Bloody Rose

by Nicholas Eames

  Across the table, Cura grinned. “I’d marry that smelly old turtle for a castle this big.”

  Grudge’s head swung ponderously at that. He regarded her a long moment as his jaw hinged open like a drawbridge lowering in surrender. “Ha,” he croaked, before resuming his task.

  “The Dragoneater has been growing restless these past few years,” said the Widow. “Likely because of that halfwit Brontide and his pitiful excuse for a Horde.”

  “That halfwit has won two battles already,” Roderick pointed out. “And his pitiful excuse for a Horde gets less pitiful by the day. You’re lucky Brontide didn’t come through Diremarch on his way south.”

  The Widow clicked a silver claw against the lacquered tabletop. “Truly,” she said dryly, “we count our blessings every day. Don’t we, Hawkshaw?”

  The Warden bowed his head. “As you say, my lady.”

  “I care nothing for the Horde,” snapped the Widow. “It’s the Simurg that concerns me. It has cost me a great deal already. If it decides to come south it will lay waste to all of Kaskar, at the very least. I, of course, will be held accountable, and Maladan Pike will appoint a new marchlord in my stead. Or worse: insist I wed myself to one of his brutish cousins.”

  Judging by the revulsion in her voice, their host would rather drink an orc’s bathwater than welcome another man into her bed.

  Can’t say I blame her, Tam thought ruefully.

  The Widow laid a taloned hand on Freecloud’s arm. “I don’t suppose you’d like to be a lord?” she asked him. “I’m rich, you know. I have a very big castle, and I can be warm when I wish to be.”

  Freecloud calmly reclaimed his arm, but his ears may as well have been pinned to the roof. “I’ll take my chances with the Simurg,” he said.

  “Speaking of gold,” said Rose brusquely. “You promised us an awful lot of it.”

  Roderick, who’d bitten the corner off his cloth napkin, swallowed noisily. “Fifty thousand courtmarks, actually.”

  Fifty thousand courtmarks! Tam’s mind struggled to comprehend such a fortune. A thousand gold coins could last you a lifetime, provided you didn’t sprinkle gold dust on your food and buy every one of your friends a horse for their birthday. Or maybe it could, she amended, if you threw in a nag here and there. But fifty thousand? Fable could retire in luxury on that kind of money, provided they were still alive to spend it.

  “And you shall have every coin,” the Widow promised, “once the Simurg is dead.” She spread her arms as she said this, and the bard noticed a web of crisscrossing scars on the inside of her forearms. Small cuts, razor-straight; she’d seen similar scars before.

  She’s a scratch addict, Tam concluded. No wonder she’s doing a shit job of looking after her march.

  Rose leaned over the table. “So where’s it been hiding all these years?” she asked. “Callowmark? The Frostweald?”

  “Mirrormere.”

  Rose blinked once. Then blinked again. Her lips quivered, torn between smiling and snarling. Tam knew almost nothing about Mirrormere, save that it was a perpetually frozen lake somewhere to the northwest. Somewhere very far to the northwest, judging by the look on Rose’s face.

  “Mirrormere is two hundred miles from here,” said Rose. “Why have us trek all the way here just to send us west again?”

  This is it, Tam thought. This is where the trap gets sprung, where the veil is swept aside and we discover that the Widow of Ruangoth is in fact Rose’s cunningly disguised arch-nemesis, or one of Freecloud’s jilted lovers, or the Frost Mother herself, come to wreak vengeance upon the world.

  Her mind began racing: How could she arm herself? More importantly, how could she arm Rose? Grudge had left with the cutlery just a minute ago, but knowing how fast the aspian moved, he was probably still right outside the door. If she could reach him and reclaim their knives …

  The Widow dispelled Tam’s fears with an exasperated sigh. “How amusing,” she cooed. “So eager, are you, to get from here to there? Even when there is the Dragoneater’s lair?” She waved a hand airily. “You’ll fly, of course.”

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  The Spindrift

  “Did anyone else see her arms?” Brune asked as Fable marched hastily toward their rooms. They were to leave for Mirrormere within the hour aboard the Widow’s own skyship.

  “She’s a scratch addict,” said Roderick. “Nasty habit.”

  “Not scratch,” murmured Cura. “Suicide.”

  Rose glanced over. “You’re sure?”

  “I’m sure. Those scars …” She trailed off, and Tam saw the summoner clench and unclench her hands. “I’m sure,” she repeated.

  Brune scratched at the scruff on his chin. “Must be lonely up here in this drafty castle, with only Hawkshaw and the aspian for company.”

  “You feel sorry for her?” Rose asked.

  “I do,” Tam said, siding with the shaman. “I mean, yeah, she’s awful. But no one’s born bad, right? And we don’t always get to choose who we become, if that makes any sense.”

  “It doesn’t,” Roderick assured her.

  “It does,” said Freecloud.

  When they reached their wing, the bard tugged on Cura’s sleeve to slow her. “What’s up with you?” she asked, once the two of them were alone.

  Cura shrugged. “Nothing. Why?”

  “Well, I thought … I mean, last night—”

  “What about last night?”

  Tam snapped her jaw shut before it hit the floor. “We slept together,” she said.

  Cura’s laugh cut like a knife. “We slept beside one another.”

  “But … naked,” Tam said. Maiden’s Mercy, this conversation was going downhill fast.

  “Look, just forget about it, okay? What happened, happened. And what didn’t happen … Well, it was probably for the best.”

  Tam was stunned. She felt as though she’d been punched in the gut, and it was all she could do not to curl up around the pain. “I thought we—”

  “I’m sorry if my snoring kept you up,” said Cura, breezing past her. “I’ll see you on the ship.”

  Daon Doshi, captain of the skyship Spindrift, struck Tam as a man trying to be many things and failing at most of them. He had the tapering squint of a Phantran pirate, the braided moustache of a Kaskar thane, the bowlegged swagger of a Cartean horse lord, and was outfitted like an Agrian bandit who’d robbed a Narmeeri prince of his pyjamas. He wore a striped skullcap fixed with blue-glass goggles, a tattered yellow robe tied with a red sash, and a suit of shoddy ringmail draped over a padded patchwork gambeson.

  Doshi greeted Fable one by one as they climbed on board, shaking hands and smiling like a brothel owner hosting a princeling’s birthday party.

  “And what have we here?” He met Tam with a rattling handshake, his dark eyes darting between Hiraeth’s sealskin case and Duchess, which she carried unstrung in her hands. “An archer? Or a warrior-poet?”

  She smiled tightly in return, her stomach still clenched from her encounter with Cura. “I’m just the bard,” she told him.

  Doshi sketched a deep bow as Freecloud arrived at the top of the gangplank. “Itholusta soluthala!” he said in what Tam assumed was druic.

  “Isuluthi tola,” Freecloud replied.

  “What did he say?” Tam asked the druin.

  “He asked how much the toilet costs,” said Freecloud, clearly amused.

  Tam knew very little about ships, and even less about skyships, but she could tell at a glance that the Spindrift was a junkheap. Its hull, nestled in an iron cradle atop one of Ruangoth’s black-shard towers, was about the size of a cutter. It was scuffed and splintered, patched in more places than a treasured old blanket. Its name was splashed in red across the side, and her sails—two larger and one smaller—were in obvious disrepair. Their metal ribbing was warped and rusted, the panels tattered and, in some places, ravaged by fire. Woodchips littered the deck, and though the bard couldn’t fathom their purpose, the scent of cedar shavings
was the Spindrift’s most appealing feature thus far.

  There was a tidal engine mounted on either side of the rear deck, which Cura pointed out was curious without explaining why. Tam headed over for a closer look.

  “Duramantium,” declared the captain, sauntering up behind her. Doshi’s boots, she noticed, were soled with thick slabs of wood, though he was still several inches shorter than Tam. He placed a gloved hand on the hollow outer ring of one engine. “They don’t make ’em like this anymore.”

  “Make what?” she asked. “Engines?”

  “Anything!” Doshi stroked one of his moustaches. “Swords, armour, engines—the rabbits dug up every nugget of duramantium they could find and left none for the rest of us! And yet”—he took in the derelict cutter with an adoring gaze—“they sure left us some wonderful toys to play with.”

  Tam grazed her fingers against one of the duramantium rings. The metal was blue-black, grained with tiny flecks that sparkled like silver. She’d heard blacksmiths back in Ardburg reference the rare metal with an air of sorrow, the way old mercs grieved for comrades lost to battle, or bald men mourned their once-lustrous locks.

  Hawkshaw stamped up the gangplank, having once again donned his black straw cape and scabbardless bone sword. A quiver of white-feathered bolts and his double-decked crossbow were slung from straps over either shoulder.

  “You here to make sure the Widow’s work gets done?” Rose asked.

  “Indeed,” he said, then stalked off toward the front of the ship. There was a figurehead mounted on the prow: a winged woman with a missing head. Tam suspected she and the Warden would get along just fine.

  Doshi showed them below, which was reminiscent of the argosy’s dim interior. The stairs descended into a long, low-ceilinged hallway with rooms on either side. There was a cluttered galley at the stern, and a locked door toward the bow, behind which were Daon Doshi’s private quarters.

  The bunks in each bedroom were so small that Rose and Freecloud were forced to sleep separately. Cura disappeared into one room and closed the door behind her. Brune, whose size made it difficult to manoeuvre in the ship’s close confines, unpacked his belongings in a room opposite Tam’s. After struggling for several minutes to find a place to store Ktulu, he eventually wrenched the twinglaive into halves and put them each beneath his cot.

  Tam stowed her things, anxious to be back on deck before they set sail. She laid Duchess on the bed, and put Hiraeth under it. When she turned to leave she found Rose blocking her path, leaning not so casually against the doorframe.

  “Did something happen last night I need to know about?”

  Tam hesitated. Sweat prickled across the small of her back, and she suddenly wondered if there was some unspoken rule among Fable’s members that she wasn’t aware of: No fucking the bard, for instance. Cura was already acting strange; the last thing she wanted was to get her in trouble with Rose.

  “Nope,” she answered. And then, in case that wasn’t emphatic enough, she added, “No,” and “Nothing,” and “Definitely not”—which was, in hindsight, probably overkill.

  Rose spent a long moment examining her fingernails—or her knuckles, maybe—while Tam began formulating a plan that involved squirming through the small circular window behind her.

  “I heard you slept in Cura’s room last night.”

  “She invited me,” Tam blurted, tossing her moral integrity out the window instead.

  Freecloud appeared beyond Rose’s right shoulder. “She invited you?”

  “Nothing happened,” Tam insisted. “We only slept.”

  “Slept?” The druin looked skeptical. “Really?”

  “It’s true!” she told them. “We were in one of the other rooms, just talking, and then—well, I … and she …”

  “She what?” Roderick poked his head around the edge of her door. “You know, for a bard you can’t tell a story for shit.”

  Just then Brune emerged from his room. He saw his bandmates crowding Tam and grinned. “Did you ask her?” he said excitedly. “Did something happen?”

  The satyr hushed him. “Quiet, fool! She’s getting to the good part now.”

  Tam flapped her arms in annoyance. “There is no good part!” she cried. “I told you, we just—”

  The world—no, the ship, Tam realized—listed violently. Roderick stumbled into Brune, who bumped into Rose and knocked her sideways into Freecloud. Tam seized the chance to make a break for it, bolting past them and hurrying up the stairs to the deck.

  It was snowing fiercely now, and the wind threatened to blow her off balance. Overhead, the skyship’s sails fanned open like webbed fingers. Lightning leapt from spine to spine, rippling down the mast and spitting along the cutter’s rail. A mild jolt of electricity surged through Tam’s feet and up her spine.

  So that, she realized, is what the woodchips are for.

  The tidal engines whirled to life: one a blur of concentric rings, the other spinning so slowly she could see the hollow hoops turning laboriously inside one another. Daon Doshi stood at the helm near the rear of the ship. He was frantically palming a pair of spherical steering orbs, and when he caught sight of the bard he waved her over.

  The stuttering engine was making an awful clatter, and whatever the captain shouted as Tam climbed the steps to the rear deck was lost between the racket and the buffeting wind.

  “What?” she called back.

  “Hold on!” Doshi screamed, as the Spindrift tipped free of its cradle.

  With nothing but the steering console nearby, Tam grabbed hold of Doshi himself—and barely in time, since they’d begun a barrelling nosedive toward the canyon floor. Her longcoat thrashed behind her. Her scarf flailed madly. A flurry of woodchips blew past, swirling like cedar cinders into the sky behind them.

  Doshi spat a mouthful of curling flakes and yelled over the wind’s roar. “The water inside freezes!” His moustaches whipped across his cheeks as he glanced toward the faltering tidal engine. “It just needs to warm up a bit. Which it will,” he promised, “any second now. Probably.” He yanked a lever, cinching the sails, and their freefall gained momentum.

  Squinting against the blowing snow, Tam saw Hawkshaw crouched at the stern. The Warden was gripping the rail with both hands as the gale tore at his straw cape.

  Doshi was muttering something beside her; she heard him speak the Summer Lord’s name.

  “Are you praying?!”

  “Of course I am!”

  “For what?” Tam hollered, as the ground rushed up to meet them.

  “For this to work!”

  Doshi slammed the lever. The sails snapped open, crackling with power, and the bard’s teeth clenched as the ship’s unbridled current—stronger now that the woodchip carpet was gone—hummed through her bones.

  The slow-spinning engine screamed like a boiling kettle, belching a cloud of white mist as it whirred into a silver blur. The captain’s hands danced over the steering orbs, and the Spindrift veered away from the floor of snow and stone like a diving hawk deciding at the last second that it wasn’t hungry after all.

  Slowly, Tam pried her fingers from the captain’s arm. She could have sworn she felt static snap between her teeth as she unclenched them. “That was …”

  “Exhilarating,” said Doshi, “I know. But if you think that was fun, just wait until we hit the Stormwall.”

  Chapter Thirty

  The Rum-Go-Round

  “There are three things,” her uncle Bran told her once, “you never want to hear a woman say.” Tam hadn’t quite finished rolling her eyes before he raised a finger and told her the first: “I’m pregnant.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Tam said. “What if you want a baby?”

  “Then you need a better helmet, because your head is cracked. The world needs more humans like an orc needs a second asshole.”

  “Well, I doubt I need to worry about that one anyway.”

  Bran regarded her narrowly above his raised tankard. “I suppose not. Anyhow
, the second is, Did you remember?”

  “Did you remember what?”

  “It doesn’t matter what,” Bran said. “To buy her a birthday present, to take out the trash, to pick up that thing from that place on your way home from the bar. Whatever it is, you most certainly did not remember. Your best bet at that point is to run and buy flowers. Or skip the flowers and buy a fast horse.”

  The final thing, in Bran’s estimation, was the worst.

  “We need to talk?” Tam frowned. “What’s so bad about that?”

  “It can mean only one of two things. Either you’ve fucked up big and are on the cold brink of hell itself, or …”

  “Or what?” she asked impatiently, as he paused to sip his beer.

  “Or you’re about to get your heart broken.”

  “We need to talk,” Cura said from the doorway.

  Tam was sitting cross-legged on her bed with Hiraeth in her lap. She’d finished writing the words to Brune’s song, and was trying to get down the music for the final verse. It required her to play the same tune over and over, experimenting with various notes, listening for branching paths and following them to see if they ended anywhere good. Often, they didn’t, so she’d wander back to the beginning and start over.

  “Sure,” she said.

  Cura glanced up and down the hall before stepping inside. She closed the door behind her and put her back against it. “What happened last night was a mistake.”

  “Nothing happened,” Tam said, doing her best impression of casual indifference. “You fell asleep, remember?”

  “I meant before that. In front of the fire …” She trailed off, and as the ensuing silence lengthened it was obvious to each of them what the other was thinking about. “I was in pain,” she explained. “I was feeling vulnerable. And also a little bit drunk. I shouldn’t have done what I did.”

  “I’m glad you did,” Tam said, too quickly. “I—”

  “Don’t,” Cura cut her off. “Just … don’t.” She left the door and came to sit on the edge of the bed. For a while she said nothing, only picked at the cloth strip binding her left arm. “I’m broken,” she said finally. “There’s something missing inside me. I don’t know what used to be there. My mother. My uncle. A normal fucking childhood, maybe.” A hollow laugh escaped her. “I don’t know. But it’s like a … a hole that I keep trying to fill. And yet no matter how many drinks, or drugs, or people I consume … it’s still there. An empty space that nothing can fill and no one can fit.”