”

“Crushed with the rest of us, I think.” Maude gulped soup. “Didn’t hear

anything about you specifically.”

“Me neither,” said Victor.

That seemed to wound him. The gargoyle let out a curt “Hmpf!” then turned his nose up and refused to look at any of us.

“Here’s the real kicker.” Maude wiped food from her face and reached into her satchel. “A royal invitation, sent to the Eichel family—and likely other nobles of the hamlets.” She pulled out a folded piece of parchment, cleared her throat, and read: “‘You are hereby notified of a pilgrimage, beginning on the third week of autumn. The king and his knighthood shall

journey into the hamlets, from Coulson Faire to the Seacht to the Fervent Peaks and the Chiming Wood, concluding in the Cliffs of Bellidine. Each hamlet shall host—’”

There was a rustle in the trees. Leaves, crunching beneath boots. I thought it might be another birke, but then there was a streak of silver— daylight, dancing over armor—and twelve knights came upon us, all bearing swords.

Maude was already on her feet, and to my surprise, so was I. She stuffed the invitation back into her satchel, then ripped the helmet out of Victor’s hands, slamming it over my head, making my ears ring. “Keep it on,” she hissed, reaching for her axe.

Like wolves, the knights moved in a deliberate pack, swift and sure, locking the dais and the dead birke and our party in their circle. “All right, trespassers,” barked one with a purple sash wrapped around his wrist. “Give the horse back, and you can keep your thieving heads.”

“The horse was not stolen, and the house was not trespassed upon, Rothspar.” Maude did not bark like a dog; she did not even raise her axe.

The indefatigable assuredness in her voice was defense enough. “By me, at least.”

“No blooming way.” The knight with the purple sash lifted his visor, his eyes as round as a closed fist. “Sprite killer Maude Bauer, back from the dead.”

The gargoyle threw his arms up. “Am I invisible?”

There was a murmur among the knights. The one who’d spoken, Rothspar, the clear leader of the unit, took a step forward. “We had our orders from the king himself. Got the falcon three days ago. It said you were killed. That Petula Hall was now property of the crown.”

Maude’s hand flexed over the handle of her axe.

“He said to strip the hall of goods and offer its finery to the other noble families of the Wood. Tell me,” Rothspar said, “why would he give the order if you are here, alive and well?” His throat worked. “Unless… You’ve not done something to displease him, have you?”

Maude’s lips tightened.

Rothspar turned to me and squinted, attempting to see into the dark slit of my helmet. “Who the hell are you?”

Gazes fell upon me, weighted, probing. “At present?” I slouched

forward lazily. “None of your fucking business.”

Rothspar stared at me a long moment, his hand never straying from the hilt of his sword, then turned back to Maude. “I think the best thing would be for you lot to come back with us to the Hall. We’ll send a falcon to the

king and get this sorted out.”

“It’s her house,” I snapped.

“I wasn’t speaking to you,” Rothspar bit back. He let out a low laugh. “I know that pompous voice. That shit stance. You, Rodrick Myndacious, will be coming back with us in chains and a gag. Just for the hell of it.”

“Hear, hear,” called a knight, then another, stepping closer, their circle closing around us in a noose.

These knights knew me, then. By name, at least. But while Maude had received deference fringing on fear, I was addressed with sneers and nothing short of resentment. Seemed I hadn’t been popular during my time

with the knighthood.

I yawned.

Meanwhile, Maude was locked in a glaring match with Rothspar. “Come on, Maude. We know you’re injured. Bones, broken. Happened in this very place, in fact.” He still had his hilt in a chokehold. “Don’t make this difficult.”

Maude held her ground. “Folk of the Wood will not take kindly to your lot pushing a Bauer out of Petula Hall. Foresters are known for their short tempers and sharp axes, Rothspar.”

“Folk of the Wood aren’t here. It’s just you and us.”

Something shifted in Maude Bauer’s face, and the muscles in my back strained in response. My posture slackened, my knees bending of their own volition. In those final seconds of stillness, Maude did not gift the knights her eyes, but dropped them upon the blade of her axe, a terrifying kind of resignation pulling taut around us all. “I’m sorry, Rothspar. I really am.”

The knight stiffened. He nodded at his second. “Bring her.”

Another knight broke the circle, steps unflagging, sword lifting. Maude snapped into focus. Raised her axe before the oncoming knight could reach

her.

And took the man’s arm clean off.

Screams cut through the grove, and the knights swarmed, closing in around us. The gargoyle let out an inhuman roar, his unbroken wing

unfurling, his fangs flashing. I didn’t know what to do with my hands, my arms, but my feet were already moving, spurred by instinct.

A knight cut me off. I pivoted, denying his sword my shoulder, then popping him on the jaw with a closed fist, which hurt, but also, dear gods, felt good. “Weapon, Maude,” I shouted. “Give me a weapon!”

She couldn’t. She was fighting three knights at once, the clamor of her axe against their swords so loud the trees shook.

Then Victor was there, holding on to Fig, who was whickering— bucking. “Rory!” He tossed something at me with brutal force.

I caught it in one hand. The blacksmith’s hammer. Good enough. I

exhaled. Gritted my teeth.

And swung.

The hammer collided with the nearest knight’s breastplate, a resounding bang that shook me to the bone. It shook the knight, too—so violently he fell from his feet, a crater in his chest where the hammer had met its mark, and then I turned. Struck down another knight.

My body knew exactly how to move, how to pivot and dodge, when to take a hit, when to give one. Pith, I was a machine. I dropped a third knight and shouted like an animal in his face.

Next to me, the gargoyle had just taken a bite of a nearby arm, blood on his claws and lips. He shoved the knight and cackled. “Look, Bartholomew,” he said, “he fell funny.”

I should have been mortified—but all I felt was a hot, ravenous fire.

Maude was backed up against the dais, limping and struggling—and still overpowering anyone who came up against her. One by one they fell to her axe like trees in a forest. But then a knight caught her with a kick to the knee, and Maude fell. I shouted, the gargoyle cried out, and we burst through the knights at the same time, knocking them down until we lay in a bruising cluster, all of us kicking and thrashing. Armor clanged, shouts abounded, and the air filled with pale limestone dust from the gargoyle’s broken wing.

A hand found my throat. It was Rothspar, his gauntlets scraping against my coif. Seething, spitting blood, capillaries bursting in his eyes, he cursed me. “Fucking foundling churl. Heretic.” He struck me over the jaw, dislodging my helmet, then reached for my right ear, his blunt fingers fumbling for the gold bands. “Always hated these things,” he managed,

grunting. He caught the largest band in his finger, gave it a brutal tug— I yanked my helmet off and slammed it into his face.

He let go of my ear and crumpled in a heap into the dirt. I crawled over him, hissing out breaths, bleeding from the ear, loathing and vigor curling

in my gut. Rothspar blinked up at me— And went still.

His mouth was half-open, blood spraying from his bottom lip as he gasped. “Aisling’s waters.”

I saw it then, reflected in his armor. The thing I’d hoped to see in a silver spoon.

My reflection. I had black hair. Skin lit by a vehement flush. A prominent nose and three gold, bloody bands in my right ear. And my eyes — My eyes were devoid of pupil. Of iris. Lifeless and pale as limestone.

Rothspar stared up at me, muttering what sounded like a prayer. We were all still on the ground, knights and the gargoyle and Maude, all of us tangling in violence, locked in an iron knot.

Until the earth began to shake.

Dirt plumed, and leaves flew. There was a long, aching groan, and when I turned, three birch trees descended upon us.

No—not birch trees.

Sprites.

The birke moved with shocking speed, branch-like limbs cutting through the air, spurring the breeze into a gale. They rushed forward, crashing upon us, taking several knights in their clutches. I rolled, then caught Maude with one hand and the gargoyle with the other, dragging them with me. Above, the birke had opened their mouths, those terrifying voids full of eyes. They let out low, howling groans— And each stuffed a knight into its mouth. I heard barking screams, sickening crunches of bone, the wet slosh of flesh, of blood. Then, nothing.

“Holy shit.”

The knights recoiled, Maude and I forgotten, their gazes lifted to the looming sprites. The birke swung their limbs, splintering both men and trees in the grove. Maude and the gargoyle and I ran, dodging branches, weaving wildly between trees. One by one, the birke cut the knights down, then dragged them into their mouths, where the knights screamed, snapped,

then went silent. When the last, Rothspar, tried to run, screaming as he made his way through the grove, the birke gave chase. For a moment it seemed he might get away, but then Victor and Fig popped out from behind a tree, knocked him onto the ground, and Rothspar ended just as the others had: food for the sprites.

It was sickening. I’d never felt so alive.

“Pith, Rory.” Maude pulled my arm. “Run.”

We fled like we had from the tor—urgent and unbridled. When the grove thinned and the trees were fewer and not so many thorny brambles caught my ankles, a glen appeared, parsed by a long gravel drive. At the end of it, Petula Hall stood tall and wide and proud.

Maude limped toward the house, the chainmail along her neck bloody, and ripped a purple banner off the door. “At least we still have the element of surprise.”

“And you live here,” I said, hands on my knees, panting. “In the heart of all this danger.”

“There are worse things in the Stonewater Kingdom than birke.”

I splat blood onto gravel. “Not exactly an enticement to see more of it.”

“But you will. Victor, get the forge up and running.” Maude was breathing fast, her hair wild, her green eyes bright. “We’ve got to get back to Coulson Faire. I’ve found our way in. The story may begin and end upon the tor, but perhaps it changes—”

Maude reached for the satchel on her belt, extracting the wrinkled sheet of parchment from before, then slapping it onto my breastplate. “In the arena.”

The gargoyle began to clap, dust pluming off his back. “Huzzah!

Another whirlwind adventure!”

I peeled the parchment off my armor and read. “‘You are hereby notified of a pilgrimage, beginning on the third week of autumn. The king and his knighthood shall journey into the hamlets…’” I skimmed ahead, a cold prickle climbing my neck. “‘You, of my esteemed noble families, shall host a tournament event in accordance with the tenets of love, faith, and war.

Participants need not be of noble birth; all those able and willing to put forth a fee of ten gold coins may compete. A champion shall be named in each hamlet and shall receive the sum of the collected fees, a Divination, and an honorary place among the knighthood for the continuation of the

tournament. Come one, come all, and celebrate—’”

My body seized. “‘And celebrate the marriage between King Benedict Castor the Third and his bride, the last Diviner of Aisling Cathedral.’”

Maude took the gargoyle’s hand. Looked me in my stone eyes. Grinned.

“We’re fighting in a tournament, boys.”

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