A Nocturne In Red

By Court Ellyn

Sanjen Laurelius, a lute-wielding bard, is a rising star.

 

He's also wanted by the emperor.

 

When he calls upon his special brand of song-magic to fight off a rampaging harpy, he finds himself the object of unwanted attention: a powerful officer in the emperor's service hires Sanjen to find the cure for a curse that has transformed a favored concubine into a bloodthirsty monster. But Sanjen's past is catching up with him. Can he find a way to save the victim of the curse before his employer discovers his true identity—and returns him to the emperor in chains?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Raven Eye Press
• Release date: Nov 14, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223011545

Court Ellyn

Court Ellyn has been building plots and characters since she could hold a pen. What began as a love for historical fiction quickly gravitated toward the fantastical. A child of the Great Plains, she dreams of extraplanar travel and defeating dragons alongside her husband and two mischievous cats.

Book preview

For Bird

my music guru

"The song is the thing.

It is the fundamental thing.

Without it, there is no thing."

~Sanjen of Shar,

many years later

IN THE SMALL HOURS, Sanjen stumbled from the House of Ambrosia, brazen as a boast. The sweet ecstasy of the honey clung to his mouth and laid a gossamer veil across his eyes. The stars danced, and the great Ring leered like a drunken smile across the sky. They sang to him, golden songs like the hum of bees, like the sigh of a woman. He spread his arms and became one of those dancing stars, one of a million, and for a moment loneliness faded.

A voice somersaulted up the street and struck Sanjen in the ear:  Did you hear what I said, pretty boy? Give me your coin.

Purple magelight on the street corner glinted on steel. The sensation of almost-pain pricked at Sanjen’s throat. A face, greasy and poxy, floated specter-like through the sensuous contortions of the stars.

In some sober recess of his brain, Sanjen appreciated the situation. Dear gods. Robbed. Me?

Rotten teeth grit. Dig deep, or I’ll cut you up so small your own mother won’t recognize you.

Hnh, my mother, gone, she’s gone, you fucking rotgut swine. Joke’s on you. Sanjen shook with laughter, and the almost-pain surged up his jaw. A fist the size of a ham swung out of the dark, but Sanjen was falling before he felt the impact.

A shadow, endless as oblivion, swept past, and the thief too was gone—screaming, screaming, high in the sky. Hallucination? Must be. The scoundrel seemed to have sprouted wings. The bottoms of his naked, street-black feet kicked as he screamed, and the shiv tumbled like a snowflake in the purple lamplight. The blade clattered loud as thunder as it struck the cobbles, and the street raised soft matronly arms to cradle Sanjen from his fall.

The thief flew toward the stars. The screaming stopped on a raw red note.

Sanjen lay in the gutter and chuckled. The stars chuckled back. Funny. His hallucination had saved him from a mugging.

What a disgrace, having to turn out his pockets. He patted down his doublet and his coin purse, just to be sure the thief hadn’t absconded with ... well, with whatever the House of Ambrosia hadn’t seen fit to drain. But the honey numbed his fingertips. The few sterlings might be there or not. Hell with it.

Sanjen pushed himself to his feet, or thought he did, and floated home.

𝄽

SUN LASHED him across the face. Curtains thundered and rings rattled on the rod as his manservant bared the room to daylight. The windowpane creaked as it too swung open, letting in a breath of air that reeked of the River Stoia and shuddered with the noise of carts rumbling along Gryphus Avenue.

Performance tonight, sir. It’s almost noon. Best wake and stretch those fingers.

Ai, gods, Sanjen groaned and flung an arm across his eyes. Delectable though the honey was, the drug left him feeling as heavy and cumbersome as clay the next morning. Sweat drenched his pillow. Honey-scented sweat.

People have poured in for the festival, Belinius added. Streets are already crowded with revelers. Don’t want to disappoint them, eh? Sir? Bath drawn for you. Er, better toss me those clothes too. They’ll need mending, and your injury might require stitches. Knife fight?

Memory swept aside the honey-haze. Sanjen jolted awake. His fingers, now throbbing with sensation, discovered a fount of dried blood crusted on his throat. The shiv had opened a finger-long gash under his jaw. A thief, he grunted. There was a thief.

Didn’t make off with much. Belinius had unlatched the coin purse from Sanjen’s belt and upended it over his palm. The coin trickled rather than flowed. Sir? The manservant hedged around the word. The coffer your father gave you is dwindling faster than you might think. The Ambrosia again?

Sanjen winced and rolled deeper into his pillow. Don’t scold me, Bell.

Distilled from special honey made by special Tai-Uran bees, the drug was very rare, very expensive. But Sanjen liked to think he hadn’t fallen so far that he couldn’t treat himself occasionally. Though occasionally had become two or three times a week. He wasn’t so broke that he had to settle for molasses that would turn his mouth black with tar, or Powers forbid, resort to necro dust or even plain rum. Not yet.

The manservant heaved a paternal sigh. Right. Breakfast, er, lunch in half an hour.

Scrubbed and scalded, Sanjen made his way downstairs. His little house on Gryphus Avenue was a far cry from the palace he’d grown up in. The steps creaked, the roof leaked, and the chimney smoked, painting the ceiling with soot. Mice crept in from some hidden portal on phantom feet, and the furnishings were the mismatched hodgepodge of leftovers that the landlady had seen fit to install. Worst of all, the attic afforded barely enough room (or light) to practice his music, and the neighbors (within arm’s reach of the eave) complained that he kept their children awake at all hours.

Still,