The Secret of the Rose and Glove Read Online Free PDF Page A

“mad” and “drunk.”
    “Thatsh right,” Rhodel agreed. “I may be mad, I may be drunk, but I’m the one with the bombs, so ye all get ta listen ta me fer a change!” She held the smoldering remains of the goblin brand over her tray. A few of the wiser and faster ran in terror, but others, underestimating the explosive capacity, foolishly thinking that the fires of joy could only be used for joy, or just as trapped as Norret was by his crutch and the press of the crowd, simply stayed, petrified as if by a cockatrice’s touch.
    “This is our independenshe!” declared Rhodel. “Independenshe from what? Truth? Common sense? Fear? Well I’m dyin’ so I’m done wid the last, so I’ll tell ya a few things the old don’t wanna admit an’ the young only suspect. Our duchess? She were a good duchess! An’ she worked her ass harder’n I ever worked mine on these streets! Ye all think perfume ‘n’ gloves sell themselves? She pimped ‘em hard at court, an’ our guilds got rich. An’ if she took some fer herself, so what? She earned it! An’ her husband, old Arjan, the ‘bad’ duke? He were a scared old man too busy snorting mercury ‘n’ tryin’ ta make the elixir of youth ta have time ta whip peasants! Yeah, he taxed us an’ spent too much on his weddin’. Boo hoo. We still got taxes! And death too, an’ a lot more o’ that! An’ shpeakin’ a death, maybe the duchess poisoned old Arjan and bribed the priests ta say he weren’t comin’ back, or maybe he just were too old like she said. Who cares? That be the truth!”
    Rhodel was just getting wound up. “Want another bit a truth? Half a ye are are smugglers selling perfume ‘n’ brandy ta the elves so we kin have food, an’ half are spies fer the Gray Gardeners, an’ that be a joke right there because ye know yer Litranaise? Yer ‘March a’ the Revolution’? Darl Jubannich were a hack! He recycled shtuff from his operas! That started as the ‘Silver Maidens’ Song’ he wrote fer the masque fer our duchess’s weddin’, an’ I know ‘cause I were only six but I got ta play the Horse! Then Jubannich reused it for his ‘Tales of— Oh bugger…” Rhodel trailed off, looking down at her tray where a stray spark from her goblin brand had ignited several fuses. “I was gonna shay more….”
    Whatever she was going to add was silenced by the witch’s candles, which began to scream, and the siren fountains, which sang like sopranos at the top of their range, their blue flames and waterfall of sparks setting fire to the shreds of Rhodel’s tattered gown.
    Corsetry, however, is a form of armor, and with icy dignity the old slattern marched forward, hop-frogs hopping from her tray and scintillating as she stepped onto the raft tied at the end of the dock. She embraced the effigies of Traxyla and her cronies like sisters, setting fire to the Shelyn’s roses on their breasts which began to twirl like red windmills as she cast off, the raft drifting into the Sellen as the blaze began in earnest.
    Then a voice rose up, defiantly echoing off the hills of Kyonin: “But up in the air flew King Coco! The unicorn’s horn, where could it go? Then Patapouf found a hole below….” Rhodel sustained the note, harmonizing with the siren fountains until at last concluding with a flourish, “The tail of the cockatrice!”
    With that, the dragonfly rockets Norret had bound to Traxyla’s broomstick went off in sequence as he had hoped, bearing her effigy high over the river before exploding in a brilliant blue flash of witchfire and brimstone.
    He had not thought she would have a passenger.

Chapter Three: The Feaster in the Dark
    The wheel of the year had given a quarter turn and reached its end, the final day of Kuthona, the last month, ruled by the twisted god Zon-Kuthon. Winter, the Season of the Black Dragoness, the watery drake who embodied the phlegmatic humor, had begun but nine days before with the solstice, which the Midnight Lord’s