A dense dark green peered through the flurries of white that whipped Vira’s cheeks, the first meaningful color she’d seen in hours. At Duke Hallgor Lovas’s keep she’d seen banners in faded cloth, colors dulling with the years, while the village around the castle showed some brighter hues in its winter flowers. A child had offered Vira a large bouquet of bright red roses when she arrived, a guest honored and respected. She pretended to believe it was a spontaneous gesture. For the past few days there had been no inns or settlements on their path, leaving no recourse but to sleep in the cold wilderness, so this warmth was welcome, much as she hated relying on the hospitality of a dishonest old man who acted like he wasn’t as treacherous as his fellow Valkeans, even as he conspired with them.
That was behind them now. If Vira looked back, she would see only the snowfall. It swept over the world, bringing with it silence, stillness, a calm that was not quite peace. Behind, the footprints seemed to fade away almost immediately, melting into the whitening mist. Almost as though we cannot even find our way back. This was unusually harsh weather, according to Sergeant Agnur, who all too often refused to let a silence linger. Now only three soldiers accompanied them, riding slowly though their steeds were suited for this snowfall. Vira could make much better time without such encumbrances, but Duke Lovas insisted that Agnur travel with her, for her safety.
To watch over me, more like it, she understood. She had understood that from the start, but now it was clear even through the blizzard, from Agnur’s gaze, from his whispers to his men, to his unwelcome remarks on how she should deal with the insubordinate northrons who threatened Valkeavise’s standing with the Rose. We must placate all inflamed spirits, he said. We, as though he was on Vira’s side as an ally, not as a millstone. Please, oh please, Lady Blossom, assure all those malcontents that they shan’t be punished, let us pretend none of this happened and that you weren’t locked in a hole along with rats and your shit, and don’t forget that good Duke Hallgor was your friend, always your friend, yes, the Rose’s loyal friend. A touch of the old man’s scent lingered around Agnur, and the sergeant’s words were his lord’s as well. This could be why a warrior of this miserable land actually made it to old age; for good or ill, there was a cunning there. When they thought the Roses withered, Lovas was quick to try to seize power where he could, fostering sedition and dreaming of independence. Now he could play the Red Rose’s faithful ally, currying favor and prestige, perhaps some advantages over his peers…
“Ísafverfi is within the day’s reach,” said Vira. “I have heard such an ample variety of whispers regarding the province and the conflicts there. Duke Lovas says that a simple, easy diplomatic mission will sedate this unpleasant affair, but Stensrud spoke with such urgency that the matter seemed serious indeed. And the commoners in the village spoke of a winter sown red with war.”
“There are difficulties, yes, but nothing that must needs escalate. War… My Lady Ulkatsil, lend no great credence to the words of washerwomen and tillers who embellish their tedious lives with hearsay. Some blood has been shed, some skirmishes fought, but no battle, no war… Even before there was word of the Ruby Blossom’s continuation, not all lords were in agreement. There remains the Empire of Tesmaria to contend with, mighty even without the Blossoms. The boldest dreamt of independence, others found it best to leverage the Empire’s moment of weakness, without their luminous backers, to wrest rights and benefits,” Vira was glad she had a friendly, smiling face, so that her smirk and amusement did not seem unusual. Luminous backers of the House of Rosavor and all the Houses that came before it… That was simply too good.
“What a quarrelsome folk you are,” she said. “I expect that, if nothing else, you and your sire understand that such discord meant this uprising was ill-conceived from the start.”
But, then again, so are all such plots until they triumphed. One glimpse at the world reveals just how much of it was ill-conceived and yet endured. Nature abhorred a moron, but the realms of men at times rewarded them. It almost made Vira curious to see just how far this foolish secession plot could have bumbled along.
But it was her bloom-sisters she was desperately curious about. Your fellow Blossoms remain, she had been told, but that meant little and less. How many? Where? Which ones? To these questions her hosts had no answers to share, tongues held by ignorance or malice. Or both; no one had ever been so stupid as to find cruelty beyond them, and none ever so despicable as to find no room for idiocy. In Vira’s experience, those traits were often found in cretinous marriage.
The winds became uncomfortably loud during the lengthy silences between Vira and her traveling companions. Their whistling turned to hissing and then to a deep, distant sigh. They had halted long enough, and the day was not like to get any warmer, so they returned to the road north.
A thick cloud cover made the tracking of time a questionable proposition. The hours crawled on as they trudged through the snow, with little change to their surroundings, greens fading into browns and grays so gradually that it felt as though Vira was only sleepwalking aimlessly in a strange land, dreamlike – though what demented mind would dream of a place like this was no question she could answer.
Enough time had seemed to pass that it ought to be night, yet the world remained clear and bright. Time meant little in the blizzard, measured only by pangs of hunger and the aches of weary limbs. The group sat beneath a sturdy oak, whose heavy branches from time to time lurched and jerked and dropped a slew of snow by their feet. The men joined by the fire, but Vira remained apart. She tried to listen to the wind, but they spoke too loudly, so she couldn’t help but hear their conversation.
“Served some time in Ísafverfi a few years back,” said the one with a scar under his lip, named Lyas or something similar. He was the oldest among them, prone to bragging and boasting deeds of no consequence. He took great pride in the wide range of mediocrities he had lived and took them for experience. “Before the Duke took me in for his own household guard.”
“Household guard,” laughed the ugly one they called Squint, a stupid name he’d been given by companions, though Vira found amusement in convincing herself that his mother named him thus by dint of his roving eyes. “Duke Lovas has hundreds o’ men in his employ, don’t be thinking yourself of some import for having shat within a high lord’s furlong once or twice.”
“Be quiet,” Lyas whined. “I was saying, I know some of the noble folk of Ísafverfi and their conduct, and can attest that even a man as proud as Duke Aegil would try to cheat a man-at-arms of his wages, paltry as they are. I stupidly thought mayhaps they was penniless and struggling, or miserly to the point of dishonesty, but the truth is I think the folk there just like to lie and steal. I fought alongside men who’d pilfered my fucking kindling rather than get their own, that’s how lowly they are. No wonder they turned rebel.”
“They stole from you because they can tell a moron who don’t deserve his money,” said the third one, whose name Vira never learned, because his peers only ever called him little shit. He was not quite so little in truth, but was so young he probably still drank milk. “Wherever you go, sorts like you get taken advantage of, ‘cos you know not what to do with an advantage anyways.”
“Be that as it may, ‘tis no great surprise that those cunts up north turned traitor,” Lyas continued. “I thought it folly, always did.”
“You’ll break an arm jerking the Blossom’s cock, fool,” said the little shit. “If ever you found an arse you would not kiss, ‘twould be astonishing.”
Vira laughed, an uglier sound than she remembered it. Since she was a young girl she knew her laughter was high-pitched and grating, but now she was suddenly reminded of just how unpleasant it was, and her own mother’s sweet birdsong resounded in her head, a voice so anodyne for words so heartless. Vira knew she was annoying those men, that they’d rather be digging latrines than following her north. Alas for you, your faithless masters have led you and your home to a ruinous road.
“You can speak freely,” she said, “I care not one whit. A stay in the dungeons has taught me exactly what esteem I’m judged to deserve. Subjugation is a most bitter taste, I can scarcely blame you for seizing what you thought was an opportunity.”
I can, of course, for all the good that will do to me.
“Your Rose would not be so forgiving,” said Sergeant Agnur. “We have felt her briars, and the wise among us know not to cross her. But wounds don’t always birth wisdom but resentment, and the promise of vengeance is like honey.”
“You hate us,” Vira said plainly. “I too would chafe at the notion of kneeling and offering my sword to my forefathers’ butchers. Whether that blood drips from the sword of Rosavor or the Rose is of no concern.”
“Will you have our tongues if we speak truth?” Squint asked.
“What use would I have for your tongues?” She shrugged.
“The Conflagration is hundreds o’ years behind us,” he said, “No living memory remains of it, and so that hatred has cooled with the snows. But the lingering embers are the reminders that the fate of our people is ultimately not ours to decide. The future has been created for us. And we are but a small portion o’ it, a land to forget and purge from your mind. It feels as though we matter so little that any revolt on our part would go unnoticed, and yet who can bear that…? Folly, aye, that’s what it was, and though we played no part in the decisions, though we knew the risks, even those of us who did not turn coat still dared to dream, a little… He who lives his life without ever tasting pride forgets what it’s like to be a man.”
Vira understood. The myriad ambitions of the valklings got in the way of their hopes, and if they ever seemed like thoughtless impulses, that’s because they were. Through action, through violence, one could dream of regaining the dignity of being a master of their own destiny. Even if that destiny was struggle and loss.
“It means less than nothing coming from me,” said Vira, “but I’m confident that your lord has determined that the Rose is weak enough that, after you manage to bring an end to these hostilities before they have the chance to spread, he and his allies will be able to leverage that into privileges, rights… Greater freedom. Perhaps not the freedom of your dreams, but won by your toil nonetheless. Making peace is difficult work. The most difficult work, perhaps, and it certainly does not carry the taste of honey.”
“So you say,” said Agnur. “Things have not yet come too far to be undone. It is easy to dream such dreams as you speak of, but when you look at it, only the blood of our countrymen has been shed, all blades turned within Valkeavise, all flames contained within our lands. It is only our own nose we bloodied. Perhaps-”
A sudden gust stifled the fire, smothered the sergeant’s voice. A familiar sensation lingered on the wind, but Vira scarcely had the time to try to identify it. A light came forth from the blizzard, a red brighter than the blaze had burned before it was quelled. Not a light, Vira realized only when it unveiled the shape of a woman, a scarlet blur cutting through the white, suddenly standing right before her, her gaze briefly meeting Vira’s before the world became a spray of sparks hissing and turning snow to steam. Her eyes were fire, fire her hair, her armor and her cape, but the huge blade she wielded was clean and pure as snow.
Squint had no time to react; the sword pierced through his chest and painted a red arc behind him. Lyas moved to grab his spear, but a black spike sprouted from his chest, then another, a dozen, and he fell face-first onto the snow, his back punctured by black feathers. Vira reached for her dagger, but she was not in danger. These are Blossoms.
Agnur and the young man yielded, not that they had a choice. Their companions’ wounds smoked in the cold, and the red spread from their corpses. The swordswoman was clad in lacquered plate, a layered masterwork of steel with a skirt that unfolded at the waist like a rose in bloom. Her eyes were sharp and narrow, full of hate, laden with anger. Not unfamiliar, not truly, but in the chaos Vira could not think clearly, and in trying to enunciate a question she babbled like a stupid child.
“Lady Tantia,” the other Blossom’s voice was carried from afar, a murmur spoken meters away but understood as clearly as a kiss on her ear. “There are no more of them. Take their horses and leave them there to die.”
She approached, and only then did Vira notice that neither of the two left any footprints on the snow. The soft-spoken Blossom was draped in raven wings, a cloak over her right shoulder made not of fur but feathers swaying unnaturally, guided by the girl’s hand and not by the gusts. Black velvet wrapped around her body, layers of petticoats rustling beneath the hem with each step she took, louder than her voice. Slender, like a doll… Dark blue hair parted in two tumbling lengths and fell past her waist, secured by ribbons of silk. The eyes did not match her beauty, however. They were hollow, pale, tired.
“We are in need of more horses, my Madeleine,” the woman said, stopping before Vira, inspecting her. She didn’t seem too impressed with what she saw. “The prisoner…? It is true, they let you go. Duke Irsith was correct. Hallgor is a wretched craven that deals only in half measures.”
“I did not know there were other Blossoms here in Valkeavise,” said Vira. She recognized Tantia, not Madeleine.
“You are not like to know much,” said Tantia Sullhon, turning her back on Vira as she approached the kneeling sergeant, ignoring the smaller man crawling away. “A smarter woman would have headed south, not north, but it is nevertheless fortunate that you have found your way to us.”
“It was to stop this all,” Vira said. Agnur avoided her gaze, staring defiantly at Tantia and Madeleine. “Duke Hallgor comman- asked me to accompany some soldiers to try and defuse the tensions.”
“Tensions?” Tantia cackled. Unlike Vira’s hers was an elegant laughter, even in its loud exaggeration, a noble voice that ill suited a bloodsoaked woman carrying a massive sword. “You are a soldier,” she said to Agnur. “Not a diplomat. You people are soldiers, are you not? Is that not your heritage, your pride? Should you not take it to its end? You have struck first, you and your masters, and though I know not this woman, arresting one of us is an affront to all Blossoms, and I suffer no affronts.”
“So you choose to continue this folly,” Agnur said. “We started it, aye, but we mean to finish it. You speak of Duke Irsith… Is he your ally?”
“He did not turn traitor,” said Tantia. “Even here it is possible to choose honor. You simply chose otherwise.”
“Does it matter to you if I say this does not need to escalate?”
“No,” the woman said. “You have turned against your betters, your guardians. And you think an apology will undo your slight? That you can say sorry, it turns out we regret our rebellion, so we wish to take it back? Don’t be absurd. As to you, Vira… We have need of you. You have felt on your flesh the indignities of upstarts and ingrates. Would you like to kill them?”
“What? No, I… Why would…?”
“Do you have pity for these miscreants?” Madeleine asked. “Well, as long as you don’t desert your bloom-sisters, it makes no difference if this scum feeds the soil.”
“I promise you, Vira, peace is not a possibility here,” said Tantia. “We will pacify this country, put to the sword all those who had delusions of defiance, and then we can go somewhere your piss won’t freeze.”
She was not actually being asked if she wanted to join them. Whatever their plans, the two already counted Vira as one of them. She caught a glimpse of the butchered body, recalled the stench of her cell and the loss of her bloom-sisters. Some choices are made for us, someone had taught her once. Other paths present no choice at all. Between what remained of her rosen family and a land of men cold, done, and old, playing at warriors and stumbling blindly into war guided only by their ambitions, Vira knew her choice. She had made it long ago.
“Leave a horse so that it can’t be said no mercy was offered,” said Vira. That was better than the two dead men had been granted, but that blood was already spilled. Curdled, too.
“Such kindness,” Tantia remarked. “I’ll consider it, for your sake, but I’m not sure I care to.”
“M’lady Blossom,” the younger man said. When Tantia turned back to meet his eyes, she seemed to have almost forgotten he was still there, and alive, “we’re only soldiers, have mercy, we had no say in this treason.”
“Then you have no say in the manner of your death,” Tantia drove the tip of her sword through the top of his head. His body jerked violently until it came to a sudden end. The steel was a gruesome red nightmare when it was pulled loose, and Tantia grimaced and flicked her tongue, handing the weapon to the Blossom behind her. After leaving one horse behind for Agnur, Tantia and Madeleine did not look back. “Get someone to clean this when we’re back in Moonglow Keep. We’ve wasted enough time here.”
The Rose's Torn Petals 