QSFer J.S. Fields has a new sapphic fantasy romance book out (intersex, lesbian): The Rosewood Penny.
The dragons of Yuro have been hunted to extinction.
On a small, isolated island, in a reclusive forest, lives bandit leader Marani and her brother Jacks. With their outlaw band they rob from the rich to feed themselves, raiding carriages and dodging the occasional vindictive pegasus. Thanks to Marani’s mysterious invulnerability, this mostly works out well…until Marani and her quirky band of outlaws plunder the carriage of the very bossy princess Nuria.
The princess’s carriage contains not just gold, but a dragonscale comb that belonged to Marani’s murdered mother. Worse yet, Princess Nuria seems to know exactly who Marani is, maybe more than Marani herself.
Marani hatches a plan to retrieve her mother’s comb, seduce the princess, and make her entire bandit crew rich in the process. But island politics and the island of Yuro itself have other things in mind. Marani and Jacks quickly find themselves caught between warring monarchies, trade disputes, feral pegasi, and a very old, very concerning family lineage—all bound within an old penny, a mouthy princess, and a stolen comb.
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Excerpt
Finally. Marani kept the knife near the princess’s face, got on one knee, and flipped the trunk open.
She saw clothes, mostly, as she dug with her free hand. Silk blouses, a few pairs of useless slippers. Gold bracelets, which she promptly pocketed. Her hand hit something both smooth and striated, and very warm, near the bottom left corner. It was wedged under a particularly heavy boot, and Marani couldn’t free it with just one hand. Frowning, she pushed a handful of shifts away, trying to get her eyes on the whatever-it-was. Polished wood, maybe? Mother of pearl?
“Marani?”
“What!? Stop it!” Marani straightened and pushed the tip of the knife forward into the princess’s collarbone, just far enough to prick her skin and draw a bead of blood. “Just shut up and let me do my job.”
The princess’s face fell, and she bit into her lower lip.
“Hey!” Jacks thumped on the roof of the carriage as he called down. “What’s the delay?”
“Getting things together,” Marani yelled. “Need a few more minutes with Princess Big Boots here.”
“Driver is awake and I’m tired of restraining him. If you want to hit the next carriage you’ve got five more minutes, tops. If I knock this guy out again, I might kill him.”
The princess, finally, looked worried. “You really don’t know me, do you?”
“No,” Marani said, ignoring the compulsion to stare at the other woman until she figured out why rifling through royal undergarments made her feel guilty. She returned her focus to the trunk, pulling shifts out and tossing them onto the bench behind her. Under the shifts was a heavily embroidered white and green dress. Under that was a map of their island with roads and public pegasi flight routes inked in, which was a joke, because a common person could save their entire life and still not be able to afford one flight. Then an entire bolt of raw silk. Then…
A comb. A brown comb slightly larger than Marani’s palm, its tines thick and widely spaced. A comb that caught the candlelight and flickered a bright green, the surface striated and uneven.
A comb that had belonged to Marani’s mother.
An artifact of her childhood that she actually remembered, that had survived the raiders and the fire and the blood. Her parents were dead. Their lean-to destroyed, their every possession taken while Marani hid with newborn Jacks in a cave and…and the princess had her mother’s comb.
The guilt turned to something much heavier. It cascaded through her, the sense of wrongness and familiarity. It threatened to choke her, freeze her fingers, stop her heart.
“Leave it,” the princess cautioned. Her voice turned tight and dangerous. “It’s not yours to take.”
“It’s not yours to keep,” Marani spat. “Who are you? Princess So-and-So of Duchy Whatever? Stealer of Combs? Traveling to meet your cousin or aunt or future betrothed under disguise because let’s face it, the Highway Guild is really damn effective since it got some decent leadership?”
“Yes, I am traveling.” The princess straightened her shoulders and tucked a piece of hair behind her ear. The grey chalk caked in her hands, which were more calloused than Marani had anticipated, but not worker hands, by any means. The nails were neatly filed and painted the color of shells. They had no dirt around or under them, although the hair chalk would fix that in short order.
Marani hated the way she moved. So fluidly. So sure of herself, her position. Her safety, despite Marani’s knife.
“I’m Princess Nuria of Aspen Grove, the Queendom on the eastern quarter of the continent. Why I’m traveling is my own business and I am not giving you that comb.”
Author Bio
J.S. Fields is a scientist who has spent too much time around organic solvents. They enjoy roller derby, woodturning, making chainmail by hand, and cultivating fungi in the backs of minivans. They live in the Pacific Northwest with their wife, kid, and Flemish giant rabbit.
| Author Website | http://www.jsfieldsbooks.com |
| Author Twitter | https://twitter.com/Galactoglucoman |