Chapter Eleven The Difference Between Heresy and Ingenuity
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN HERESY AND INGENUITY
I was still looking out the carriage window when a coin flew through the door. Benji appeared, smelling of wine.
“First that bitch ruins my joust and takes my winnings; now this,” he said, catching the coin and slamming into the velvet cushion bench across from me.
“Oh, don’t bother hiding that face, Six.
I’m sure it made your cold heart leap to see me fall from a horse.
I just… can’t understand it.” He chewed his bottom lip.
“What would sprites want with the spring?”
My head was buzzing, my pulse unsteady, the pain in my stomach searing. The farther we rode from the tor, the worse it got. “I don’t know.”
He took a flask from his belt and drank. “Gods, I hate the tor. Every time I go there I’m reminded of that first time.”
“When you came and ruined my life?”
“When my grandfather was stoned to death.”
I looked out the window.
“Of course, it’s rather in my favor that everyone should think that the creatures who destroyed the cathedral should treat its ruins like carrion.
Endlessly stupid, sprites. Still.” Benji scrubbed his hand over his face.
“I should have brought my grandfather’s notebook.
He kept a careful study of those beasts. ”
“For which you thank him by slaughtering them.”
He’d toughened his skin on my quips. I could barely reach him now. “Did the abbess ever tell you why sprites might want spring water?”
How dark the world looked out my window. “She never told me anything that was not, in some part, a lie.”
The king drank deeply from the flask. “What if someone should try to chop off a piece of that limestone and fashion another magical object? What if they drank the water or, gods forbid, brought someone back to life?” He shivered.
“No. It must remain buried. My grandfather never got his second chance, and neither should that fucking spring.”
I kept my gaze on the window. Abruptly, the carriage quivered, then shook, a rolling rumble throwing Benji and me out of our seats. Outside, I could hear horses whickering.
As suddenly as it began, the rumblings stopped.
Benji’s crown was crooked. “What the hell was that?”
“Don’t know, sire,” came Tory’s muffled voice from outside. “A nearby landslide, perhaps.”
“Felt like a bloody earthquake.”
Tory issued no reply, and soon we were rolling south again down the holloway road. Benji peered over my shoulder at the landscape. “Must have been difficult.” His tone was slower. Solemn. “You, too, have specters among those ruins.”
More than he realized.
Rain pelted the roof. I could feel the king’s eyes on my shoulders and the hairs along the back of my neck. “I know what you’re thinking, Six,” he said. “Why you want to fight in the tournament.”
I said nothing.
“To you, I have become the abbess. You cannot forgive me for hurting your friends and entrapping you, and so you’d defeat my knights like you once defeated the Omens. The tournament is your mantle, and you take it up with vengeance. The same story, told again.”
He sighed. “But it will be for naught. The tournament is not a holy, righteous endeavor. It’s but a game of appearances; a display.
And you…” Those blue eyes measured me. “Maude and Rory may have dressed you up in armor—you may have a fondness for a hammer and chisel—but no one looks at a Diviner and sees a knight heralding a noble cause. All they see, all they ever saw, is a girl who drowns.”
My gaze snapped up, cheeks scorched by fury.
Benji drained his flask, threw it onto the carriage floor, and leaned back, satisfied. “Though I must say, your rumored attendance in the joust brought in an astronomical amount of money to Coulson Faire. I have full confidence it will do the same in the Seacht. Funny, isn’t it?”
He levied the Artful Brigand’s coin, a grin toying at the corners of his lips. “The only thing folk are more keen to pay for than a Divination is the opportunity to hit you across the face in the arena.”
I turned on him, but he’d already anticipated me, tossed the coin, and disappeared from the carriage.
An hour later, the holloway road opened, and we reached the Tenor River, that body of water that split Traum. Reaching across it was a bridge, and beyond—
The city-heart of the Stonewater Kingdom.
Its buildings were tall, its roofs and turrets distinct against the night sky.
Smoke rose from chimneys, the hamlet’s scribes likely hard at work despite the hour, writing and binding books, forging instruments of knowledge and innovation and war.
Not so long ago this had been the Harried Scribe’s haunt.
Here, it was ink and knowledge, not coin, that guided men.
Here would be the second event—the melee.
We’d reached the Seacht.
Wheels groaning as they rolled from mud to hardened stones, we crossed the bridge. Dawn was a hint of gray in the sky when I was afforded a proper glance at the Tenor River. How it rushed, louder than I remembered, dawn’s early light painting it gray.
Creatures sat in the water, bobbing in the current. They had bluish bodies and milky eyes, slit nostrils, long snouts. When they peeled back their purple lips, bleating as we passed, their teeth were blunted.
Water sprites.
The knights saw them, too. Weapons were drawn—shortbows fitted with arrows. Dedrick Lange rode his horse to the edge of bridge. He lifted his bow, aimed it at the water. Then, loathing coloring his dull, middling face, he shot.
The arrow hit the Tenor River, piercing a sprite’s shoulder. The creature bleated, crying out in pain. More arrows flew, hitting more sprites in the shoulders, the necks. I began to scream. “Stop.” I banged on the walls of the carriage, the pain in my abdomen white-hot. “Stop.”
No one heard me, and the arrows did not stop flying until nothing moved in the Tenor River save the water itself.
The bridge ended, and city streets began.
We snaked our way through the Seacht—past buildings of brick and mortar and over cobbled lanes that grew more and more narrow.
There were gray banners depicting the inkwell, but also the king’s purple sashes.
It was early yet for folk to be about, and yet men and women and children with drawn faces and dirty clothes lingered along the edges of streets.
When our caravan rolled past, they came with open, begging hands.
The knights pushed them away. Those who did not move fast enough were struck with the broad side of a sword. They cried out, scattering as fearfully and desperately as the water sprites had.
Ten minutes later, we’d reached a familiar wooden gate—the same place Bartholomew and I had wandered from and come back to the last time we’d trespassed upon the Seacht.
The place Benji had told me the truth of the Omens.
Where he’d convinced me, in a way only a boy with a chip on each shoulder could, to help him take up the mantle and kill the Omens. Where Rory had measured me for armor.
The king’s barracks.
The carriage lock clicked and the door wrenched open. When Tory handed me out, shortbow slung on her back, all the arrows in her quiver had been spent.
I slammed my shoulder against hers, knocking her out of my way.
A scribe stood in front of the open gate, a dozen guards of the Seacht at his back. His brows were low and his gray robes long. In his hands, cupped with delicate care, was the Harried Scribe’s inkwell. “Majesties,” he called. “You’re here sooner than we expected.”
Dedrick dismounted. Came forward and embraced the scribe, then took the inkwell from his hands. “Thank you for keeping it safe, Uncle.”
“Not for nothing. Folk are delirious to get a view of it in the arena.”
Benji dismounted and looked up at the barrack walls. “This is where you expect to host the tourney? It’s supposed to be a melee, Lange. Not a training session.”
The scribe rolled his eyes so vigorously they disappeared beneath the hairy shelf of his eyebrows.
When he recovered, he turned to me. “I’m Otto Lange, Diviner.
Dedrick’s uncle. Our family has called the Seacht home for many generations.
It’s an honor to have you with us. If you will follow me inside—” He waved a hand, and two guards of the Seacht swung open the gate.
“You will see that, despite limited time and a great number of tasks”—he eyed Benji—“considerable funds were spent; the training yard has been effectively transformed into an arena, with sizeable stands for viewing.”
“You’ll get your gold back, Lange,” Benji said, winking at Dedrick. “Now—let’s take a look at this arena.”
The space hardly resembled itself. Wooden stands, raised by finely designed scaffolds, stood in a circle around the yard.
“We’re currently fitting the king’s box,” Otto said.
“Considering this is to be a melee, I assumed His Majesty and the queen would like to be kept safely out of range of the bedlam.” He nodded at me.
“A Diviner of Aisling is no doubt used to being elevated above her subjects.”
“Just so.” My mouth felt incapable of even the thinnest smile. “But I’ll be fighting in the melee.”
“Really?” Otto Lange eyed his nephew. “How interesting.”
Benji, still surveying the scaffolding—the raised, elaborate seats—drew his sword. Pointed it to the west side of the stands. “There. Not a speck of spilled blood should go unnoticed from that vantage. Put the king’s box there.”
I moved with several knights onto the dirt floor that had once been the yard. It was larger now. A vast space to pass. For every step I took, the wound in my abdomen throbbed. I was sweating, laboring.
Ahead, mocking me with his vibrance, Benji skipped into the arena and twirled his sword. “What do you think, Dedrick?” he called. “Care to practice your victory bow?”
Hamelin drew his own sword and flashed his perfect smile at the king. “How about we test out the arena instead?”
Benji answered his grin. “Why not?”