Page 87 of Bull Moon Rising

“No, no. I meant are you done feeling sorry for yourself?” She nudges me with her shoulder. “I recognize that look on your face. The ‘woe is me, I’m just a holder’s daughter, life is so hard’ expression.”

Shame moves over me. “I’m not—”

“Look. Is this a shit show? Absolutely.” She watches Mereden and Lark help Magpie do laps around the room, trying to walk off thealcohol and sober our teacher up. Then she turns back to me. “Is everything stacked against us? Undoubtedly. But when have you let that stop you before?”

I rub my brow. “There’s no way I come out ahead in any of this, Gwenna. I’m so tired of fighting against the tide.”

“You don’t give up. That’s not who you are, Aspeth. You make the best of whatever you’re given, always.”

“And the best-case scenario here is what, finding an artifact?” I spread my hands wearily. “And then it’s given to Barnabus, who’s going to use it against my father and steal his hold. I don’t want to help Barnabus.”

“Then we don’t,” Gwenna says, as if it’s that simple.

“What if we find something? A treasure of some kind? A magical artifact? We have to turn it over. That’s guild law.”

“We’re not in the guild yet, are we?” She gives me a pert look. “If we find something—and that’s a pretty big ‘if’ from where I’m sitting—we talk to Mereden and Lark and Kipp. We explain the situation and offer to compensate them in some way. Maybe we give up our shares for a few finds in order to pay them back.”

My eyes get misty. “You’d do that for me?”

“Of course I would. I think they would, too. You’re part of our Five. You’re our friend.”

I manage a smile.

“Or maybe we sell whatever we find and keep the funds and you can send those home to your father.” Gwenna brightens. “Or maybe it will all be made easy for us. Maybe we’ll find an Urn of Ever-Giving Nether-Pox and we hand it over to Barnabus after all. Who can say what the future holds?”

I giggle. I can’t help it.

“My point is, my friend, that you’ve come this far. Why would you let a man like him defeat you now?”

I gesture at our surroundings. At the dank cavern, where somewhere spiders are still lurking, waiting to drop onto our hair. Where another team is out there with our stuff, laughing and patting themselves on the back for screwing us over. “This just isn’t what I expected it to be, you know?”

“What in life is?” She nudges me with her shoulder again, the gesturefriendly. “We’ll get some sleep and things will be better in the morning. We’ll rough it tonight like the professionals, and then we’ll wake up in the morning and we’ll go looking for artifacts like we’re supposed to. Like we want this job. Because I would much rather dig for buried treasure in a cavern than change out the chamber pots of spoiled nobles…no offense.”

“None taken.”

There’s a nudge at my other side, and then Kipp is there, holding out a chunk of hardtack. He offers it to me with a little smile, and I take it from him gratefully. He holds another chunk out to Gwenna. “This is marvelous of you,” she says. “Where did you have this stashed?”

He pats the edge of his house, as if that answers everything, and then trots away to share with the others.

“I love that little guy,” Gwenna says. “He’s good people. Or slitherskins. Whatever.” She takes a bite of her hardtack and watches the others. “You know, it’s not just your life that’s difficult. Mereden doesn’t want to go back to the convent.”

“Oh?”

“Her father made her join the church. She didn’t want to, but he’s very religious and felt that one of their children should be an offering to Asteria to bring fortune on their house. She told me once that no one at the temple would talk to her, though. That it was a sect of silence and they believed they were closest to the goddess when they were quiet. That’s why she pushed to come here and join the guild. She was desperate to get out of there.”

“It sounds awful.”

“I imagine it was. And has Lark ever told you about her parents?”

It feels a little like I’m being lectured, but it’s all information I should probably hear. “She hasn’t.”

“Their family was poor. Magpie joined the guild but her sister didn’t have the skills. She ended up working in a brothel. She named her daughter Lark because she was jealous of everything Magpie had. Wanted her to have a bird name so she could be as special as Magpie, too. Of course, we know that’s not how it works, but what can you do?” She shrugs. “The father wasn’t known. Lark almost ended up whoring, too, but she ran away when she was a teenager and joined a troupe of travelingfortune tellers. She’s pretty good with cards, by the way. Absolute shit with juggling. No idea how she managed to make a living at it.”

I had no idea about any of this. I’ve been wrapped up in my own situation…and, well, in my relationship with Hawk. “I didn’t know.”

“You’ve had your new husband monopolizing your time, so no one blames you.” She pats my knee and takes another bite of hardtack. As she chews, she continues. “Kipp…well, I’m not entirely sure what’s going on with him because he doesn’t talk. But I imagine it’s not perfect. My point is that everyone’s life has shitty aspects to it. You’re just getting all of yours piling on at once, but you’ll get through this.”

She sounds so confident, so certain. “What if this all goes horribly and I have no choice but to marry Barnabus after all?”

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