Firerose Fiction

The Emerald Band (ao3)
'A Study in Emerald' by Neil Gaiman, 'The Speckled Band' by Arthur Conan Doyle & various works by HP Lovecraft

Summary How can I describe the sight that so unmanned my imperturbable friend? That caused the giant of a baronet to faint dead away? I could say Drago’s green-soaked body would no longer haunt my dreams—or if it did, it would be but a pleasant respite from the horror of that thing.

Rache & his faithful doctor investigate the murder of Julia Stoner in the 'Study in Emerald' universe, but the deeper they delve into the Roylott family history, the darker things become. Written for Yuletide 2014
~*~
We had done the right thing. We had struck a blow for freedom of our enslaved race. Once I believed that. Then the reprisals began. Her Victorious Majesty was terrible in her wrath. Week after week, The Star came out with thick black borders, and every issue carried lists of ‘traitors’ deemed to have Restorationist sympathies on no greater evidence than their failing to turn seawards before their evening chop.

We moved, my friend and I, from lodging to lodging, seldom staying above hours, never above a single night, Moriarty’s hounds ever running on our scent. But I had lived out of my pack before, in Afghanistan, in far less comfortable surroundings; had been hunted by a force far more awful than Her Majesty’s police. When one has walked through a valley choked with the writhing bodies of men turned witless as worms; when one has felt the Shadow pressing pressing—but I shall not think on that. Dwelling on the past is a weakness we can ill afford, as my friend daily reminds me. His nerves are steel, but even he cries out in his sleep some nights when the moon drips blood in the sky, red blood, not like—

Summary: Havnor City, the largest city in the world... It's nearly 200 years since Lebannen came to the throne and his kingdom's on the brink of disaster. The king's mad, his heir's missing and when newly reinstated Officer Bittern investigates, he soon starts tripping over corpses

Author's note: This novel-in-progress owes almost as much of a debt to Raymond Chandler as it does to Ursula Le Guin. I thank Jay Tryfanstone, Miss Morland & Northland for advice & editing. All infelicities are my own.

Chapter 3: The Big City
Havnor City, the largest city in the world. A million people were crammed into its six square miles, they said, though barely half appeared on the Ministry’s books. (ao3)

Chapter 4: Too Many Princes
CHOP shared a place with CHOSS down by the Old Docks, five minutes from Half Moon Street and no more than half a mile from the university as the seagull flies across the bay. Lebannen the Great had obviously been hot on law enforcement because it was one of the biggest, grandest, most over-decorated buildings in a city full of big grand over-decorated buildings. (ao3)

Summary: Havnor City, the largest city in the world... It's nearly 200 years since Lebannen came to the throne and his kingdom's on the brink of disaster. The king's mad, his heir's missing and when newly reinstated Officer Bittern investigates, he soon starts tripping over corpses

Author's note: This novel-in-progress owes almost as much of a debt to Raymond Chandler as it does to Ursula Le Guin. I thank Jay Tryfanstone, Miss Morland & Northland for advice & editing. All infelicities are my own.

Chapter 1: The Missing Prince
The first thing I noticed that night, the night this whole mess started, was that the chief looked exhausted, even more exhausted than I felt. ‘Bittern,’ he said. That’s my name all right. ‘Good,’ he said. And that’s where he went wrong. Nothing good ever started from being woken in the middle of the night by a couple of goons and dragged up to the palace for questioning. (ao3)

A second letter from my WiP based on Elizabeth Gaskell's Wives and Daughters.

Extract from Letters of Sir Roger Hamley (Vol. 1)
Summary: These letters from Sir Roger's second African expedition include his original drawings, and will be of interest to all readers of Travels in Abyssinia

Letter the second (ao3)

A new chapter of my long-running Friday's Child AU novella, in which it is Eudora Bagshot, not Hero, whom Sherry encounters on the wall. The earlier parts can be found at AO3 & Skyehawke.

Eleven: In Which Some Pieces of the Puzzle Come to Light

( Mr Ringwood's taste in reading matter inclined more to the racing results than to the fairy stories with which his betrothed beguiled her spare hours; he must therefore be excused for his failure to recognise a Happy Ending, even when it was unfolding under his nose. )