Page 26 of Bull Moon Rising
I frown at her, but it’s not like I can scold her. She’s a student, just like me. With a flick of my fingers over my coveted sash, I pretend to wipe away a speck of dust. “Be right back.”
I turn and walk away, heading out of the main hall and into one of the side corridors. I’ve never been deeper into the actual guild hall before today, but it can’t be that hard to figure out? I hope. I’m familiar with the entryway, as that was where I was humiliated yesterday, but deeper inside? Not at all.
All of the students filed out of the main doors, heading toward the Swan statue, but I head in the opposite direction. Something tells me that Hawk wouldn’t leave without us. He seems to take his job quite seriously. So I head farther into the hall, turning down one curving corridor lined with doors. I pass something that looks like a blurry library (I wish I was wearing my spectacles) but appears to be empty.
Farther down the hall, I hear the sound of arguing.
“I said I’m handling things,” a deep, sonorous male voice says as I quietly approach. That’s Hawk, and he’s in one of the nearby rooms. I peek in, and when I see his enormous, blurry brown form standing near a short, squat man who has to be that Rooster arse, I duck behind the door and hover in the hallway. Should I let them know I’m here? Say something?
“Your version of ‘handling things’ is very different from mine,” Rooster says in a haughty voice.
I hear the stamp of hooves on the ground and a loud, bullish snort.
“Correct me if I’m wrong, but your only male candidate for your nest has fled. He signed up with Mallard’s class this morning, filling their last slot. Now you’ve nothing but a horde of flighty females—”
“Don’t forget the slitherskin,” Hawk drawls.
“—and a lizardman who won’t take off his house to get in uniform. Truly, it’s embarrassing.”
My mouth purses into an angry little pucker. How dare he?
“It’s a disgrace to the guild’s history,” Rooster continues. “And where is Magpie?”
“Like I said, she’s sick. I’m handling things.”
“She was sick last year on enrollment day,” Rooster counters. “And the year before she showed up late.”
She was? She did?
“Like I said, I’m handling it.” Hawk’s tone grows more and more impatient.
“I do not doubt your competency, Hawk. That has never been in question. You are good at your job, but you’re not a guild master. Only guild masters can teach a fledgling nest. You know the rules as well as I do.”
Silence.
Chicken-man continues. “Twenty guild masters are allowed at one time, for twenty nests. Twenty teams of fledglings are allowed to join every year. Magpie might be a guild master due to her past exploits, but she is in danger of losing her position. If she doesn’t get herself in order, do you know what’s going to happen?”
More silence. I so badly want to peek around the corner but I don’t dare.
“Your class will fail,” he continues. “Just as they failed the year before last, and the year before that. And I will not be able to protect her any longer. She will lose her guild master position to another who can make the guild money. She will lose her house and her pension, and she will end up in the gutters. You’re a good artificer and a good teacher, but you’re not in charge. She’ll undermine everything you do and chase your students away. Do you understand?”
His tone is so dismissive, so condescending, that I want to punch him.What a rude, odious little man. I loathe him. I want Hawk to give him a verbal tearing-down. I want Hawk to tell him what’s what. I want him to lay into that peahen of a man and tell him what to do with his—
“This class won’t fail” is all Hawk says.
“How can they not fail?” Rooster continues, and I can hear the astonishment in his voice. “I saw that bunch of misfits myself. You’re doomed. Magpie has doomed you.”
“I’m going to push them harder than ever. And I’ll handle Magpie, just as I always have.” Heavy hooves clomp on the floor, and it takes me a moment to realize he’s heading toward the door, where I’m spying.
Just as I jerk away from the heavy wooden door, Hawk comes around the corner.
We stare at each other for a moment, and then he grabs me by the arm and escorts me away, his grip tight and leaving me no choice but to trot alongside his much longer strides.
“You’ll keep all of that to yourself,” he murmurs as he hauls me back toward the others.
“Of course I will,” I hiss at him. “But do you want to tell me what’s going on?”
“Later.” We round the corner back toward the others, much quicker than I anticipated. They all sit up as we approach, and then there’s no time to ask anything else. I notice Gwenna has a tight expression on her face, and the look she shoots me indicates she wants to talk.