Page 123 of Bull Moon Rising

“Left,” Magpie says, slurring her words. No surprise, she’s had too much to drink once more. “Poor little lady left town and went back to Daddy’s hold.”

It’s a lie.

They’re mucking lying to me.

Aspeth is infuriating and spoiled and hardheaded, but she’s no deal-breaker. I think of last night in the alley, and how she’d looked up at me with such heated eyes. How she’d reached for me.

None of that was a lie…was it?

I think of Aspeth’s soft expression as she gazed up at me. How she’d let me eat her soup as we talked. The nights we’d lain awake in bed while she petted her cat and told me about her excitement over joining the guild.

Her cat.

Squeaker’s bowl was empty, the cat indignant. Aspeth would never abandon her cat. Aspeth would never let it skip a meal.

I eye Magpie and the oddly triumphant stranger, and then I moveforward. I grab Magpie by her brown master’s jacket and haul her to her feet.

“Wh-what? What are you doing?”

“I’m bringing you both to the Royal Artifactual Guild,” I announce. “You can tell Rooster what you’ve done to your fledglings.”

THIRTY-EIGHT

ASPETH

Barnabus’s stupid chalkhas saved us.

We climb carefully from the rubble, retrieving our packs as we do. On the other side of the chalk line, the cavern is destroyed, the rocks blocking the tunnels so large it would take ten Taurians to budge them. On this side of the chalk line, there’s nothing but a cascade of slightly larger rocks, most of them moved with just a bit of shoving. Most of the cave-in seems to have occurred on the other side of the chalk line, with its invisible shield protecting us even as it prevents us from leaving.

Once we’re free of the rocks, I suck in a deep breath and try not to think about all the rock still pressing on us from overhead. Of how nothing but a narrow tunnel is between us and death. I’m going to have nightmares about rocks and cave-ins at some point, but for now, I’m forcing myself to think of other things. “All right, ladies and lizard. Let’s get our packs on and rope together again. Kipp, you take sword, Lark, you’re our shield, and Mer, you’re our healer. Gwenna, are you good with navigating?”

“What do you mean?” she asks, giving me a tired, blank look in the flickering candlelight. Our lantern was smashed in the collapse, and we’re still down to only a candle for light, but at least we’re not buried. “We should just sit and wait.”

“That was the plan before,” I announce. “Now the plan is that we’re going to find our own way out.”

“Why can’t we just wait for someone to come and get us?” Mereden looks up from wrapping her ankle with strips of gauzy bandages. “It’s almost Hawk’s Conquest Moon time, right? He’s going to come looking for you.”

I flinch at her words. It is the time of the Conquest Moon, true. And the one thing that has been impressed upon me is that once it arrives, Hawk won’t have control. Even now, he might not be sensible. He might be in bed with a stranger even as I rot in the Everbelow. My heart aches at the thought. “We can’t assume. We can’t assume anything. Not with Magpie and Barnabus working together. How do we know that she didn’t tell someone we left the city?”

“But the drop—”

“Is an unlucky one,” Lark points out. “No one’s going to sign up for Thirteen unless everything else is taken. It could be weeks before it gets out of the guild’s paperwork piles anyhow. It might take the investigation team a while to get to it, and we don’t know what my aunt is telling them.”

“Or Barnabus. He’s kind of shitty,” Gwenna adds. She looks over at me. “No offense.”

“None taken. Heiskind of shitty.” I put my hands on my hips, and a shooting pain jolts up my arm. I must have tweaked it in the cave-in. Doesn’t matter. I move my hand from my hip and gesture at our surroundings. “For all we know, they’ve been planning things for a while. This is Drop Thirteen again, right? Even though they wanted the other half of the ring, they dropped us here. The way I see it, they either want to collect the paired rings from our dead bodies, or they dumped us here because it’s easiest for their lies. They can pretend ignorance, say that we acted without Magpie’s permission and crept down here.”

“Never mind that she was all in,” Lark mutters.

“Never mind that,” I agree. “We have to assume no one is coming for us. So what’s the best thing we can do?”

“Find another artifact,” Mereden replies, voice wavering. “Hopefully one that leads us out of here and somewhere safe.”

Exactly. “And the best time to get started is now.” I glance around themess of the cavern. “So what do we have here that we can use as a dowsing rod?”

We dig around in our packs to cobble together a reasonable substitute. The one Gwenna had is busted in three places, and it doesn’t seem to react when she holds it. We end up finding a triangular-shaped piece of Kipp’s broken house and hack at it until it vaguely forms a Y-shape. Kipp winces when Gwenna picks it up, his expression one of longing. I want to comfort him, but I don’t even know where slitherskins get their houses from in order to replace his. We’ll figure it out after we’re free, I decide. For now, we’ve got to tackle our immediate problems.

“Here,” Gwenna tells me, taking me aside. She pulls a ribbon from over her head and holds the ring out to me. “You might as well take this. It’s yours anyhow.”

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