Page 89 of By the Horns
“My mother had always said that if you were in pain from a burn on the hand, you should hit your knee with a wooden spoon. It sounds silly, but it distracts you from the other pain. And when I was cleaning windows in the hospital, this dead man kept babbling at me and making my skin crawl. I knew he was in the alley, but I also knew I couldn’t say anything. How would that look if I just up and kept pointing out men with their throats cut? They’d suspect me. So I tried to work through it, to no avail. I told myself I needed a distraction.”
I rub my mouth. “And so you fucked me?”
“Sex is wonderfully distracting,” Gwenna says in a wistful tone. “Andit helped me focus enough that I could finish work. And you were nice and attractive, and I thought, What harm could it do? And I had fun. So aye, I fucked you to distract myself and then ran away as fast as I could to escape the dead man’s thoughts. That’s how I knew about the artifact in the tunnel. The dead pointed me there. And that’s how I felt…Hemmen.”
Her hand goes to her throat, and she rubs it.
“So that’s everything,” she says in a faint voice. “Sparrow did some research, and she says she thinks I’m what was called a necromancer. They were mancers that spoke to the dead.”
Her gaze rests on me, and it’s obvious she’s waiting for me to react.
I rub my muzzle, thinking. I don’t know what to make of the story she’s just told me. “You mean to tell me that you’ve been feeling the dead talking to you? That’s your secret?” When she nods, I add, “And that’s why you wanted me to touch you down in the tunnels?”
“I needed a distraction. There’s so many dead down there, it gets overwhelming.” She hugs her arms around herself.
“And seducing me is your best way to get distracted,” I say flatly.
Gwenna flinches. “You don’t believe me.”
“I just wonder at the convenience of it all.”
“Oh yes, highly convenient,” she says sarcastically. “Let me panic every time I step into the Everbelow, that’ll really advance my career as an artificer. Oh, and while I’m at it, why don’t I find the most fertile bull I can and demand that he have sex with me. That’ll sure show him.”
My mouth twitches despite myself. “Excellent point.”
“Did it ever occur to you that maybe I just mucking like you, you bloody idiot?”
I smile even broader. “Maybe you do. Maybe it makes us both fools.”
“So do you believe me now?” Her expression is worried but hopeful. “Or do you really think I’m some murdering mastermind that could truly have had Hemmen killed?”
“I don’t know what to think. Is there any way to prove what you’re claiming?”
She throws her hands up, exasperated. “Want to murder someone and have me quiz them?”
I think of poor, unfortunate Hemmen, dead in the alley. “There’s been enough death, I think.”
“On that, we both agree.” Her face crumples. She moves to the table and sits at one of the chairs, covering her face with her hands. “Just…tell me what you’re going to do with me, all right? All I ask is that if I’m killed for being a mancer, make it quick.”
She’s serious. She truly thinks that she’s going to be killed for claiming to be a mancer of some kind. One that talks to the dead. I eye her small, sad form as she sits at the table, and mentally go through all the things she’s told me.
How she’d known the dead man was in the training tunnel even though no one else had for decades. How she’d clutched her throat and blurted out Hemmen’s name even as she was on my knot. It explains why she had me touch her in the tunnels. Granted, she could have known that whoever was responsible for the killings was going to cut his throat…but that doesn’t explain why she gleefully jumped into bed with me that day in the hospital. She had no reason to touch me if she was simply some criminal mastermind hiding her tracks.
And if she was, why would she claim something so terrible? A criminal gets a trial. The last mancer in the kingdom was burned at the stake, no trial at all.
Am I just inclined to believe her because I’m in love with her?
If what she’s saying is the truth…I don’t know what direction we go from here. She was the closest lead we had to finding the thief, and now we’ve got nothing. If we tell the guild that she’s a mancer, what happens if they decide she should be put to death?
The thought enrages me. I won’t let that happen.
I move to Gwenna’s side and squat beside the table. She’s crying again, tears falling silently down her cheeks, and I realize just how much stress she’s been under. What would I do if I thought I was a mancer? I wouldn’t tell a soul, either. I’d protect myself, just as she’s been doing.
And here I’ve made the situation worse, assuming she was the thief I’ve been looking for. I’m just as much to blame for this situation.
“Hey.” I reach for her hand. “What do they call a Taurian who falls for a mancer?”
“A fool.” She sniffs and won’t look me in the eye. “Mancers are outlawed.”
