Roses Read online

  Roses

  G. R. Mannering

  Sky Pony Press

  New York

  Copyright © 2013 by Georgia-Karena Mannering

  All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Sky Pony Press, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018.

  Sky Pony Press books may be purchased in bulk at special discounts for sales promotion, corporate gifts, fund-raising, or educational purposes. Special editions can also be created to specifications. For details, contact the Special Sales Department, Sky Pony Press, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018 or [email protected].

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously.

  Sky Pony® is a registered trademark of Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.®, a Delaware corporation.

  Visit our website at www.skyponypress.com.

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Mannering, G. R.

  Roses / G.R. Mannering.

  pages cm

  Summary: “A darker retelling of Beauty and her Beast, set in the fantasy land of Sago amid a purging of all the magics in the land”--Provided by publisher.

  ISBN 978-1-62087-988-7 (hardcover : alk. paper) [1. Fantasy.] I. Title.

  PZ7.M31516Ro 2013

  [Fic]--dc23

  2013027916

  Printed in the United States of America

  Map of the Western Realm illustrated by Danielle Ceccolini.

  In memory of Richard Hayton

  Contents

  Part One

  CHAPTER ONE The House of Rose

  CHAPTER TWO The Youngest Daughter

  CHAPTER THREE The Baby with Amethyst Eyes

  CHAPTER FOUR The Nanny

  CHAPTER FIVE The Circus

  CHAPTER SIX The Little Beauty

  CHAPTER SEVEN The Child with Amethyst Eyes

  CHAPTER EIGHT The Incident with Eli

  CHAPTER NINE The Threat in Sago

  CHAPTER TEN The Danger

  Part Two

  CHAPTER ELEVEN The Journey

  CHAPTER TWELVE The Hillands

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN The Sister

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN The Temple

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN The Winter

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN The Girl with Amethyst Eyes

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN The Dreams

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN The Matchmaker

  CHAPTER NINETEEN The Woman with Amethyst Eyes

  CHAPTER TWENTY The Gray Shadow

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE The Proposal

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO The Red Rose

  Part Three

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE The Beast

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR The Enchanted Castle

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE The Prisoner

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX The Forbidden

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN The Library

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT The Voices

  Part Four

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE The Thaw

  CHAPTER THIRTY The Ball

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE The Chapel

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO The Nightmares

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE The Corridor of Mirrors

  Part Five

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR The Blackness

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE The Return

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX The Attack

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN The Magic Bloods

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT The Dead

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE The Spell

  Acknowledgments

  Part One

  She panted into the chilled air. Snowflakes fluttered around her like ashen butterflies, clinging to her lashes and to the hood of her thick cloak. Champ, her warhorse, tore through the night’s darkness with clouds of warm breath, and his flanks heaved after the rush of the ride.

  Before them in the enchanted quiet stood a castle. It was just as it had been described to her, and she grimaced slightly, for she had hoped that it was not real. The snowflakes whirled around its facade without settling, brushing against the latticed windows and marble arches. It was vast and rich with numerous turrets of coppery bricks that appeared to rise higher and higher until they were lost in the white of the snowstorm. Its outline flickered against the magenta sky and shifted under her gaze, as if it almost was not there.

  She swallowed hard and pressed her heels into Champ’s sides. The pair made no sound as they approached the gates; the blanket of snow muffled all noise, and Champ’s hooves sank deep into its cushioned whiteness. He flicked his ears. She knew that he did not want to approach, but they could not turn back. She leaned forward and laid her cold, raw hand on his sweaty flank to reassure him.

  She was not surprised when the iron gates swung silently open of their own accord. She gritted her teeth as she urged Champ on and reminded herself that she was saving the life of a man who had once saved her own.

  As the gates clicked shut behind them, she heard the distant roar of a beast.

  CHAPTER ONE

  The House of Rose

  When she was born, the midwife screamed. It was a reaction she was later familiar with. A child with amethyst eyes, silvery skin, and white hair is abnormal in Pervorocco. The combination is startling and with the later addition of a surly demeanor, she became quite frightening.

  But even in babyhood, with the gentle air of innocence, she had terrified the midwife. The young woman held the pale, slippery bundle in her outstretched arms and screamed. The silver skin was so light it was almost translucent, and mauve webs of veins glinted beneath its surface in the shadowed room. The baby was unnatural and freakish to an olive-skinned, dark-eyed race of people, and the midwife’s fingers began to tremble. At that moment the bells at the nearest temple clanged to mark midnight.

  The midwife immediately thought the bundle a gypsy’s child, a sorcerer’s child, a cursed child—born at the bewitching hour to steal her soul. She looked up, intending to thrust it into the arms of the mother, but the mother had vanished. This produced a second scream.

  A doctor darted into the room and scanned the beds of dying patients in the yellow glaze of the oil lamps. His eyes finally alighted on the last bed in the corner, where a midwife stood alone, clutching a ghostly child, and he pressed his thumb and index finger together instinctively in the sign of the gods before immediately reproaching himself. Nobody believed in the gods anymore.

  “What is it?” he asked, moving reluctantly toward her.

  The midwife blinked, but did not answer. She vaguely knew the doctor, as she knew all of the staff at the paupers’ hospital, but names were never shared. There were too many dying people for such trivialities.

  The baby began twitching and moaning.

  “What is it?” he repeated, wiping his damp brow. Though it was the spring season, Sago was muggy and hot. It would remain like this through all four seasons—the heat never ceased.

  “It is . . .” the midwife trailed off, lost for words.

  “Where is the mother?” the doctor asked.

  An empty bed with unsoiled sheets stretched tightly over a straw mattress stood before them without the faintest indent to suggest that someone had lain there, let alone given birth.

  “She was here,” the midwife gasped. “She was here . . . I’m sure of it.”

  “Where is she now?”

  “I . . . I do not know.”

  “What did she look like?”

  It would not have been the first time that a mother had given birth and then tried to escape the paupers’ hospital without her child. In the suffocating throng of downtown Sago—the
capital of Pervorocco—children were an unnecessary expense and the shantytown orphanages were overflowing.

  The midwife creased her brow and licked her chapped lips as if to explain, but then a vacant look passed across her face and she stared off down the ward.

  “I do not know,” she said at last.

  The baby began crying louder and its tiny, translucent cheeks turned red. It was the red of blood and not the rosy blush of a normal child. The doctor had treated a few Rurlish in his time—a pale, fair race—and yet none of them had looked silvery like this beast.

  “How long have you been on your shift?” he asked.

  In the swamp-like squalor of the paupers’ hospital it was not unusual to work a whole day and night without rest. The doctor had been rushed off his feet since yesterday lunchtime and he had various streaks of rusty brown down the front of his shirt to prove it.

  “I have just come on my night shift.”

  The doctor glanced at the baby nervously. It would not be admitted to any orphanage looking the way it did and there would be little use trying to find its mother—whatever gave birth to this creature had surely flown back from whence it came. He did not know what they were to do with such a thing.

  “Perhaps it is from The Neighbor?” the midwife whispered hopefully. “They let anything across the borders now.”

  “I do not think so. I have birthed Magic Bloods before and this is different.”

  “A Magic Being?”

  “I think not.”

  The midwife shuddered and the baby’s wailing grew louder.

  A dying patient in a nearby bed groaned.

  “Quiet the thing!”

  The midwife clumsily grasped some nearby stained swaddling and wrapped the creature in it. It looked somewhat better when she had finished, but still her fingers shook.

  “What are we to do?” she asked.

  The doctor rubbed his forehead. Born in an outer city, some crazy notion had brought him to Sago seasons ago to seek work. He had been young then, without the softness about his belly that had arrived with middle age, and he had been full of dreams to singlehandedly raise the healthcare of the impoverished shantytowns that swept the edges of downtown Sago like a lady’s full skirt. Those hopes had long been lost in a never-ending sea of sick and dying people. The doctor was tired and most of his compassion had been wrung out of him. His first thought was to leave the baby outside the front door, but just as he considered this, something at the side of the bed caught his eye.

  He bent down and picked up a hexagonal amulet from the floor, instantly recognizing it.

  “I know where this thing is from!” he gasped, the relief in his voice palpable.

  The midwife nodded.

  “I spoke to a gentleman about it—the House of Rose. I would not have recognized it otherwise, but the crest is so distinct.”

  He brushed his thumb across the carved rose at the center of the amulet, feeling the hard undulations of its heavy petals. Family amulets were a dated concept and now rarely seen in the streets of Sago or its surrounding towns. They belonged to the Houses and those with ancient ancestry.

  A few days ago, the doctor had rushed out of the hospital’s front door and into the muddy street to gasp as much fresh air as the putrid, humid atmosphere allowed. He had been removing the gangrenous leg of a child with no sedation and he had needed a moment away from the young boy’s tortuous screams.

  “Are you all right?” a voice had asked.

  The doctor had looked up to see a gentleman, although the exact appearance of the man was unclear to him now. He could only remember that he had been surprised, first to be addressed by anyone in that street, and second that such a smart individual should be wandering among lowly beggars and prostitutes.

  “Yes,” he had found himself saying. “I just needed some air.”

  It was then that he had glimpsed the amulet around the gentlemen’s neck, clearly on show for all to see. It was a heavy, gold, hexagonal disk with filigree twisting its borders and an intricate, carved rose at its center. It was possibly the most beautiful thing that the doctor had seen in a long time and he immediately advised the gentlemen to hide it, for thieves stole openly in the city’s center.

  “Thank you,” the gentlemen had said, and he had possibly tipped his hat, if he had been wearing a hat, the doctor thought, trying desperately to remember.

  “It’s magnificent,” the doctor had replied, unable to think of a better word.

  The gentlemen had nodded and said, “It is my family, the House of Rose,” and his eyes had flashed. They had flashed with a color that could have been silver or gold or violet. Or, maybe it was just the light.

  Then the stranger had walked away.

  It was funny that such a thing had stuck in the doctor’s mind; his never-ending line of patients usually eclipsed all else in his life.

  “Are we to send it to the House of Rose then?” asked the midwife, keen to get away from the freakish baby.

  The doctor nodded. “I will take it to the nearest town hall and ask them to send it to a House of Rose relation.”

  “Fancy such a thing being from one of the Houses . . .” muttered the midwife, but she was too pleased to be rid of the baby to make anything of it.

  Despite it being the dead of night, the town hall would be open. The constant stream of drunken criminals, homeless orphans, and illegal gamblers left Sago’s town halls with no opportunity to close their doors. It was a running joke that the overflowing shantytowns never slept—night or day, it was all the same to their inhabitants.

  The midwife passed the swaddled bundle to the doctor, who grimaced and held it awkwardly in one arm, trying not to look at the mewing package. As he hurried out of the ward, a little part of him was glad that he had an excuse to leave. He was too distracted in his thoughts to notice a well-dressed gentlemen brush past him in the hall with eyes that might have been silver or gold or violet. Or, maybe it was just the light.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The Youngest Daughter

  The House of Rose was easily traced through the town hall system to Ma Dane Herm-se-Hollis, its last surviving member. Her own amulet hung in her drawing room so that guests might see that she was of good breeding, but she no longer wore it around her neck like a prize, as she had done in her youth.

  Good breeding was all Ma Dane had had then, for she was plain looking and thick shaped even as a girl, with the addition of a disagreeable temper. She had used the amulet to attract a painfully rich husband, the merchant’s son, Pa Hamish Herm-se-Hollis, who was desperate to marry ancestry. Pa Hamish could hardly believe his luck when Ma Dane House of Rose made eyes at him at a dance, and their wedding was arranged soon after.

  Since the House of Rose was sinking into a swamp of poverty, Ma Dane’s widowed mother was only too happy to marry her youngest daughter off to anyone, let alone a considerably wealthy family. The widow had wondered how on earth her plain-looking child had managed to attract such a suitor, but upon making inquiries, she soon realized that Houses in better financial positions had dismissed Pa Hamish on account of his ugly exterior, social ineptitude, and shady dealings. However, Ma Dane’s mother had slowly been dying for some years, often worrying about what would become of her youngest daughter once she was gone, so she had wisely turned a blind eye to these shortcomings, passing away with relief a few days before the wedding.

  After a honeymoon on an island off The Neighbor, Pa Hamish and Ma Dane had moved into Pa Hamish’s father’s mansion, intending to care for the bed-ridden, foul-tempered old man in his last days. The mansion sat on the seafront of Sago’s richest, most extravagant boulevard and was everything that Ma Dane had ever wished for in the cramped, stinking boarding houses of her younger years. It had an extensive fleet of servants, vast chambers, and a two-story ballroom. To complete the idyllic fairy tale, Pa Hamish’s father promptly died after the couple had been living there but one season and the whole contents of his boundless estate passed to his only s
on and domineering daughter-in-law.

  That was when Ma Dane stopped wearing her amulet and instead hung it in her drawing room, realizing that the dated emblem would inspire respect in high society, but never acceptance. To be accepted one had to conform to the nouveau riche lifestyle and Ma Dane desperately wanted to be accepted. She spent the next several years plotting her way up Sago’s social ladder, using her wealth, her good breeding, and her husband’s formidable family business as leverage.

  Such distractions were exactly what Ma Dane needed to forget her past and she succeeded in escaping it for many seasons. Even the death of her mother had left little impression on her, for she had known that the widow would die and she had feared it. The House of Rose had no other family in Sago and no inheritance to speak of, thus Ma Dane had no possibility of making her own way in the realm. Her father, before he had dissolved into gambling and drink, had refused to let his children pursue an occupation, arguing that they were gentry and could survive on their breeding and family wealth alone.