Bloody Rose
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Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2018 by Nicholas Eames
Excerpt from Empire of Sand copyright © 2018 by Tasha Suri
Excerpt from The Thousand Deaths of Ardor Benn copyright © 2018 by Tyler Whitesides
Author photograph by Kristine Cofsky
Cover design by Lisa Marie Pompilio
Cover illustration by Richard Anderson
Cover copyright © 2018 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.
Maps by Tim Paul Illustration
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The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact permissions@hbgusa.com. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
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Simultaneously published in Great Britain and in the U.S. by Orbit in 2018
First Edition: August 2018
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Eames, Nicholas, author.
Title: Bloody rose / Nicholas Eames.
Description: First edition. | New York: Orbit, 2018. | Series: The band
Identifiers: LCCN 2018009595| ISBN 9780316362535 (softcover) | ISBN 9781549168178 (audiobook (downloadable)) | ISBN 9780316362528 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Quests (Expeditions)—Fiction. | Mercenary troops—Fiction. | BISAC: FICTION / Fantasy / Epic. | FICTION / Action & Adventure. | GSAFD: Adventure fiction. | Fantasy fiction.
Classification: LCC PR9199.4.E15 B58 2018 | DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018009595
ISBNs: 978-0-316-36253-5 (paperback), 978-0-316-36252-8 (ebook)
E3-20180531-JV-NF
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Map
Chapter One: The Monster Market
Chapter Two: The Cornerstone
Chapter Three: One Song
Chapter Four: The Wyld Heart
Chapter Five: Necessary Vices
Chapter Six: Wood and String
Chapter Seven: View from a Hill
Chapter Eight: The Villain of a Thousand Songs
Chapter Nine: Woodford
Chapter Ten: The Spectacle of Suffering
Chapter Eleven: The Greater of Two Evils
Chapter Twelve: The Rock and the Road
Chapter Thirteen: Highpool
Chapter Fourteen: The Big Deal
Chapter Fifteen: The Bard and the Beast
Chapter Sixteen: Some Wild Thing
Chapter Seventeen: The Bringol’s Bridge
Chapter Eighteen: A Home Beyond the Heartwyld
Chapter Nineteen: Prints of the Past
Chapter Twenty: Strange Animals
Chapter Twenty-one: The Clawmaster’s Cave
Chapter Twenty-two: Shadow of the Wolf
Chapter Twenty-three: Hawkshaw
Chapter Twenty-four: The Woes of Diremarch
Chapter Twenty-five: Something White
Chapter Twenty-six: Grudge
Chapter Twenty-seven: Monsters Under the Bed
Chapter Twenty-eight: A Cold Breakfast
Chapter Twenty-nine: The Spindrift
Chapter Thirty: The Rum-Go-Round
Chapter Thirty-one: The Final Verse
Chapter Thirty-two: Lurking Below
Chapter Thirty-three: Seventeen Seconds
Chapter Thirty-four: Soul on Fire
Chapter Thirty-five: The Damndest Thing
Chapter Thirty-six: Lost and Found
Chapter Thirty-seven: Sharing Smoke
Chapter Thirty-eight: Old Glory
Chapter Thirty-nine: Cold Clouds
Chapter Forty: Mercs in the Murk
Chapter Forty-one: Black Magic Woman
Chapter Forty-two: The White-Feather Bolt
Chapter Forty-three: Slowhand
Chapter Forty-four: Ashes on the Wind
Chapter Forty-five: The Free City
Chapter Forty-six: The Forest of Broken Things
Chapter Forty-seven: Four Words
Chapter Forty-eight: The Exhumation of Conthas
Chapter Forty-nine: Here and Now
Chapter Fifty: Eve of Annihilation
Chapter Fifty-one: Friends and Foes
Chapter Fifty-two: The Beginning of the End
Chapter Fifty-three: Birdsong on the Battlefield
Chapter Fifty-four: The Scabbard and the Sword
Chapter Fifty-five: Sacrifice
Chapter Fifty-six: Fighting Dirty
Chapter Fifty-seven: The War of Roses
Chapter Fifty-eight: The Spark and the Snowflake
Epilogue: The Promise
Acknowledgments
Extras Meet the Author
A Preview of Empire of Sand
A Preview of The Thousand Deaths of Ardor Benn
By Nicholas Eames
Praise for Nicholas Eames and Kings of the Wyld
Orbit Newsletter
For my brother, Tyler.
If this book is worthy of you,
it’s because you made it so.
Chapter One
The Monster Market
Tam’s mother used to say she had a Wyld Heart. “It means you’re a dreamer,” she’d told her daughter. “A wanderer, like me.”
“It means you ought to be careful,” her father had added. “A Wyld Heart needs a wise mind to temper it, and a strong arm to keep it safe.”
Her mother had smiled at that. “You’re my strong arm, Tuck. And Bran is my wise mind.”
“Branigan? You know I love him, Lil, but your brother would eat yellow snow if you told him it tasted like whiskey.”
Tam remembered her mother’s laughter as a kind of music. Had her father laughed? Probably not. Tuck Hashford had never been much for laughing. Not before his wife’s Wyld Heart got her killed, and never once after.
“Girl! Hey, girl!”
Tam blinked. A merchant with whiskered jowls and a fringe of yellowed hair was sizing her up.
“Little young for a wrangler, ain’t ya?”
She straightened, as if being taller meant seeming older. “So?”
“So …” He scratched a scab on the bald crown of his head. “What brings you to the Monster Market? You in a band or something?”
Tam wasn’t a mercenary. She couldn’t fight to save her life. Oh, she could fire a bow with passing skill, but anyone with two arms and an arrow to spare could do the same. And besides, Tuck Hashford had a hard-and-fast rule when it came to his only daughter becoming a mercenary and joining a band: “No fucking way.”
“Yeah,” she lied. “I’m in a band.
”
The man cast a suspicious eye at the tall, skinny girl standing weaponless before him. “Oh yeah? What’s it called?”
“Rat Salad.”
“Rat Salad?” The man’s face lit up like a brothel at dusk. “That’s a bloody good name for a band! You fighting in the arena tomorrow?”
“Of course.” Another lie. But lies, as her uncle Bran was fond of saying, were like a cup of Kaskar whiskey: If you’re in for one, you’re in for a dozen. “I’m here to decide what to fight.”
“A hands-on sort of woman, eh? Most bands send their bookers to handle the finer details.” The merchant nodded appreciatively. “I like your edge! Well, look no further! I’ve got a beast on hand that’ll wow the crowd and have Rat Salad on the tongue of every bard between here and the Summer Souk!” The man shuffled over to a cloth-shrouded cage and tore its sheet off with a flourish. “Behold! The fearsome cockatrice!”
Tam had never seen a cockatrice, but she knew enough about them to know that the thing in the cage was not a cockatrice.
The thing in the cage was a chicken.
“A chicken!?” The merchant looked affronted when Tam told him so. “Girl, are you blind? Look at the size of that thing!”
It was a big chicken, no doubt. Its feathers had been daubed in black paint, and its beak was smeared with blood to make it look feral, but Tam wasn’t convinced. “A cockatrice can turn flesh into stone with its gaze,” she pointed out.
The merchant grinned, a hunter whose quarry had charged headlong into the trap. “Only when it wants to, lass! Any bee can sting, right? But they only sting when they’re angry. A skunk always stinks, but it only sprays when you startle it! Ah, but look at this!” He reached into the chicken’s cage and brandished a crude stone carving that vaguely resembled a squirrel. Tam decided not to point out the price written in chalk on the bottom. “It’s already claimed one victim today! Beware, the—”
“Bwok,” said the chicken, dismayed by the abduction of its only friend.
An awkward silence stretched between Tam and the merchant.
“I should go,” she said.
“Glif’s Grace to you,” he replied curtly, already throwing the sheet back over the chicken’s cage.
Tam wandered farther into the Monster Market, which had been called Bathstone Street before arenas started blooming like mushrooms all over the north and the scale-merchants arrived to set up shop. It was broad and straight, like almost every street in Ardburg, and hedged on either side by wooden pens, iron cages, and dugouts fenced by barbed wire. Most days it wasn’t especially crowded, but there were fights in the arena tomorrow, and some of the biggest mercenary bands in Grandual were coming to town.
Tuck Hashford also had a rule about his only daughter going anywhere near the Monster Market, or the arena, or associating with mercenaries in general: “No fucking way.”
Despite that, Tam often took this route on her way to work—not because it was quicker, but because it quickened something inside of her. It scared her. Thrilled her. Reminded her of the stories her mother used to tell, of daring quests and wild adventure, of fearsome beasts and valiant heroes like her father and Uncle Bran.
Also, since Tam would likely spend her whole life slinging drinks and playing lute for coppers here in wintry Ardburg, a stroll through the Monster Market was the closest she’d ever come to adventure.
“Look here!” called a heavily tattooed Narmeeri woman as Tam passed by. “You want ogres? I’ve got ogres! Fresh from the hills of Westspring! Fierce as they come!”
“Manticoooooooore!” shouted a northerner with a shaved head and savage scars marring his face. “Manticoooooooore!” There was, indeed, a real live manticore behind him. Its batlike wings were bound by chains, its barbed tail trapped inside a leather sack. A muzzle was clamped over its leonine jaw, but despite its captivity the creature still managed to look terrifying.
“Wargs of the Winter Forests!” another merchant announced above a chorus of deep growls. “Wyld born, farm raised!”
“Goblins!” an old lady hollered from atop an iron-barred wagon. “Get your goblins here! One courtmark apiece, or a dozen for ten!”
Tam peered into the cage upon which the old woman stood. It was crammed with the filthy little creatures, most of which looked scrawny and malnourished. She doubted even a dozen of them would give a band of half-decent mercenaries a run for their money.
“Hey!” the woman hollered down at her. “This ain’t a dress shop, girl. Now buy a bloody goblin or get on with ya!”
Tam tried to imagine what her father would say if she came home with a pet goblin in tow, and couldn’t help but grin. “No fucking way,” she muttered.
She walked on, weaving through the throng of bookers and local wranglers as they bartered and bargained with scale-merchants and rugged Kaskar huntsmen. She did her best not to gawk openly at the varied monsters or the merchants peddling them. There were gangly trolls whose severed limbs were capped with silver to prevent them regenerating, and a massive, muscled ettin that was missing one of its two heads. She passed a snake-headed gorgon chained by her neck to brackets in the wall behind her, and a black horse that breathed fire into the face of someone fool enough to inspect its teeth.
“Tam!”
“Willow!” She trotted over to her friend’s stall. Willow was an islander from the Silk Coast, bronze-skinned and big for his kind. She’d remarked when they first met that Willow was a curious name for a guy his size, and he’d said it was because a willow tree provided shade to everything around it—which made a lot of sense when he put it that way.
Willow’s black curls bounced as he shook his head. “Cutting through the Monster Market again? What would old Tuck say if he found out?”
“I think we both know the answer to that,” she said with a grin. “How’s business?”
“Booming!” He gestured to his wares, a variety of winged serpents in wicker cages behind him. “Before long every home in Ardburg will have their very own zanto! They make excellent pets, you know. Great with kids, provided those kids don’t mind having corrosive acid spat in their faces from time to time. Also, they can’t stand the cold up here and will very probably be dead inside a month. Next time I go home I’m bringing back lobsters instead. I could sell lobsters, easy.”
Tam nodded, despite having no idea what sort of monster a lobster was.
Willow toyed idly with one of several shell necklaces he was wearing. “Hey, did you hear the news? There’s another Horde, apparently. North of Cragmoor, in the Brumal Wastes. Fifty thousand monsters hell-bent on invading Grandual. They say the leader is a giant by the name of—”
“Brontide,” Tam finished. “I know. I work in a tavern, remember? If there’s a rumour to be heard, I’ve heard it. Did you know the Sultana of Narmeer is actually a boy wearing a woman’s mask?”
“That can’t be true.”
“Or that a seamstress who killed her husband down in Rutherford is claiming to be the Winter Queen herself?”
“I seriously doubt that.”
“How about the one where—”
The sound of cheering interrupted her. Both of them turned to see a commotion at the nearest cross street, and a smile split Tam’s face from ear to ear.
“Looks like the party’s come to town,” said Willow. Tam shot him a pleading glance and the islander sighed dramatically. “Go,” he told her. “Say hi to Bloody Rose for me.”
Tam spared her friend a smile before bolting away. She ducked around the bulk of a shaggy yethik, then slipped between a shouting huntsman and a barking wrangler an instant before the huntsman launched a punch that put the wrangler on his ass. She reached the next street as the first argosy was approaching and wormed her way to the front of the crowd.
“Hey, watch where—” A boy her age with a hawkish nose and limp blond hair turned his affronted scowl into what he probably thought was a charming smile. “Ah, sorry. A pretty girl like you can stand wherever she’d like, of course
.”
Ugh, she thought. “Thanks,” she said, choosing a falsely bright smile over an exaggerated eye roll.
“You came to see the mercenaries?” he asked.
No, I came to watch the horses shit, dumbass. “I did,” she answered.
“Me too,” he said, and then tapped the lute slung over his shoulder. “I’m a bard.”
“Oh? With what band?”
“Well, I don’t have one yet,” he said defensively. “But it’s only matter of time.”
She nodded distractedly as the lead argosy rolled up. The massive war wagon was bigger than the house Tam shared with her father. It was draped in leather skins and drawn by a pair of woolly white mammoths with streamers tied to their tusks. The mercenaries to whom it belonged stood around a stout siege tower built on top, waving their weapons at the crowd massed along either side of the avenue.
“That’s Giantsbane,” said the boy next to her, as if the north’s favoured sons required an introduction. The mercenaries—all of them big, bearded Kaskars—were regulars at the tavern where Tam worked, and their leader gave her a wave as the argosy went by. The self-styled bard glanced over, bewildered. “You know Alkain Tor?”
Tam did her best to ignore his tone and shrugged. “Sure.”
The boy frowned, but said nothing further.
A hundred or so mercenaries on foot and horseback came next, and Tam picked out a few bands she recognized from the Cornerstone commons: the Locksmiths, the Black Puddings, the Boils, and Knightmare—though two of the latter’s members were missing and an arachnian in steel plate armour had taken their place.
“Riffraff,” sneered the boy. He paused, clearly wanting Tam to ask for clarification. When she didn’t, he clarified anyway. “Most of these lesser-knowns will wrestle with trash imps in guildhalls and private arenas tonight. But the bigger bands—Giantsbane, for instance, or Fable—will fight in the Ravine tomorrow, in front of thousands.”
“The Ravine?” Tam asked. She knew damn well what the Ravine was, but if this blowhard was gonna talk, then Tam figured she’d might as well choose the subject.
“It’s Ardburg’s arena,” the boy droned on as a caravan of argosies rumbled past, “though it’s not much to look at, really. Not a real arena, like the ones down south. I was in Fivecourt last summer, you know. Their new arena is the biggest in all the world. They call it—”