By the Horns

One

Gwenna

Dere Ma,

Aspeth is helping me to rite to you. She is teeching me my letters so I can better myself. I am still a repeeter at the guild but we will have recruitment day soon and I hope to be picked as a flegling again. If I can work for the guild I can send money home. I have enclosed a few coins. Please pay someone to rite back and let me know you are well. I love you.

Love, Gwenna

The dead man in the alley is really bothering me.

Not that I killed him, of course. I just know that he's there, and I can't tell anyone.

Nor can I tell anyone that I've been able to sense the dead lately. I don't know why. I don't know how it started. All I know is that if there's a dead person somewhere nearby, my skin itches and crawls as if a hundred bugs were moving over my body.

It makes it damned impossible to concentrate.

I swipe at the window I'm supposed to be cleaning, hoping no one notices that I'm not truly giving my all. I need to keep my head down and stay out of trouble to remain as a repeater, one of the workers for the Royal Artifactual Guild. Repeaters have a strange sort of position in the guild. We're considered "failed" students, but because we've been students in the past, we're also allowed to be first in line when it comes time to sign up with a new guild master for the next year's training. If I piss off Mistress Umala, though, she'll drop hints that I'm a bad, lazy employee, and she could ruin my chances to get picked as a fledgling for the next year's tutelage. True, my best friend is married to a guild master, but I can't count on Aspeth to grease the wheels for me. I need to earn my place, and as a woman in a male-dominated guild, I need to make doubly sure that my record is impeccable or people will talk.

Focus, I remind myself. Concentrate. Ignore the dead man in the alley and how hard your skin is buzzing because it must be a fresh murder-

A throat clears behind me.

I lower my arm, turning to greet Mistress Umala. She's an elderly woman with thick coils of white hair atop her head, and she wears a severe, high-necked dress in guild colors, along with a repeater sash at her waist and a second one at her shoulder. She's not a repeater, though. It's just part of the uniform. I'm told that she's a guild member's widow who decided to take up cleaning to keep her husband's pension, and now she just makes all of us who clean miserable. I really wanted to like her, because we maids should stick together, but Mistress Umala made it clear from day one that she didn't think much of me because I'd actually "dared" to try to be in the guild.

"Is there a problem?" she asks, looking down her sharp nose at me. Her skin is so pale that she looks unhealthy, and for a moment, I wonder if she's the corpse I keep sensing.

I put on my sweetest smile. Only one more month until recruitment day. Then I'll be free of drudgery. "Why would there be a problem, ma'am?"

She arches one hairy silver brow at me. "You've been rubbing that window with a dry rag for ten minutes now."

I . . . have? I glance down at the rag in my hand and sure enough, I've forgotten to wet it. "Just getting a few of the worst smears taken care of," I say cheerfully, and rub the window with the rag again as if this is all according to plan. "See?"

"I do not see," Umala hisses. "All I see is a young woman not doing her job properly."

Biting back a retort, I keep the smile on my face and take the shit she shovels at me. It's the servant's lot in life to smile through their true feelings, to never let their employers know what they're really thinking or else they'll get the boot. After years of working as a kitchen girl, and then a maid, I know all about how to look fawning and humble. "I'm very sorry, ma'am. I've no wish to be a bother. I'll finish up this window quickly."

And then I scratch at my neck and the high-collared uniform I'm wearing, because by the gods, that dead man is going to make me crazed.

I keep on scratching as she harrumphs. "See that you do. And then get the windows on the second floor. They look filthy."

I nod and bend over to dip my rag in the soapy bucket at my feet. "Of course, ma'am." One more month. One more mucking month. "Even the rooms with the patients?"

"Absolutely. They deserve clean windows, too." She turns and sweeps away, the conversation ended.

Now that her back is to me, I make a face at her retreating spine. Bitter old puss. She never rides any of the other repeaters as hard as me, nor any of the women who are employed under her. It's the fact that I am an actual repeater and a woman that really makes it difficult for her to mask her resentment.

After nearly a year of working as a repeater, I'm used to it.

I turn and clean the window correctly this time, scratching wildly at my skin through my uniform as I do so. The buzz of the dead man's presence feels as if it is burrowing directly under my flesh, and I wonder if I should say something.

Not to Umala. She already hates me.

I can't say anything to the guards, either. I notified them about a dead man in an alley last week because I'd felt him. A second one would be less of a coincidence and would point a finger at me. If they find out that I can feel the presence of the dead . . . my fledgling career would be over.

Everything would be over.

I scrub the window frantically, trying to distract myself. A song? No. Counting? That won't help. Reciting guild rules? I can't remember enough of them. I end up biting the inside of my cheek until it bleeds, but the pain helps me focus. After I get done with these windows, maybe I'll volunteer to go dust in the archives. That should be far enough away from the guild hospital, where I am currently. And maybe Umala will be pleased with my initiative.

By the time I finish the windows downstairs, my crawling skin is driving me mad. I glance around, looking for Umala, but she's talking with someone near the front hall and I won't be able to slip past her and leave. I dig my fingernails into my palm, but my hands are callused from years of housework and it doesn't give me the bitter pinch I need to focus my mind. The inside of my cheek has been bitten so much that it feels like ground meat.

I need something to distract me until I can leave this place. Biting back a whimper of frustration, I grab my bucket and dump the rag in. "Heading upstairs," I call out to Umala.

She's deep in her conversation with a guild master and shoots me an irritated look as I interrupt. Right. Well, if there's one thing Umala likes to do, it's let everyone know how important her work is. I suspect that guild master isn't going to be able to get away from her for a while. Her cornering him might be to my advantage.

I need something to distract me so I can finish my job. The buzz of the dead man is only growing more deafening, and it's starting to scare me. What do I do if it doesn't stop? What do I do if no one finds him and it just keeps going and going and going?

Head down, I bite back a whimper of frustration as I go up the stairs.

"Be sure and get the patients' rooms," Umala calls after me.

"Yes, ma'am," I yell back, probably more forcibly than I should. Maybe one of the patients will have something I can use to get this feeling out of my head. A bottle of wine would be nice. At this point, I'd even be willing to cut myself with a knife if the pain would distract me enough, though I won't be able to work if I carve up my hands. I need a better solution.

I race down the hall as quickly as I can, opting to start with the rooms that overlook the alley, since they're the ones closest to the body. Get it over with already. Maybe I can open a window and pour the soapy water down on someone on the street and force them to veer into the alley.

Then again, maybe it's not a dead body. Maybe I'm panicking. Maybe it's something else. Didn't Ma say once that she grew up in a house where the cook couldn't eat shellfish or his lips puffed up? Maybe this feeling I have-like I'm being gnawed from the inside-is like that. As I approach the room farthest down the hall, though, the sensation grows stronger. I get to the window, but I don't even have to look outside to know that there's a dead man there.

I can feel him. He's about my age. Throat cut. Been there a few hours now, limbs stiffening. Spirit lurking until he can go to Romus, the god of the dead.

And I'm terrified about the fact that somehow I know all of this.

I'm just a maid trying to be a guild artificer. Not a mancer. Mancers are trouble. Mancers are burned at the stake because they're a threat. Because magic is outlawed and forbidden, unless it's in one of the old artifacts.

I just want to blend in. Get a decent job that doesn't involve handling other people's chamber pots or a broom, maybe make a little coin to send back home to my ma so she won't have to work so hard for that skinflint Lord Honori.

I'm not a mancer, though. I can't be. I'm not anything special. This must be a sickness. That must be it. Scrubbing the window viciously, I tell myself the dizziness is due to something I ate last night. Nothing more. Soon enough I'll get the sweats and then go running for the garderobe. I mean, I am sweating. But as time passes, more bits about the dead man leak into my brain. That he was a repeater, just like me. That he was doing a stint on guard duty. That he was supposed to meet someone in the alley last night for an exchange when someone came up behind him and a hot flash moved over his throat. Then he couldn't breathe-

Choking on air, I grab my bucket and haul it toward the next room. The moment I'm inside, I slam the door behind me and lean against it, gasping.

"Who's there?" asks someone with a deep, irritated male voice.

Shit. Mucking shit. I must have awoken the healers' patient. Sure enough, when I look over, there's the big, pale white form of a Taurian sprawled over the bed, which seems far too small for him. He's naked except for a sheet tossed over his loins and what looks like a cloth covering his eyes. His bed has an overly tall footboard, upon which his hooves press. I guess that's more comfortable for him on his back than lying flat like a human would, because his legs bend backward at the knee. He looks mucking grumpy that I'm here, too.

"Sorry, sir," I chirp, sliding into my old friendly-helpful-maid persona. I step forward, clutching my bucket, and notice that his eyes aren't just covered, they're blindfolded. Good. He won't be able to say it was me who interrupted him. "Name's Sarya."

Maybe I shouldn't lie about my name, but I figure he doesn't need to know who I really am. If I annoy him, the last thing I want is someone reporting back about how terrible Gwenna is. I set down the bucket near the window and then glance back toward him. This is the guild medics' main hospital, so I reckon that he's a guild artificer. He's enormous, this Taurian man. There's a glinting golden ring in his bovine pink nose, and his shoulders are so broad that his arms hang over the sides of the narrow bed. His horns jut forward over his bandaged brow and look sharp and deadly. Someone, one of the nurses perhaps, has tied a bright red ribbon in a colorful bow on the end of each one so the staff notices if he swings his head.

I don't think they're necessary. He's impossible to look away from. I've seen him around guild headquarters, but I don't know his name, just that he's one of the guild's hardworking Taurians. His barrel chest is nothing but muscle and the occasional scar, with two flat nipples decorating his delicious pectorals. The hooves on the footboard are equally enormous, and his tail swats the side of the bed with irritation. He's magnificent.

Grumpy as muck, but magnificent.

The Taurian grunts, shifting his big body on the bed. "You're the female they sent up?"

To clean the windows? "Aye, that'd be me. I'll get you taken care of and then I'll be on my way, promise."

"Good" is all he says, and then he drops the sheet covering his loins to the floor and gestures at his fully engorged cock.



Raptor

I'm a terrible invalid.

It goes against everything I am to lie abed all day, doing nothing at all. I should be in the tunnels, digging for artifacts. I should be scouting for new paths. Five hells, I should be drinking in a tavern for all I care. Just not in bed with my eyes glued shut by a thick paste under a bandage. Granted, the paste is cool against my burnt skin, and the healer assigned to my care reassures me my vision will come back soon, but each day that I'm here, I can practically hear the coins clinking. The guild loves to charge for everything. Meals. Uniforms. Medic services. Everything. I'm going to be in so much mucking debt after this, just to get back to normal.

It's my own fault. I shouldn't have let the new guy in our Five handle the artifacts. I should know to duck and cover when someone says, "I wonder what this button does."

I'm lucky all I got was a pair of flash-burnt eyes and some scorches on my hands. I'm told Romald-sorry, Bustard-didn't make it. That means our Five has an opening again, and it means we'll have another new guy. I mucking hate new guys.