The Princess Bride meets Six of Crows in this uproarious fantasy debut set in 18th century Scandinavia full of assassins, magic potions, romance and rivalry.
Intrigued? Well read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from Emma Sterner-Radley’s Snowblooded, which releases on May 9th 2024.
Valour and Petrichor are esteemed members of the Order of Axsten, an assassin’s guild tasked with keeping order in the rough city of Vinterstock. Plucked from the streets as children and raised to compete for their guild’s approval, Valour uses her brawn to survive, while Petrichor strives to be a gentleman assassin. When they’re given their biggest job yet—to kill Brandquist, the mysterious leader of the city’s illegal magic trade—it’s a recipe for disaster. If they can quell their rivalry long enough, the reward will be enough to settle their debts with the Order and start new lives.
If this job wasn’t dangerous enough, Valour is saddled with protecting the aristocrat, Ingrid Rytterdahl. Valour finds her dangerously attractive, but Petrichor can’t wait to be rid of them both. He begrudgingly accepts Ingrid’s knowledge and connections as they navigate the city’s criminal underbelly in pursuit of Brandquist.
As secrets bubble to the surface, the duo must outwit the thugs on their tail, keep Ingrid alive, and—hardest of all—work together without murdering each other.
Valour
Valour heard hollow whispers within the dark. The voices of regular people, folklore creatures, and even the old gods. Heimdal, Freja, Oden, Tor, Sif, Loke, all of them. With the logic of dreams, Valour knew they walked the same grimy cobblestones and stood in the same shadowed alleyways as she did. She couldn’t call out to them, though. Therefore, she was godsdamned trapped alone as her routine nightmare scenarios started playing out. Over and over.
She woke and grabbed the sweat-dampened covers, panting like a wounded animal, her heart racing and hurting. The images from the tunnels and the remembered smell of soured blood refused to fade. She sat up and snarled at herself. She had no patience for this. Valour had no patience at all. What she had was a job to do and nightmares to outrun. Not allowing herself breakfast, she washed, dressed, and still half-asleep stormed out while braiding her hair. She opened the door and… godsdamnit. She was staring right into a bloody broom closet! She shut it fast and looked around. No one was about. Thank Heimdal no one saw one of the highest-ranking assassins in the city fail at navigating a hotel hallway. She cursed fouler than a band of drunk sailors, opened the correct door, and left.
Rushing through Vinterstock’s harbour, dodging between washerwomen and dock workers, Valour saw the last clippers to sail here before winter filled the sea with ice floes. The ships were lined up and ready to unload the tea, cocoa, coffee, spices, and other modern goods in their hold. Up top at least. Below the official cargo, there’d be crates of illegal magic tinctures. Shrewdness tonics, brawniness tonics, wellness tonics, and other ’ness tonics. Or simply ’ness. She wouldn’t be partaking, despite the fact that that she could do with being smarter, faster, or stronger. While the drugs boosted your body to change certain things about itself, when one started using ’ness, it was almost impossible to stop. And, of course, there was a steep toll taken on the body each time. Not to mention your coin-purse.
She’d buy some fresh tea, though, and something to eat. Her favourite bakery was sure to have used some of the newly arrived ingredients to create tarts with sweetened cream, warm buns with exotic spices, and delicate creations crafted from sugar. However, she’d need coin for that. This brought her back to work, back to today’s kill, which had to be accomplished before noon, when the gloriam prayer would be held at the Assassins of Axsten’s sanctum.
She hurried to the address where the mark was lodging, passing rundown hovels that soon gave way to new-built townhouses, shops, and coffee-houses on cobbled streets. Her investigation had shown that there was an apothecary next to the address she’d been given. Now she lingered there, pretending to browse the apothecary window while putting her gloves on.
Gods in Asgård, how she hated waiting.
Petrichor
Petrichor burned the letter unread. Why shouldn’t he toss it in the fireplace, watching it turn to cinders as he drank his morning coffee? The accursed thing wouldn’t change anything and hope, as well as dreams, were a luxury and so not for him. He sat very still, watching the paper curl and burn. A solitary quiet enclosed the astronomy tower, all but him slumbering. Soon the university’s students—about his age but without his life experience—would fill the halls, laughing and discussing the day’s lectures. How he envied those rich brats, engaging in matters of the mind, keeping their hands clean, never having been broken.
Outside his window the stars died, blotted out with grey light by the dawn, as unable to stop their fate as he was.
The letter was nought but ash now.
Never mind. Another day had begun and he must get to work. At least he was exceptionally good at what he did. He tied his simple cravat, not meeting his own gaze in the looking-glass. He sipped the soot-black coffee, careful not to spill. This unembellished ensemble in grey broadcloth had cost him dearly. Tailors charged aristocratic fees and then always wanted to include deuced frills, lace, silk, or brash patterns. His tasteful clothes marked him out as an intellectual. Other than that, they might as well be a uniform and like his body—kept muscled but nimble—they were calculated to be perfectly suited for his work but not make him stand out.
He checked his knives were tucked neatly inside the specially sewn slots in his outercoat and that his new tricorne hat hid as much as possible of his face. Then he left to see to the day’s kill.
Blood in the Snow
According to the tolling of the tower bells it was an hour into Valour’s watch and no sight of her mark yet. She was freezing her arse off. Maybe she should’ve spent her last pay packet on a new winter cloak instead of giving it to Widow Lindberg for firewood and supplies. No. She could warm herself by jumping on the spot, the old widow couldn’t. There was a scent on the air, the blend of pine and iron that meant snowfall. Godsdamnit. She glared up at the bruised purple and grey sky, spotting clouds pregnant with snow that would fall within the hour. She recalled what her late mother always said: “Fresh snow is rotten news for us assassins, it shows up the blood.”
Busy sulking about the weather, Valour nearly missed her mark arriving. Here the foreign aristocrat was, standing around boasting to an elderly local nobleman about his ‘grand tour’ and all the cities he’d seen and the operas he’d attended. No sooner had she gotten a good look at his rouged cheeks, powdered wig, and a ridiculous beauty mark painted at the corner of his mouth, than he had accepted an invitation from a shapely lady—in similar wig, rouge, and with a much larger beauty spot—into her posh townhouse, which of course Valour had done no research on. Shit.
Stomping her feet to keep from freezing her toes off, Valour waited. But there was absolutely no bloody point, as her mark didn’t come back out. Instead, much later, she heard him some distance away, crowing about dancing something called ‘La Crevette’ at a court somewhere. The lady’s house must’ve had a back door. Double shit!
She snuck around the row of houses until she got to where he stood, then ducked into the opening of a shadowed alleyway so she could hear but not be seen.
“I am glad you decided to visit our city.” The local nobleman nervously smoothed his age-frosted ponytail. “We up here in Scandinavia are not spoiled with aristocratic guests, and I know Vinterstock’s noble count, or greve as the title is here, was happy to see you and hopes you shall visit again tonight.”
“Perhaps. I had not seen him since he was a young man visiting my country in the company of your king. And I must say, I found your greve eerily changed. It must be this wretched place. I did not expect Vinterstock to be so cold and small. Or so filthy.”
His tone made it sound like he was a hair’s breadth from calling their city, or perhaps their whole country, a backwater hole.
“Ah. Well, cities are dirty and the North is cold,” said the other man apologetically.
Her mark didn’t answer immediately, but she saw him turn to glance back into the townhouse. His make-up was smudged, that beauty spot now more like the imprint of a splatted spider.
“Mm-hmm. Tell me, Monsieur Ädelberg, the delicious sorceress you introduced me to in there. Would she perhaps entertain me tonight, instead of your taciturn greve?”
The Vinterstockian noble, apparently by the last name of Ädelberg, hesitated. No wonder. The greve had ordered the hit on this foreign fop because he was known to kill noblewomen and then escape justice by paying or blackmailing his way out. Obviously, her countryman did not want the lady killed. And the title of sorceress must be wrong; the magic of the old gods was meant to have vanished with the Vikings. Well, except for in the tonics. Right? She wasn’t sure about any of this. She focused on her work.
Valour groaned under her breath. She could solve Ädelberg’s problem if he just left. Sanctioned by authorities or not, assassinations were not to be carried out in front of witnesses. When Ädelberg was gone, Valour would sneak behind the fop and knock him out. After that, she only had to drag him the few steps down this alley into the opening to one of the city’s underground tunnels. There she’d slit his throat and dispose of his body in the mass graves created for this very reason. Alas, the Vinterstockian bonehead didn’t leave but stood there with the foreign killer, in the bloody cold, discussing masked balls. By the time Ädelberg finally said his goodbyes to head to a coffee-house, snow was falling.
At last, her mark was alone, leering up at the lady’s townhouse.
Valour closed her eyes for a tick, bracing herself and breathing in the scent of snow. The deep breaths staved off the images from her nightmares creeping back into her mind. Almost.
She picked up a loose brick, slunk silently out of the shadows, and brought her makeshift weapon down upon his head. He fell backwards and she caught him, dragging him into the dark and his awaiting death. She tried very hard not to leave a trail of blood in the snow.
Gloriam
Petrichor had finished his duty. He had chased his mark down into the tunnels, ensuring she halted by the mass graves so he wouldn’t have to touch her bloodied corpse, then slit her throat while saying the sacred words.
“On the command of the Assassins of Axsten and the Greve of Vinterstock, you are hereby axed. May your offences be atoned for in the arms of death.”
‘Axed’ was wrong, of course. A heritage from olden days when assassinations were displays performed with axes in the town’s squares. Now, it was a concealed procedure, usually done with a razor-sharp blade. Still, he said the words that had been beaten into him. He probably said them in his dreams. Not that Petrichor dreamed much; most of his nights were sleepless and when he did sleep, it was only a bottomless, black void.
It wasn’t his duty to stay while the mark died. Nevertheless, he always did. Despite the vile stench of the mass graves that had to be left open for identification of the marks. He didn’t stay to pay his respects—that was soft-heartedness—but perhaps to show that he took responsibility for the death. To act as witness and sentinel as this woman passed on to whatever came next.
Before ascending to the streets, he wiped his blade on the handkerchief he carried for this purpose, and obviously washed meticulously each night, while trying to remember what crimes this woman had committed to merit execution without trial. Something about dead aristocratic children? It mattered not. Petrichor followed orders and didn’t play god by choosing who got to live, unlike Valour. He couldn’t afford scruples if he was to carry out his plan. He stopped himself, remembering the burned letter and how impossible that path was. Hope was a weed. It grew without being planted and then refused to be fully eradicated.
Up on the streets, he checked his pocket watch. A quarter to twelve. Fifteen minutes until he had to be at the sanctum for gloriam. He would be there precisely on time. Valour, however, was sure to be late.
As Petrichor walked, snow fell. It landed like a fine dusting of sugar on the green-patinaed copper domes of the towers atop the greve’s palace, which stood in the middle of this small but proud nation’s second-largest city. Soon he spotted the dark, wooden pointed gables of the Assassins of Axsten’s sanctum. He slipped between foul-smelling people like a shadow, never touching anyone despite the overcrowded streets. People should be forced to wash. Right when the tower bells began chiming midday, he knocked on the sanctum’s doors, aiming for the engraving of the guild’s crest—a capital A with a knife through it—burned into these doors just as it was branded into the skin of every assassin. Halcyon opened them. The current leader of the order was a competent, striking man of about thirty. Like Petrichor, he had become a member as an orphan. But unlike him, he was not a Vinterstock street urchin, having instead arrived on a trader’s ship from the East. He spoke of his homeland of tall temples, never-ending sunshine, and dragon lizards. Petrichor took that with a fistful of salt; he’d been a toddler, how could he remember anything rational? Children’s brains were swampy things, filled with too much imagination and emotion.
“Pre-eminent Brother Petrichor. Come on in!”
Halcyon ushered Petrichor in while blowing on his bruised, bleeding knuckles. He was the only person Petrichor liked, due to his intelligence, competence, refinement, and tolerance. Yet, those bloody knuckles reminded Petrichor of something he despised in their leader: Halcyon boxed. Sometimes Valour joined him. They could both be brutes and should’ve been given monikers that reflected their loutish natures. None of the order’s designations fit their owners. Take ‘Petrichor’—what did he have to do with the smell after rain? Why in the deuces could they not have been given names like Karl or Elsa?
The order had its eccentricities, he supposed. Sweden was now mainly Christian with a smattering of recent immigrants bringing their religions. The lion’s share of Vinterstock, meanwhile, had split into two: one part following Christianity and the other secretly clinging to the old Norse religion. But in this sanctum and for the people within it, the Order of Axsten had become its own religion. Petrichor surveyed the copper etchings of past members on the walls, and the gloriam set of beverages and ritually prepared dried fish, everything orderly and familiar. Their lore and rites were connected to the first assassin, Axsten, who was stabbed thirteen times and miraculously lived due to his refusal to be weak. Petrichor realised that he enjoyed the steadfastness, asceticism, and structure this tint of religion gave the order. The city’s other guilds were a barely controlled mess of debauchery, debates, and demands.
The other assassins filtered in, hanging up their hats and chatting, until nine were in attendance. Then they were waiting for Valour, precisely as he’d assumed.
They stood around the oblong table which held two large bowls of dried, salted white fish and ten steaming cups containing tea or coffee depending on the assassin’s preference. As always, the cups were set out two in each row, and his was next to Valour’s at the end. Not just because they were of a similar age but because they were seen as the order’s luminaries, racking up the most and neatest kills in the past few years. He checked his pocket watch for the third time. They couldn’t get down to the business of the day’s roster of targets until the sacred words had been said, the beverages drunk, and the fish eaten.
Loud knocking echoed in the bare, high-ceilinged hall. Halcyon opened the doors and in stormed the churl of a woman Petrichor had been raised with. No, ‘raised with’ wasn’t right. They had been yanked into adulthood while fighting each other for every scrap of food or attention.
She shook the snow off and strode into the room like she owned it. Her face had the undignified red cheeks of someone who had run here. What all those women she bedded saw in her, he had no idea. Everything about her was wrong. Her tall build was too brawny and her ash-blonde hair was falling out of a slipshod braid. Why was she wearing that ragged cloak and unfashionable boots? They made her look like the order did not pay her well enough to buy clothes. She had no respect for anything or anyone, including herself.
“Apologies, everyone,” she panted. “Got held up behind a bloody cart. The donkey pulling it was as slow as snot trickling down a hill.”
She clapped Halcyon on the back in greeting and smiled. Her friendliness dropped as she spotted Petrichor. “Hello, pompous wart. Did you manage to pull that stick out of your arse this morning?”
What he wouldn’t give for a single day when she didn’t greet him with that phrase.
He sniffed. “There is blood on the toe of your boot.”
She pulled out a handkerchief from a pocket, spat on it—actually spat on it—and then wiped the droplet off her antiquated knee-high boot. “Oops. It must’ve been hidden by the snow.”
The oldest member, Exalted Brother Encumbrance, approached. “So, the bastard daughter of the deadliest woman I ever met finally graces us with her presence.” He watched Valour with the smirk of a tormentor enjoying the pain of his victim, which to be fair was his usual expression. “You are late, Venerated Sister Valour. Your mother was never tardy, you know. ’Tis a shame she is not here and has left us with nothing but you.”
Valour—who only had two settings, silent or foul-mouthing—shut her mouth with a hard click of teeth.
Petrichor adjusted his cravat. At least Valour had memories of one of her parents, happy years together while her mother assassinated for the order. He had none of his family. He’d been nine when he was taken in by the order, starved and mangy after fending for himself on the streets. The first person he met was Valour, sulking after her mother’s hanging, and she told him he smelled like piss and threw a rock at him that split his eyebrow. She must’ve been about seven or eight. He never asked. Why would he ask anything of such a rude mud-stained imp? He could recall Valour’s most oft used insults as if she had said them today.
“Bet your parents died from the pox. Or were too boneheaded to find jobs, so they starved on the streets like newborn puppies.”
“Gods, you’re so weak, you weird little changeling. Are your muscles made of pus?”
“What did your parents die of anyway? Boredom from talking to you?”
That last one had made the adult assassins laugh every time she said it. Only Halcyon, a mere adolescent at the time, had suggested she stop. That had meant everything to Petrichor.
Now, Encumbrance spoke again. “Obviously, we shall finish the gloriam prayer before we divvy up today’s marks. However…” His eyes glinted with malice. “I must mention that today shall be intriguing, as we have a task that is sure to test Sister Valour and Brother Petrichor like none has before.”
