Bloody Rose

by Nicholas Eames

  “I’ll even give you a discount,” Pryne said. “You know, considering you’re saving the world and all that.”

  Rose gazed at the dealer’s offering. Some mute distress flashed behind her eyes, as though she found herself confronted by the ghost of a long-dead nemesis. But then her expression slackened. “Give it here,” she said with a sigh.

  A sound like a whimper came from Roderick. The booker said nothing, however. Nor did Brune, or Cura, or—to her own surprise—Tam, who was wise enough to know that some battles needed to be fought alone, even if it meant you lost them.

  “Atta girl,” said Pryne, handing over the cloth. “I brought you the best, of course. Made it fresh this morning, so it’ll be less bitter than you’re used to. You’ve got an even dozen there, which …” He faltered as Rose drew them out of the cloth. His chuckle was palpably disingenuous. “Now be careful, Rosie, or—”

  Rose crushed the brittle leaves in her fist. When she opened her hand they were nothing but dust, which the wind carried off into the cold Conthas night.

  The dealer’s eyes bulged. “What the hell? Are you out of your fucking mind? You just threw away sixty bloody courtmarks! I expect to be paid for those!”

  “Sure thing.” Rose grinned. “How’s the end of the week sound?”

  Pryne’s hand twitched toward the knife on his belt, but for all his apparent faults he wasn’t that stupid. He relaxed, and his slimy grin gradually returned. “I’ll see you before then, I think. We both know what’s coming, Rosie. The moment that Horde shows up you’ll come crawling to me, and you’d better have a full purse and a bloody convincing apology when you do.”

  “Can I throw him off the roof?” Brune pleaded.

  “Can I cut his balls off first?” asked Cura.

  Pryne bolted for the downstairs door. “Rot take the lot of you,” he called over his shoulder.

  No one spoke for a while after he left. Roderick kicked his feet and watched the crowd below. Rose stared at the black stain on her hands—wondering, perhaps, if she really did possess the courage to face the Horde on her own. Brune drank and tried catching snowflakes on his tongue. Cura hummed quietly to herself. The tune was familiar, and it was a moment before Tam recognized it as the song she’d composed for Brune.

  She unlaced the toggles on the sealskin case and eased the heart-shaped lute from inside. She sat next to Roderick and nestled Hiraeth in her lap. When she plucked a few exploratory notes the others glanced her way.

  Cura smiled, which made the effort of playing worthwhile before she’d even started.

  “Sing with me?” Tam asked.

  An arched brow, a quirk at the corner of the summoner’s lips. “Why not?”

  Tam played. They sang. The satyr swayed beside her, tapping out the beat on his thighs. Rose and Brune listened intently. The shaman began nodding almost as soon as the song began, and by the end he was bobbing along, blinking to forestall the threat of tears.

  Moog emerged from inside the Old Glory. He sidled up next to Rose, who put an arm around the old man’s slim shoulders.

  Tam sang the last verse herself, since she hadn’t yet written the words when she and Cura performed the song together in a Diremarch hovel.

  A mother’s cry, a father’s crime

  We cannot leave the past behind

  Only in the end we find

  The missing piece, the borrowed time

  We bear the weight of stolen thrones

  With broken hearts and broken bones

  The saddest song I’ve ever known

  Is the howling of the wolf

  “Blood of the fucking gods,” Brune said when she’d finished. “I love it. I love it, Tam. Thank you.” She managed to lower her lute before the shaman’s huge arms enveloped her. He squeezed her once and then kissed the top of her head before stepping away.

  “She’s a bard, after all!” jeered Roderick. His tone was playful, but the words rankled for some reason Tam couldn’t quite put her finger on.

  “Could I make a request?” asked Rose.

  Tam blew on her fingers to warm them. “Anything but Castia.”

  Cura chuckled. Brune, still smiling, looked to Rose like a boy expecting his mom to slap a sibling.

  “I think you know the one,” Rose said. And then added, quite unnecessarily, “Please.”

  She did, as it happened, know which song Rose had in mind.

  As it began, she thought, so it ends.

  The bard was a few chords into Together when Moog interrupted. “Ah, wait! Just a moment, sorry!” The wizard rummaged through the many pockets of his robe for an awkward length of time before finally withdrawing a small leather satchel. He drew a pinch of blue powder from inside and sprinkled it over the flames in the brazier. It sparked, and left a smell like cinnamon in the air. He said nothing afterward, only gave her an exaggerated wink and a double thumbs-up.

  When she once again plucked the first note of the song Tam nearly jumped out of her skin. The sound echoed back to her from everywhere at once, and it wasn’t until she pulled another few notes that she realized where it was coming from. Whatever enchantment Moog had cast over the brazier, the music she played was emanating from every torch and bonfire within earshot.

  The noise in the Gutter faltered as the celebrants looked around, bewildered. Up and down the strip instruments fell silent and conversations died. Windows were thrown open and curious faces peered out, no doubt wondering why their fireplaces and candles were playing music.

  Cura offered Tam an assuring nod. “Go on,” she whispered.

  Go on, said the night around them.

  The bard took a breath, aware that the whole city might hear it, and then she sang.

  The bards say the Winter Queen herself led the Horde against Conthas. They say the city’s defenders were outnumbered three to one, and that monsters fought shoulder to shoulder with men and women against the unrelenting army of the dead. They tell us that Clay Cooper slew the giant Brontide in single combat, or that Bloody Rose did, or that a girl with silver hair killed him with a single arrow—when in fact none of these three are true.

  Bards, you see, are full of shit. They’ll say just about anything if it means a free drink or another copper coin in their hat.

  But of all the stories told about the days before and after the destruction of Conthas, none is more absurd, more categorically far-fetched, than the tale of Tam Hashford and the Singing City.

  According to the bards, she performed on a rooftop, and her voice, amplified by sorcery, was heard in every corner of Conthas. It’s said she played her mother’s now-legendary song on her mother’s then-legendary lute, and that she sang the first verse all by herself, timid and tremulous, until a second voice—lower, but also female—joined in. During the chorus, we’re told, she was accompanied by her remaining bandmates, including none other than Bloody Rose herself.

  The stories would have us believe that war-weary mercs wept at the sound of Rose’s voice. She might have made a magnificent bard, some claimed, had the world not made her a killer instead.

  Hundreds more joined in for the next verse. Most people know that song by heart, and there’s not a drunk in the world who doesn’t consider themself an exceptionally gifted singer. When the chorus rolled around once again, it’s said that even the soberest citizen of Conthas shrugged off their inhibition and sang along.

  On every street, in every square; in brothels, and taverns, and scratch dens; in brawling pits, and dice-houses, and candlelit temples—anywhere a lamp sputtered or a fire roared, they sang. Thieves crooned it while they rifled pockets, harlots hummed it in their lover’s ears; wranglers serenaded the monsters in their pens, and pits, and cages.

  Mercenaries, for all their pomp and pageantry, are a sentimental lot, and so the thousands crowding the streets of Conthas clung to one another and bellowed at the top of their lungs, because they might be dead tomorrow, and undead the day after, but they were alive tonight. Even the musicians chimed in: drummi
ng and strumming and plucking along, each one adding their own flavour to the stewpot of simmering melody.

  The most fanciful accounts of the night tell of a druin standing on a dark hillside, gazing with an immortal’s bone-deep melancholy on the spectacle below. Others float the outlandish notion that the singing city could be heard even by the approaching Horde. They imagine a host of shuffling corpses cocking their heads and listening to that distant, defiant song, the flames in their eyes guttering as some lingering spark of their humanity drew breath.

  You will know, of course, that Lily Hashford’s masterpiece ends unaccompanied by music. During its final verse, the city-wide chorus faded as well, shedding voice after voice as an oak sheds its leaves at the onset of winter, until the only one singing was the girl who’d started it all.

  Her voice—bolstered by the courage of sixty thousand souls—was no longer the timorous thing of minutes earlier. Now it was strident, steady, clear as a starry summer night. In fact, there are some who swear it was Lily Hashford herself who sang that final verse.

  And when she, too, fell silent, it was several heartbeats before the applause began in earnest.

  At which point, the bards unanimously agree, the strangest thing occurred.

  Tam Hashford stood. She grazed her fingers over the whitewood face of her mother’s lute and whispered some secret message into the instrument’s heart-shaped bowl. And then she gripped its slender neck with both hands and smashed it to splinters on the ledge before her.

  Chapter Fifty-one

  Friends and Foes

  Tam stared at the ruin of her mother’s lute.

  She waited for remorse to storm in, throw its hands in the air and yell, Fool girl! What have you done?

  In the space of a few heartbeats she’d managed to wreck a beautiful instrument, destroy her livelihood as a bard, and break the last material bond she shared with her mother. This last, she knew, should have gutted her. It would have, mere months ago.

  She’d been a very different person mere months ago.

  While smashing Hiraeth, Tam had felt a profound sense of rightness. In doing so, she had set free a sorrow she’d been holding on to since childhood. Her mother’s memory remained inside her: an unforgettable fire. But where once it had scalded to touch, it was now a comfort—a soul-suffusing warmth that could, if nurtured, heal a great deal more than it hurt.

  And what was more: She’d finally made the choice Freecloud had warned her was coming. As a bard, it had been her duty to watch, to distance herself from the men and women whose stories she was supposed to tell. Only it turned out she was ill-suited for watching, incapable of standing by while others put their lives at risk.

  And distance? she mocked herself. Distance went out the window when you jumped in bed with a bandmate …

  Tam became gradually aware that the others were watching her: Roderick with openmouthed shock, Brune and Cura with a mix of startled surprise and genuine concern. Moog was too busy wiping his red-rimmed eyes to look at anything but the sleeves of his robe.

  Rose, however, was smiling. “You were a terrible bard,” she said.

  “I know.”

  “You’re fired.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “So, what’s next?”

  Tam blew a strand of silver hair from her eyes. “I thought I might try joining a band.”

  “Hmm.” Rose pretended to consider that. “Got any experience?”

  “A little,” she confessed. “I once killed a cyclops with a single arrow.”

  “Is that so?”

  Tam nodded. “Ask anyone.”

  Rose’s smirk grew wider still. “In that case”—she spread her hands—“welcome to Fable.”

  Despite its double walls, an encircling moat, and two very advantageous hills, Conthas was ill-suited to withstand a siege. Of the four gates, the only one that still functioned was the Wyldside portcullis in the outer curtain wall. In fact, the city had never once repelled an invading army, preferring instead to welcome its would-be conquerors with open arms.

  Roderick likened this tactic to the business practice of a seedy brothel. “First you lure them in,” he explained. “Then you get them drunk, fuck them silly, rob them blind, and dump them in the alley out back.”

  “I don’t think that’s going to work this time,” Tam pointed out.

  In response, the satyr shared a sly smile with Rose. “We’ll see about that,” he said.

  Fortunately for Conthas, both Rose and Slowhand were veterans of siege warfare. Rose had been trapped in Castia for months while the Heartwyld Horde festered beyond its walls. When plague decimated the Republic’s commanding officers, she had assumed control of the city’s defenses, and had personally led its remaining soldiers out of the gate during the Battle of the Bands.

  As for Slowhand … Well, everyone and their dog’s barber knew what Saga had endured at Hollow Hill. Clay’s shield, Blackheart, was testament to what became of those who attempted to kill him. Tam doubted the Winter Queen’s hide would make for a very stout shield, but a pair of supple leather gloves probably wasn’t out of the question.

  If anyone could save Conthas (and, quite honestly, Tam wasn’t sure anyone could) it was these two.

  Come morning, Slowhand turned the Starwood into an improvised command centre. From here, he plotted the city’s defense and hosted an endless stream of mercenaries, gangsters, and alchemist types he hoped could help implement Rose’s plan—a plan even Moog referred to as “orc-shit insane.”

  “Don’t get me wrong,” he was quick to clarify. “I love it. But it’s crazy as socks on a centipede!”

  Rose took to the streets, overseeing the effort to turn Conthas into a killing ground. Avenues were cleared, or cluttered, or barricaded in order to create blind alleys and funnel Astra’s horde toward defensible choke points. Buildings were burned or demolished as Rose saw fit. Argosies were retrofitted, or disassembled, or turned into bombs and towed up the sloping hillsides.

  The Sanctuary on the southern heights (known to the locals as Chapel Hill) was designated as both a field hospital and the inevitable site of a “last stand” should things go sideways.

  “Hills,” her uncle Bran had pointed out with characteristic cheer, “make excellent places to die.”

  Along with Alkain Tor and Mad Mackie (the leaders of Giantsbane and Flashbang, respectively), Branigan was put in charge of organizing the mercenary bands into three companies that could move and operate independently of one another. One would lie in ambush, while the others made it look like they were putting up a fight and losing.

  Bran’s company was comprised almost entirely of old campaigners, veterans of the Heartwyld who jokingly dubbed themselves “The Rusted Blades.”

  Brune was entrusted with making sure every pit-fighter and street tough was armoured and equipped for war, while Cura set up shop in a low-ceilinged pub called the Cavern and began the long, tedious process of executing the most critical part of Rose’s plan. At one point, the queue of women waiting outside the pub was more than a mile long.

  Oscar the merman (suffering from a hangover that made him even grumpier than he’d been the day before) was appointed “Lord Commander of the Moat” and presented with a ceremonial silver trident. He saluted Rose and swam away, vowing to kill, as he put it, “every dead-eyed bugger who swims on my turf!”

  Tam and Roderick accompanied Rose on a tour of the city’s various wards, from the sordid squalor of Rockbottom and the smog-ridden streets of Saltkettle, to the decadent dens of the Paper Court, whose Baroness Alektra offered them iced cakes and white tea from the Phantran coast—which Rose quaffed like it was a shot of strong whiskey.

  “Where are these five hundred swords you promised me?” she asked of Alektra.

  The baroness smiled. “Running an errand,” she said cryptically, and then waved over a servant. “More tea?”

  Alektra’s errand turned out to be a full-scale assault on her twin sister’s neighbouring territory. Ho
ping to catch Ios unprepared, the baroness’s men raided the warrens of Telltale shortly before noon. They met no resistance whatsoever, though, since Ios, anticipating her sister’s treachery, had arranged an attack of her own. While Alektra’s men were looting Telltale, Ios and her assassins stormed the Paper Court. When next Tam saw the Baroness of Telltale, she was leading her sister around on a silver leash.

  Rose met briefly with Kurin, the High Han’s bodyguard, whose scouts reported that the Horde was moving more slowly than anticipated and wouldn’t arrive until the following day. Before they parted, Rose told Kurin to pay Cura a visit at the Cavern. “Skip the line,” she said, “and tell her I sent you.”

  The Ravenguard warrior looked confused, but nodded anyway and trotted off.

  Their next stop was the Monster Market, where Rose gathered the hunters and wranglers together and explained their part in her plan. One of them—a swarthy wrangler wearing a hat decorated with griffin feathers—refused to comply with her demands, and a few of his associates rallied behind him. Since she didn’t have time to negotiate (and wasn’t very good at it anyway), Rose dangled him over the goblin pit until he saw the wisdom in her plan.

  In the meantime, Roderick (who was, in fact, a brilliant negotiator) made a circuit of the forum. Fable’s booker talked to trolls, bargained with bugbears, conferred with kobold chieftains, offering every single prisoner in the square a simple choice: freedom or death.

  Those who chose freedom were informed of their role in the battle to come, while the few who refused were granted something the wranglers begrudged immensely: a quick and merciful end. The bodies were beheaded and burned immediately after.

  When Tam asked Roderick why some would prefer to die instead of fight, the satyr struck a match on his remaining horn and used it to light his pipe. “All sorts of reasons,” he said. “Could be they hate humans. Could be they fear the dead, or don’t want to become one of Astra’s thralls if shit goes south tomorrow. And some of them … Well, they’re monsters, Tam—and I mean that literally. The Heartwyld is an evil place. Warped and twisted. Live there long enough, and it gets to you. Infects you. I’ve seen it happen.”