Coulson Faire is a large field of merchant tents beside the king’s castle, Castle Luricht. Six is far ahead of Hamelin on the road as she enters the hamlet. She finds the colors and noises of the fair lively in comparison to the cold stone of Aisling Cathedral. Pyres burn in the distance as people dance around the flames and play music. Above it all, Six hears the clinking of coins changing hands and wonders if the Artful Brigand really lives among the people of this hamlet like the abbess claims. 

Six sees the other Diviners up ahead, but before she can catch up to them, she sees a stall with extremely lifelike limestone busts. She asks the merchant about them, but he refuses to answer her questions and treats her rudely until he realizes that she’s a Diviner. He then attempts to grab her to force her to give him a good portent until Rory pushes him away. Rory threatens the merchant and tells him not to tell anyone that he saw Six. Rory asks where Hamelin is, noting that his time in the grass with Six was rather short.

One wants to dance, so she drags Six and the other Diviners to where the musicians are playing music. They see King Benedict, or Benji, who asks to dance with Six. He thanks her again for her divination and calls her his friend, which confuses her. 

To thank her further, Benji proposes a game. He challenges Rory at his craft, a ritual of Traum; every person in every hamlet has a craft (combat, wits, handiness, etc.), and a challenge is a duel in their chosen craft that only cowards refuse. Rory must accept the challenge or be chased naked through the field by the other knights. If Rory wins the challenge, Benji will run naked instead. If he loses, he must face a divination at Aisling. Benji challenges him in combat, in which he must face three assaults to knock him down, and Rory accepts, on the condition that he chooses who will attack him. He chooses the Diviners.

The Diviners huddle and discuss who will attack Rory. One, Four, and Six agree to attack. Six counsels One that Rory has bruising on his left ribs, so she should hit him there. One kicks him hard, and Rory winces but remains standing. Four kisses Rory to try to throw him off, but he remains standing. Finally, it’s Six’s turn. Rory taunts her, and she manages to pick Rory up off his feet and throw them both to the ground. Six lands on top of Rory, and Rory asks her if it wouldn’t have been easier to kiss him. Six tells Rory that she’ll see him in the spring.

When they return to Aisling, the other girls go to bed while Six dons her Diviner robe and heads to the spring. She summons the bat-like gargoyle to help her, and he agrees not to tell the abbess about the secret divination, displaying contempt for the abbess and her behavior. The gargoyle offers her a story about the outside world, but Six tells him that he cannot because he’s never been outside Aisling and never will, which makes the gargoyle cry. Six apologizes and consoles the gargoyle before they wait in silence for Rory. The gargoyle goes to begin his chores before Rory arrives. Six asks him what he wants to ask the Omens, and Rory says nothing.

Six realizes that she’s forgotten a knife, so Rory bites his own thumb until it bleeds. He offers it to Six, who drinks the blood and then asks the gargoyle to drown her. The gargoyle doesn’t want to, but Six insists. When Six drowns, she wakes naked in a liminal space that seems like Aisling but feels wrong. She calls out to the Omens but gets no answer. 

A moth appears and lands on her Diviner shroud. It removes her shroud, and Six sees that the world is more colorful than she ever imagined. She flies over all the hamlets of Traum before seeing Aisling Cathedral. The five figures outside are no longer statues but five people holding the five objects. There is a sixth person standing in the doorway of the cathedral, as if the cathedral is their object. 

Six enters the cathedral and finds the spring. When she looks into the spring, she sees the faces of gargoyles, the abbess, and the Diviners. The Diviners’ bodies begin to warp and distort as they scream in pain, and Six begs for it to stop. The Diviners disappear, and the moth again lands on Six’s face. Six feels agonizing pain as a voice states that “swords and armor are nothing to stone” (81).

Six wakes up on a bench. The gargoyle tells her that she was silent during her divination, which is unusual. She finds the other Diviners watching the king and his retinue leave. They ask her what she saw, and all Six says is that she couldn’t read the signs. She watches Rory leave and hopes that the dream of the moth was simply a strange anomaly and that everything will return to normal soon. Instead, when the Diviners wake up the next day, Four is gone.

Six completes her stone-working chores with the gargoyle while she wonders about Four’s disappearance. The abbess sent a cat-like gargoyle to search for Four, but otherwise, it’s business as usual at Aisling Cathedral. After an arduous day of work, Six returns to the Diviner cabin to find her fellow Diviners arguing. One thinks that Four ran away with the knights, while Five and Two are offended that One would think that their sister would leave them so easily. Six suggests a search party after dark, and the other girls agree. However, when night falls and they try to open the door, they find the door locked. They go to sleep, and when they wake, Two is gone.

After another day of divining, Six asks the abbess if they can talk. The abbess takes Six to her cabin, a place that Six has only been to once before, as a child. Six asks the abbess about the missing Diviners, and the abbess says that they’re runaways and that she’s sent the gargoyles after them, which is all she can do. 

Six confesses to divining for Rory and having visions of a moth, and the abbess reveals that she knows about the Diviners’ jaunt to Coulson Faire and Six’s illicit divination. She chastises Six, whom she views as the most dedicated Diviner, for acting out like the other Diviners. Six returns to the Diviner cabin and tells the others that the abbess stated that Four and Two ran away. Three doesn’t believe it, and neither does Five. The remaining four Diviners sleep in the same bed, and Six tells them a story until they all fall asleep. When they wake, Three is gone.

Six tricks the bat-like gargoyle so that she can slip away over the wall to Coulson Faire to search for the missing Diviners. Before long, however, the gargoyle catches up with her, crying because he thought that Six had gone missing. The gargoyle says that the abbess promised that Six would stay with him, so he felt betrayed. Six explains that she’s looking for the missing Diviners, and the gargoyle insists on accompanying her. 

They reach Castle Luricht, but they are stopped by a guard who tells them that the king and his knights are in the Seacht. Before Six and the gargoyle leave, a group of drunk men harasses them, but the gargoyle fights them off. When Six and the gargoyle get back to the Diviner cabin, One is asleep, and Five is gone.

A bear gargoyle puts iron bars over the windows of the Diviner cabin. One and Six are trapped in the cabin, with water and food brought to them by the gargoyles. One takes off her shroud and looks at her eyes in the mirror for the first time and is horrified by what she sees, but Six refuses to look or ask her what she’s seen. One and Six lay in bed together, and Six tells One a story about what they’ll do when they escape Aisling. Six tries to force herself to stay awake, but she falls asleep. When she wakes, One is gone.

Six cannot bring herself to cry. She attempts to escape when the serpentine gargoyle brings more food, but the gargoyle throws her onto the ground and keeps her locked in. She feels tempted to look in the mirror at her eyes, but whatever One saw didn’t save her, so Six smashes the mirror. She sees a small object pass through the bars of the window: a coin. In an instant, a man appears inside the cabin and catches the coin. Six tries to fight him but realizes that it’s Rory.

Six accuses Rory of taking the Diviners. He says that he has no idea where they are and that Six can help him search for them. Rory asks Six why she’s bleeding and bruised, and she tells him that the serpentine gargoyle attacked her and that she’s also been pinching herself to stay awake. Rory realizes that Six went to the castle to seek the king because of the missing Diviners. He tells Six that they must leave, but he cannot get the locked door open. He tells Six to close her eyes; he’s going to use an item to make them disappear briefly and pass through the door.

Rory tells Six to get her shoes, but Six doesn’t own shoes. She goes to the shed to get her hammer and chisel, which are the only objects she owns. However, she can’t get through the locked door, and the ruckus summons the bat-like gargoyle. He unlocks the shed for Six to get her things and then requests to go with her. 

Before they leave, the abbess and the other gargoyles appear. The abbess demands that Six stay—she says that there are horrors in Traum far worse than what she can imagine. Six refuses, so the abbess tells the gargoyles to kill Rory and drag Six to the spring. Six, Rory, and the bat-like gargoyle fight off the other gargoyles, with Rory targeting the serpentine gargoyle first for the violence he did to Six. 

Rory uses the coin to destroy the gargoyles, throwing it before it explodes through the stone. Six realizes that the coin he has is smooth on one side and rough on the other; it’s the Artful Brigand’s coin. Rory tells Six that he will take her to the king in the Seacht.