Page 6 of By the Horns (Royal Artifactual Guild #2)

“Of course not. I’ll come up with…something. Let me think on it for a moment.” Aspeth pulls out a quill and dips it in ink. She pushes aside a cat sprawled on her desk and scratches a note onto a page in front of her. “You’re certain it’s another dead man?”

I rub my neck, thinking of the uncomfortable, uneasy feeling that had moved all over me. “I didn’t go look at him, but…yes. It always feels the same.”

She nods, writing frantically. “Describe your symptoms to me.”

“What? Why?” I just want to forget about the entire thing, not dwell on it.

Aspeth looks up at me, her eyes huge behind her spectacles. “I’m going to search through some of the texts here to see what they mention about such things. When other people have had, ah, the same problems.”

My brows go up. “Problems?”

“Sensing, ah…things they shouldn’t,” she says delicately.

We both know what she’s talking about. It’s something we’ve considered a dozen times before and discarded, but I’m afraid we cannot anymore. “Let’s call it what it is. We think I’m a mancer.”

A magic user. An evil person with secret powers.

Mancers were outlawed three hundred years ago, and all of them were put to death.

Since then, the guild has risen to power.

The only magic allowed now is magic found in artifacts, so the Royal Artifactual Guild retrieves magic doodads from the ancient ruins and sells them for large amounts of coin to the noble holders.

Personal magic should be dead. I should not be a mancer. I can barely even read.

She blinks. “I mean…possibly.”

“I don’t want to be a mancer,” I tell her, twisting my hands in my worn skirt. The anxiety crawling through me is worse than the buzzing feelings earlier. “If they think I am, they’ll burn me in the square!”

“No, they won’t,” Aspeth says confidently. “No one’s been burned as a mancer in a hundred years.”

That’s because no one has been stupid enough to step forward and claim to be a mancer in the last hundred years. I don’t want to be the first. “Aspeth, please . If we keep pointing out dead bodies, someone’s going to become suspicious!”

“I promise you’ll be safe, Gwenna. No one will know it’s you. I just want to find out what I can so we know what to expect. You know I would never say anything to endanger you.”

“Which is why I would really like it if we didn’t bring this up,” I counter.

When her expression turns to hurt, I take a deep breath.

I force myself to swallow the worried knot in my throat.

Aspeth has kept my secrets in the past. I’m just…

terrified of what will happen if I’m found out.

There’s so much at stake. “Until I can figure out how to make this stop, I’d prefer we say nothing. ”

“But there’s a dead man in guild territory. It’s not right to just say nothing at all. He’s not the first one to be murdered, you know.”

“Oh, I know. I’ve felt them both.” My dry sarcasm carries in the small room. At my feet, a cat with long fur rubs against my legs.

“Of course. I’m sorry. I’d forgotten.” My friend seems chagrined. She drums an ink-stained finger on her lip, thinking. “Perhaps I’ll steer Hawk toward that area and we can accidentally run across the dead man so he can be identified and removed.”

“Aspeth, please….”

“I won’t say anything about you, Gwenna. I promise.” She pushes her glasses up her nose, the lenses making her blinking grotesquely exaggerated. “Anyway, you should call me Sparrow. No one calls me Aspeth anymore except for Hawk.”

I’m still not used to her guild name. She’s been in my life since I was a girl, and she’ll always be Aspeth to me. I know the name means a lot to her, though. “Sparrow. Apologies.” Her wide smile is like sunlight coming through the clouds. “And you asked about my symptoms…?”

“I did!” She poises the quill over the paper again, readying herself.

For the next while, I tell her in great detail what it feels like to sense a nearby dead body.

I don’t know if it’s because my sheltered life as a maid back in Honori Hold never allowed me to brush with death, or if there’s some sort of latent magic in the very soil here in Vastwarren City that activated this whole “death sensing” power.

Vastwarren was built upon the bones of an ancient civilization full of magic, so it’d stand to reason that magic permeates the very air here.

I describe to her the sensations, the feeling of dread, and even the vague “memories” that drift into my mind about the dead person.

She’s most interested in the physical sensations, making little exclaiming noises as she writes. “It sounds dreadful.”

“It doesn’t feel good, no.”

“How did you manage to stay there so long? Feeling all of that? How did you not run from the building?”

My face feels suddenly hot. “I, um, found a way to distract myself.”

She nods, continuing to scribble away. “A distraction to minimize the physical reaction is good. What did you do specifically?”

There is no way in goddess Hannai’s green earth I’m going to tell her what I did specifically . “Pain. Bit my lip, stabbed my fingernail into my hand, things like that.”

Aspeth—no, Sparrow—keeps writing. “And did you have to reach a certain pain threshold? Were there certain applications of pain that were more useful than others? Perhaps we can narrow down what brings effectiveness in case this occurs again—”

“Just pain,” I say, blushing. “I wasn’t too focused on what kind or how much. There was a lot going on.”

“Hmm.” She doesn’t seem convinced. “Perhaps other stimuli might be listed in the archives. Things like smells, or perhaps even certain visuals. I’m not certain how much the records here go into mancers, but I’ll see what I can find. Give me a few weeks to see what I can dig through.”

“I don’t want to be a bother.”

“You’re no bother. You’re my best friend.” Sparrow beams at me. “Give me time to work on this and I’ll see what I can find out.”

“No rush. I’m not going anywhere,” I joke. It’s true, though. I’ve got one month left before recruitment day, and I’ll be damned if I give up my chance to become a fledgling again. I’m not spending the rest of my life cleaning windows and tossing chamber pots. I’m not.

My friend looks up, and then her countenance changes to a soft delight as she slides her notes underneath a blank sheet. “Oh! Hawk! I didn’t realize you were coming by, darling.”

Uh-oh. I jump to my feet, anxious as the big russet Taurian strides into the cramped quarters. “Master Hawk! Hello.”

He gives me a distracted smile. “Gwenna. Good to see you.”

Is it? He doesn’t know why I’m here yet.

I watch nervously as he moves to Sparrow’s side and presses a kiss atop her head.

She leans into him, her mien one of pure contentment.

They look good together. Hawk is large and forbidding, while Sparrow is softer.

Gentler. She reaches up and nudges the golden ring through his nose, and they share a secretive smile.

It’s time for me to leave. These quarters are far too close for me to stay comfortably with a pair of starry-eyed newlyweds.

Even though my friend initially married the big Taurian for practical purposes, it didn’t take long before they were both in love.

Good for them, but I’m not jealous. The last thing I need is a man dragging me down.

My ambitions don’t include relationships, not right now.

I want to join the guild, become an artificer, and make some real coin.

“Well, I should get going,” I say, moving away from the desk before they start making kissy noises at each other or something embarrassing.

“I promised I’d cover Kerta’s nestmaid shift, and I need to go home and change out of these sweaty clothes.

Thanks for the chitchat, Sparrow. I’ll get out of your hair. ”

Her face glows at my use of her name. She gives me a quiet thumbs-up and I know she’ll keep my secrets. My relief feels intense, as if I can suddenly breathe again.

At her side, her Taurian husband is sniffing the air. “Did Raptor come by?”

I freeze in place. Damn Taurians and their elite senses. I scrubbed at the mess the big white Taurian had left between my thighs earlier, but perhaps I didn’t do enough.

“No, why?” Sparrow glances up at Hawk.

“I’m picking up his scent.” His bullish mouth pulls into a frown and he eyes the room, nostrils flaring.

I decide to play dumb. “Is he an oversized sort of bull with a white face and vicious horns?” I wiggle my fingers by my temples in an imitation of horns. “There’s a big male like that in the hospital. I was cleaning in his room earlier.”

Hawk relaxes. “That must be it.”

“Well then, I really had best be going,” I chirp in a bright voice. I need to bathe again once I get back to the nestmaid quarters to ensure that no one picks up the scent of Taurians—or sex—on me. “See you soon, Sparrow!”

One more month, I remind myself. I just need to lie low for one more month.

Surely I can manage that.