Burn Red Skies by Kerstin Espinosa Rosero

Author:Kerstin Espinosa Rosero [Rosero, Kerstin Espinosa]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: BURN RED SKIES by K. E. Rosero. First edition 2020.
Publisher: K. E. Rosero
Published: 2020-11-11T16:00:00+00:00

17

genovel

FIRE REALM

It was a strange thing, the feel of a man freshly severed from the waking world. His body bent and twisted but didn’t break, and for having just parted with something so immense, it felt absurdly heavy.

Bard spent a few moments trying to place the dead man’s face, but he had never seen it before. Not that it made a difference; Bard was sure he had several running bounties on his head, and it was hard to keep track of who wanted which reward. But this man was a professional. A seeker, by the looks of it. His clothes were marred by travel, his cloak besmirched with red stains that had long since turned black. Seekers loved to target rich, soft men who went down easy. It took a special breed of hooligan to hunt down hooligans.

Bard sifted through the seeker’s satchel, but its contents betrayed nothing of his origins. A few coins from everywhere. A list of locations with some crossed out. The only possession he had of value was a dagger that lay at his side, now dripping with his scarlet mistake.

The seeker had come at night while the entire village slept, on the rare occasion that Bard decided to wallow in self-reflection.

And ale.

The destriers must have given him away. No one rode them out in the woodlands, and they were too expensive for this part of the world. Bard had wanted to cut them loose, but Dancer refused, threatening to cut something else loose. He was standing behind the house, dulled by drink and musing the mysteries of the universe when the seeker found him.

“I have a message for you,” the seeker had said as he unsheathed his dagger. His words were tainted by his thick accent, but more intelligible than Bard’s slurred “whohasthmessage?”

Bard had seen the dagger, but he liked to give people the benefit of the doubt. Ending them was such a final thing, and unlike Dancer, who didn’t discriminate, he only raised a hand in defense. He was a pacifist, after all. Only the weak started fights, and only cowards attacked the unarmed. Dancer had a much more lenient definition of defense, but he supposed she had more to guard than a few drops of blood and a handful of coins.

Of course, that didn’t mean he couldn’t finish fights. He wasn’t about to go seek a duel with the Blood Queen—once had been enough to last a lifetime—but he had never gotten himself into a situation he couldn’t handle without blood, steel, or Storm.

Except for that one time … he mused, taking a swig of ale. And that other time …

The man saw an opening and lunged, blade in hand. Bard bristled, more irritated at being interrupted mid-memory than attacked by a foreign assassin.

Well, he thought. At least he isn’t a common street thug. Thugs wielded blades that were sharper than their minds and attacked wildly under the belief that weapons made them more dangerous. This one was calm, though. He kept the knife close to his body instead of flailing it around like a drowning man grabbing at driftwood.

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