Wall slip and wall divergence are known to have large and opposing effects on the stability of flow in a two-dimensional channel. While divergence hugely destabilises, slip dramatically stabilizes the linear mode. In a non-parallel stability analysis, we study a combination of these two effects, since bothwill coexist in small-scale flows with wall roughness.Our main results are (i) that the stabilising effect of slip is reversed at higher angles of divergence,(ii) transient growth of disturbancesis unaffected by either wall-divergence, or by slip at any divergence.Moreover, at the Reynolds numbers relevant here, transient growth is too low to be a significant player in transition to turbulence,which is more likely to be driven by linear instability. The results would have implications for the onset of unsteadiness andmixing in small scale flows.