“Ha!” crowed Father Ubb. “Justice has come for you, you dusty old bat.”
“The both of you,” said Captain Axe sternly. “I had my signals mate run up a few flags. Told the harbormaster I had two bad priests ready for an arrest.”
“Me?” Ubb gulped. “But I didn’t do anything!”
“You tried to,” Alix said.
“Breaking the trust of a vessel at sea is a serious thing,” said Axe. “But we’ll let the justiciar sort that all out.”
Axe’s sailors chivvied the priests down to the maindeck, where the Azure Guard looked all too happy to take them into custody. As Father Ubb climbed down the rope ladder to the waiting longboat, Bishop Draskis right behind him, the two got back to bickering.
“I wouldn’t have been caught if not for your meddling,” Draskis was saying.
“I wouldn’t have bothered sneaking into the elf’s cabin if I knew you already had the jewels,” Ubb shot back.
“I wouldn’t have had to steal them if you weren’t planning to toss them into the sea…”
Then the sailors in the longboat set to their oars, the creak of timber and the flap of sails covered the priests’ chatter, and the wind carried their argument away.
That night, Gally and Alix lay together in a featherbed in the attic of a cozy backstreet inn.
“I still feel like I’m pitching on the sea,” said Alix into Gally’s shoulder, where she had snuggled up.
Gally laughed. “We were onboard for less than twenty-four hours! You’ll get your land legs back, I promise. You don’t go stumbling around every time you finish a ride, do you?”
“Horses don’t tilt sideways.”
They lapsed back into comfortable silence, and for a while Alix listened to Gally’s steady breathing and the beat of her heart. Her own heart, which normally raced along at a gallop, slowed to match Gally’s unflappable rhythms. Her eyes grew heavy. At length she said, “Still impressed as hell you sorted that out.”
“I couldn’t have done it without you.”
“You enjoyed your big…” Alix paused for a yawn. “Big moment?”
“More than I’d like to admit.”
“S’a vacation.” She was properly sleepy now. “S’good you had fun.”
As she drifted off, she saw the flash of Gally’s smile and heard her say softly, “I couldn’t have done it without you.”
BARD CITY BLUES OFFICIAL PLAYLIST
As a musician writing a book about music, it was perhaps inevitable that I would make a playlist. In fact, I made a few. But this one was built to represent the shifting moods of Bard City Blues.
Music taste is idiosyncratic by definition. So is cozy fantasy, for that matter. So when I set out to find cozy songs, it was inevitable that they’d represent nothing more than my own quirks of taste and feeling. I hope you’ll find them as warm and welcoming as I do, but even if you don’t, perhaps they’ll help capture the mood of each chapter.
One of the biggest challenges in putting this playlist together was not overrepresenting any given band. Jethro Tull, for example, has any number of songs with a pastoral cozy feel, particularly from their folk-inspired duology Heavy Horses and Songs from the Wood. Other bands who vied for too many spots included The Midnight, MUNA, Runrig, and Skipinnish.
In the end, I set a hard limit of one song per band. And I only cheated once (Fish was the lead singer of Marillion).
Chapter 1.
The Midnight - “A Place of Her Own”
The perfect song for a young woman wandering the streets of a new city, alone and looking for her place in the world.
Chapter 2.
Helium - “Cosmic Rays”
Music, beauty, and more than a hint of the weird.
Chapter 3.
Pavlov’s Dog - “She Came Shining”
No song better captures the moment you meet someone new and you just know your life is changing forever.
Chapter 4.
Big Country - “In a Big Country”
Gally’s starting to settle in at the Lifted Gate. She’s earned a big anthem.
Chapter 5.
