Bloody Rose (the Band, #2)

The second installment in Nicholas Eames's The Band series is set in Grandual, a fantasy realm where mercenary bands fight monsters in arenas for fame and profit. The story follows Tam Hashford, a seventeen-year-old barmaid in the wintry northern city of Ardburg who longs for adventure. Tam's mother, Lily, died on a mercenary adventure years earlier, and her father, Tuck, a retired mercenary, has since grown overprotective, forbidding Tam from playing music or associating with mercenaries. Despite this, Tam secretly takes lute and singing lessons from Edwick, the retired bard at the tavern where she works.

When the famous mercenary band Fable arrives in Ardburg, Tam's uncle Branigan, a washed-up gambler, arranges a meeting. Fable includes their leader, Bloody Rose, daughter of the legendary Golden Gabe; Freecloud, a druin (an ancient immortal species) swordsman; Brune, a vargyr shaman who can transform into a bear; and Cura, the Inkwitch, whose tattoos manifest as real monsters, called inklings, when invoked. The band needs a new bard. Rose tests Tam, who plays Together, a tender song her mother wrote about the bond between bandmates, and Rose accepts her. Tuck is furious but relents by morning, giving Tam her mother's lute, Hiraeth. He makes one painful condition: She must never return, because he cannot endure wondering whether she is alive.

At Ardburg's canyon arena, Fable faces an unexpected cyclops. When Freecloud is knocked unconscious, Tam steals a bow and runs onto the arena floor. Her arrow grazes Rose's thigh rather than hitting the monster, but Rose kills the cyclops, and fifty thousand witnesses believe Tam felled it with a single shot. She is dubbed "the Bard." Branigan gives Tam a will'o'wisp quill, a device that simulates death, and warns her that Rose is driven by a dangerous need to prove herself and takes reckless contracts.

While most bands rush west to confront the Brumal Horde, a massive monster army led by a giant named Brontide, Rose claims Fable has a contract in the remote region of Diremarch and leads the band east on an arena tour. Other mercenaries confront her about fleeing the fight. During the tour, Tam grows disillusioned: Fights are often rigged, with monsters drugged or starved. She observes Rose secretly consuming Lion's Leaf, a drug that dulls fear, before every battle. Freecloud reveals that he and Rose have a daughter, Wren, who lives with Rose's father in the city of Coverdale. At a party after the tour's final stop, a brawl erupts after a mercenary insults Wren. Brune loses control of his transformation and mauls his girlfriend. Tam sedates him with the will'o'wisp quill, and the band flees.

Rose takes Brune to the Silverwood to find his estranged father, Shadrach, the vargyr tribe's Clawmaster—its dominant warrior and leader—hoping Shadrach can teach Brune to find his true fain, the animal form that mirrors a vargyr's soul. During the journey, Freecloud reveals that Grandual's worshipped gods are actually ancient druins. The Winter Queen, Astra, was repeatedly resurrected by her husband, each time at the cost of an immortal life and each time becoming darker and more unstable. Freecloud believes her son's death at the Battle of Castia triggered her latest resurrection and suspects she is behind both the Brumal Horde and the plague of undead rising across the northern land of Kaskar.

At Brune's village, they find Shadrach has forced his people to remain in animal form until they have become feral. Brune challenges his father, who dominates as a bear, but Brune discovers his true fain is a wolf and defeats Shadrach with superior speed. When loyalists attack, Tam retrieves Rose's gauntlets, which summon Rose's sword, Thistle, to Tam's hand, and she stabs Shadrach. Rose finishes the fight, and Brune spares his father.

Fable travels to Diremarch, where the Widow of Ruangoth has offered a staggering sum to kill the Simurg, a legendary creature known as the Dragoneater. Her masked agent, Hawkshaw, guides them through the devastated region. During the journey, Cura reveals her traumatic past to Tam, and a charged intimacy develops between them, though Cura pulls away and tells Tam to forget what happened. At the Widow's citadel, the band learns the Simurg lairs at Mirrormere, a frozen lake, and they fly there aboard a skyship. Rose secretly takes her last dose of Lion's Leaf and asks Tam to write a song for Wren if she dies.

At the lake, the skyship crashes and a chaotic battle erupts. Tam blinds the Simurg in one eye with alchemical grenades. Rose hurls both swords into the creature's mouth and drags the blades through its organs, killing it. The Widow then reveals herself as Astra, the Winter Queen, a druin necromancer. She raises the dead Simurg, mounts it, and declares she tricked Fable into killing the creature so she could control it. She threatens to destroy the world and flies away.

Stranded, the band is eventually rescued. Rose suffers severe withdrawal from Lion's Leaf but recovers. Her father, Golden Gabe, bearing the legendary sword Vellichor, and his old bandmate the wizard Arcandius Moog fly north to retrieve them. Rose declares Fable's career is over. On the journey south, however, they encounter Astra at the battlefield of Grey Vale. The Winter Queen reveals she deliberately sacrificed her Horde to raise all the fallen as undead thralls. Hawkshaw, resurrected by Astra, shoots Gabriel with a poisoned crossbow bolt. Gabriel dies at dawn.

His death reverses Rose's decision to retire. She takes his body to the inn of Clay Cooper, her father's old bandmate, delivers a eulogy, and begins planning to stop Astra. Freecloud pleads with Rose to stay hidden with Wren in Lamneth, a sealed underground citadel controlled by his father, Contha, an ancient druin who commands legions of golems. Rose refuses, and her parting from Freecloud and Wren is wrenching.

In the Free City of Conthas, Rose organizes the defense, assembling mercenaries, horsemen, sorcerers, and pit fighters. Roderick, Fable's booker, negotiates with every captive monster in the city's market, offering freedom in exchange for fighting. That night, Tam performs Together one final time, amplified by Moog's magic so the entire city hears. When the song ends, she smashes Hiraeth, choosing to stop being a bard and become a fighter. Rose welcomes her into Fable as a full member.

Astra's Horde, approximately one hundred thousand undead, converges on Conthas. Rose has thousands of mercenaries dye their hair red to impersonate her, while she cuts off her famous red hair, revealing her natural gold. She leads a charge with the freed monsters. Cura summons every inkling at once to destroy the undead Simurg, permanently expending her power. Freecloud arrives with Contha's golems, having secretly planned to help. As the battle rages, the Baroness of Telltale, Ios, reanimated as one of Astra's undead thralls during the fighting, attacks Rose from behind, and Freecloud throws himself between them, taking the fatal blade. He dies in Rose's arms.

Rose charges Astra alone. The druin's prescience allows her to dodge every direct attack, so Rose and Tam execute a plan devised in advance: Tam fires an arrow at Rose, who deflects it off her father's legendary sword, Vellichor, into Astra's throat. Rose rams Vellichor through the Winter Queen's chest. The entire Horde collapses.

In an epilogue drawn from Tam's memoir, she recounts the aftermath. Cura, having lost her inklings, slowly recovers, and she and Tam begin a relationship. Roderick and Brune plan a venture to free captive monsters from arenas. Contha, moved perhaps by guilt or by meeting his granddaughter, sends his golems across Grandual to protect cities. Tam visits Ardburg and leaves a sign for her father that she is alive. In a closing scene, Rose, her hair its natural gold, finds Wren at a ruined keep and embraces her, accepting a new identity at last.