Page 107 of Bull Moon Rising

How fascinating. I’ve never seen it until now, and the sight of it is a little…slithery, all right. It looks downright obscene, but who am I to judge? I married a Taurian, and they have all kinds of strange customs, too.

Thinking of Hawk and his people’s customs makes me think of the orgy in the alleyway and my face gets hot and flushed. I wish he wasn’t such a prick.

I also wonder where he is right now. Probably storming the guild halls looking for someone to give him a job to get out of the house.

We stand by awkwardly a short distance away as the two slitherskins rub against each other with frantic, happy motions. Then they hug one last time and part, tails twining. Kipp trots over to us, a look of contentment on his small, lizardy face.

“Old friend?” Gwenna asks.

He shakes his head and then pauses. A flurry of gestures quickly follows as he tries to communicate with us, and it takes a few rounds but we finally figure it out. The slitherskin was a stranger, working for a traveling merchant. He saw Kipp in his uniform (now unbuttoned and open to the waist thanks to all the full-contact slithering) and wanted to tell him how proud he was of his fellow slitherskin.

I am first, Kipp gestures to us.

“You are?” I’m startled to hear this, but not entirely surprised. I haven’t seen other slitherskins around and none of the guild’s history books refer to slitherskins in any way. They barely reference Taurians, and Magpie is the only woman I know of who has joined.

Kipp lifts his chin, full of pride.

“Bunch of horrid men,” Gwenna grumbles. “Don’t like anyone who doesn’t have the same equipment as them. The more I learn about this Royal Artifactual Guild, the less I like it.”

“Which means it’s all the more important that we join the guild,” Mereden says. “These men need to realize that slitherskins—and women—are just as competent as they are.”

Gwenna grunts.

I’m silent. So much is riding on this that the guilt is becoming overwhelming. I’m going to ruin everyone’s chances if it’s found out that I have the ring…or that I’m a noble….

“That’s why a Five is so important,” Lark says, speaking up. She puts a hand on my shoulder and one on Mereden’s, drawing us closer in the middle of the street. “The guild wants to emphasize teamwork so Fives work together, but doing this has made us more than a team. We’refriends. We have one another’s backs. And we’re going to join this fucking sausage party of a guild and turn it inside out.”

We laugh at that, but I blink back tears again.

Before leaving home, I had no friends. Now I have four of them, and it feels like I’m the richest person in all of Vastwarren.

Once the lastof the letters are delivered, we opt to head back to the dorm and train ourselves. Kipp teaches Mereden and Lark some basic stabbing moves with short swords, and I go over a few of the more common Prellian glyphs with Gwenna in the kitchen. I want her to be able to recognize them to give her an advantage over some of the men in the guild.

We’re basically waiting and passing time until something happens. Either Lark can approach her aunt and see if she’ll help us with our plan, or we’ll get permission to go back down to the drop due to the appeals we dropped off earlier today. Until then, all we can do is stay busy.

“The lovely thing about Prellian magic is that it’s considered female,” I tell Gwenna enthusiastically as I flick through a book I borrowed from Hawk’s small store of guild tomes. I pause on a rendering of a common vase covered in glyphs and point it out. “So you’re always going to see the glyph for a female if there’s magic referenced.”

Her brows furrow. “What are you talking about?”

“When you reference magic, it’s considered female,” I explain, delighted to be able to talk about my favorite subject. “And it was Prellian law that every object had to be labeled clearly with what it did for public safety. They were really very advanced with law for their time. So every object will have a statement of some sort as to what the magic is, and since it’s referencing magic, you can look for the egg symbol around this particular glyph. The arrow over this figure means ‘man,’ but when it’s encased by an egg, it changes the symbol to ‘woman.’ ”

“Is the arrow supposed to be a cock?” Gwenna asks.

Her blunt words make my face heat. Good gods, it seems I’m blushing all the time now. “No, of course not! It’s an arrow, at least that’s what scholars believe. They think that it references back to the time whenmen were hunters and would use arrows to feed and provide for their families.”

“Looks like a cock to me,” she says, and then adds, “I’m probably spending too much time around Lark.”

“Probably.” Though now it looks a bit like a cock to me, too.

The doors to the kitchen open and Hawk strides in. Gwenna and I immediately grow quiet, watching as he marches over to the water pitcher and pours himself a drink. He looks dusty and dirty, as if he’s been in the tunnels, but I don’t want to ask. The last thing I need is a more cranky Hawk jumping down my throat.

I’m sure I deserve some of the throat jumping but not all of it.

Hawk drinks his water, leaning against the counter, and I pretend to focus on the book in front of me instead of my very large Taurian husband, who might possibly hate me. He’ll just finish his beverage, I think, and then we’ll be alone again and ready to continue our lessons—

“Aspeth,” Hawk says. “We need to talk.”

I put on my best gracious-holder’s-daughter smile. “We are in the midst of a lesson.”

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