Page 3 of Bull Moon Rising
It’s the lord holder’s responsibility to protect their people, and since my father cannot, it falls to me.
So no, I have to do this. When Father left for court to visit his mistress, the courtesan Liatta, I knew I had to act. I slunk out of the hold in the middle of the night, carrying a few bags with my possessions, and left a note to the staff explaining that I would be visiting my grandmother in the eastern hills.
In the meantime, I’ll become an artificer myself, find an absolute hoard of artifacts, and replenish the Honori holdings.
Aspeth Honori was left behind on the dusty roads to Vastwarren City.
Sparrow is who I am now.
Gwenna rents a luggage cart with a penny, dragging it after her. We load up the cart—or rather, she does while I juggle my cat. Then all of our gear is loaded and there’s no reason to wait any longer.
“Come along, Chickadee,” I say brightly. “The guild recruitment meeting isn’t until the morning. Shall we find lodgings?”
“Not ‘Chickadee,’ ” Gwenna protests, her hands going to her hips. “That sounds incredibly dumb.”
“Then pick a bird. What’s your favorite bird?”
“To eat? Turkey.”
“Mmm, I don’t think calling yourself ‘Turkey’ is a good idea, though I doubt it’s taken.” I purse my lips, thinking, and adjust my heavy cat in my arms. Good gods, she’s shedding like a dandelion all over my dark traveling dress. I try to put Squeaker back into her satchel but she howls with anger and digs her nails into my arm, so I sigh and heft her onto my hip like a fat orange baby. “What about ‘Blue Jay’? ‘Robin’? ‘Wren’?”
“How about I stay Gwenna for now?” She gives me an irritated look and picks up the handle to the luggage cart. “Guild first, bird name later. Lead the way, Lady Sparrow.”
“Just Sparrow,” I tell her brightly, and then breathe deep.
It’s a mistake. Vastwarren City has a peculiarsmellto it. It’s a smell like a compost pile, along with unwashed bodies and a variety of otherundelicious stinks. There’s a cloud of smog hanging over the city, no doubt due to several thousand hearths working all at once. I cough, juggling my heavy cat, and then wish I hadn’t laced my corset so tight this morning. “By the Lady. There’s a real stench to this place.”
“Smells like I rubbed the back of my ear,” Gwenna agrees.
“That’s disgusting.” I pinch my nose shut with one hand, juggling Squeaker with the other. She’s notwrong, though. There’s a distinct, unwashed scent to everything that I’ve never experienced before. Honori Hold is austere and lightly populated and above all else,clean. Vastwarren City looked a little run-down from afar, but I had resolved to withhold judgment until I stood in its streets.
Now I’m standing there and, well…it’s bad.
It’s crowded. That’s one of the first things I notice. Gwenna wrestles with the luggage cart while people flow around us in the street, giving us dirty looks for not moving with the foot traffic. I hug Squeaker a little closer, because if she runs away, I’ll never find her again in this crowd. Not that this is a problem—the only thing Squeaker runs to is her food bowl. Vastwarren City is dirty, too. There’s a layer of grime in the cobbled streets and there are potholes everywhere. The buildings—two and three stories tall—all look as if they’re sagging and weather-beaten, and I don’t see a single bit of greenery. Everything is gray and brown and drab and dirty and crowded. Rising above the clutter of buildings is a large wall around the heart of the city. Behind it, I see spires and tall, arching roofs.
That’s where the guild will be. I just have to get through the rest of Vastwarren first.
I eye my surroundings with distaste. There are so many people—people of all kinds. There are the pale northerners from the mountains like myself, and the sun-kissed southerners from the coast. There are Taurians marching through the crowds, their sweeping horns threatening to take out the nearest awning if they walk too close to a building, and their hooves clop on the cobblestones. I even see a slitherskin darting amongst the crowd, small and quick, his portable home perched on his back. I want to stare but it doesn’t seem polite. Honori Hold is high in the mountains, isolated by the landscape and our name. Honori is the oldest of holds, and we’re expected to hold ourselves to a higher standardthan the newer holds. We only consort with other families nearly as old, and even though I’ve traveled to many other holds while attending court and visiting allies, I’ve always been left with the women, supervised and stuck in a parlor somewhere, pretending to embroider. Most of the time I can’t even bring a book, because Grandmama thinks no one will wish to marry a bookish woman and that’s why I’ve remained unattached for so long despite the Honori name.
(Then again, Grandmama would have wanted me to marry Barnabus regardless of the fact that he was a title hunter. I would be fine with that if the title wasn’t bankrupt. I’m just afraid of what would happen when he found out it is, and we’ve got no artifacts to boot.)
I once read a pamphlet that compared Vastwarren to an anthill built atop a graveyard, and now I can’t unsee it. The houses perching up the slope that elevates Vastwarren City above the surrounding lands are all clustered together, sharing walls and overhanging roofs, and I get the impression that if one house were to fall, the entire city would crumble. The streets seem to wind around the city in a spiral, lined with more run-down buildings every step of the way. Everything seems to be made of wood and patchwork remnants of other old houses. Overhead, laundry lines hang between houses on opposite sides of the street, dripping water on passersby below.
Something wet drips on my face and I swipe at it in horror. I certainlyhopethat was from laundry.
“Where to now?” Gwenna hisses at me, her expression expectant. “Do you need to consult your pamphlets about the guild?”
No need—I have them memorized. For years, I’ve gathered every book I could find on the Royal Artifactual Guild. I have the memoirs of Sparkanos the Swan. I have three books written about Guild Master Magpie and her adventures. And every time the guild releases an informational pamphlet, I have one sent to me so I can pore over it. I know precisely the location of the guild headquarters. “The annual meeting is tomorrow. At that time, the doors will be opened for newcomers to find a master to apprentice to. Until then, I suppose we find a nearby inn for the night and bide our time.” I smile brightly at her. “All according to plan.”
“Is it?” Gwenna asks. “Is itreally?”
“Do you have a better idea?”
She thinks for a moment and then sighs heavily. “I do not.”
“Me, either. So come on.” Squeaker howls at me and I adjust her on my hip once more. “Let’s find ourselves a nice clean inn and tidy up.”
“Oh, acleaninn?” she grumbles at me. “Are we leaving the city, then?”