Dahlia “Thorned” Rose, “Nightshade Maiden”'s Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Dahlia Rose crawled out of the red clay mound on her belly, blunderbuss first. The Mudslide guards called her the Nightshade Maiden inside the cells, where they thought the name was a joke. Six weeks ago her ex, Chappy Chapman, forged her signature on a stack of stolen writs and tipped the magistrate before sunrise. Now she was free, filthy, and short one dog. She meant to find Chappy, clear her name, and reach Jolly Roger's Spyglass before he could put his hands on it. The tunnel had not been her work. A Francais dwarf savant named Carmine, owed her a favor from Commandaria, and he had spent two nights cutting under the south wall with a folding pick. The exit came up through brick chunks and broken track, shaped like a hunter's blind from above. Dahlia patted the clay, whispered thanks, and slid into the tree line. She lay flat under wet ferns until she saw the signal: a split black-and-white crow circling twice, then dropping a copper-bronze flash from a chainmail harness. Peril, her messenger. Safe to move. She followed the bird three miles through soaked pine until the willow stronghold rose out of the canopy. Artemis' Marionette House sat braided into ancient trunks, its catwalks hidden under hanging green. Dahlia climbed the rope ladder with the shield strapped to her back, the raven etched at its center catching no light. Her grandfather, in there somewhere under the silver. She had carried him since she was seventeen and never once dropped him. Loom met her on the second landing, the Leadtail hawk's gray feathers slicked from the rain. "You look like a grave," he said. He pushed a cup of hot broth at her. He had little on Chappy. A drover at the Witch's Pyre Pub had seen a man matching Chappy's description trading silver three nights back. That was the next thread. The rest of the Foolhardy 5 were two valleys over, wrestling a barrel of Scorch Gully Rum out of a cellar that did not want to give it up. They would ride for Chappy the moment they returned. "Where is my dog," Dahlia said. Calm. Loom's wings shifted. Chappy had come through the hideout looking for her ledgers, and Lucksome had run him off, snapping at his heels into the dark. The dog had not come back. But one of Loom's scouts had found a bed of woven sticks deep in the gloam, stuffed with feathers and a flat cushion. Pork bones around it. Eggshells. Three pilfered horseshoes stacked like a charm. Lucksome, alive, and stealing breakfast from somebody's stable. Dahlia set the cup down. "Then we have a trail and a tavern." She loaded the Rip Jacket by the firelight and counted her explosive tubules. Two for the pub door if it came to that. Loom unrolled a map. Outside, Peril called once from the willows, the all-clear holding. The hunt had started.