#rainbowsnippets: Jack and Marjory

Happy Saturday! I didn’t have an author snippet sent to me for today so I thought I’d share another six lines (well sorry a bit more than six because otherwise it would have ended in a weird place, hope that’s ok) from the novella I’m working on right now. It’s called Jack and Marjory and it gives space for two of my  bigender characters to tell something of their own side-adventure (which played a massive part in the history of Ire in a behind the scenes sort of way.) If you want some world – background, check out the Introduction page above 🙂  To see all the other fabulous rainbow snippets for this week check out the rainbow snippets facebook page 

The previous snippet of Jack and Marjory was posted here

We wasn’t always called Jack and Marjory.

Then again we didn’t always live in Lancaster, we didn’t always own these boots, we couldn’t always wield magic, didn’t always work for Kitty Flynn…

Kitty’s coffee house, The Angel, is always full, always bustling, always respectable and everything above board.

They serve government standard issue caffeine-free coffee – the lifeblood of the workforce and the would-be well-to-do alike.

Chicory, acorn, dandelion … the great copper pots of caffeine-free brown liquid sit simmering in the seventeen fire places all day long and Kitty’s daughters run to and fro serving it out in pewter tumblers on silver trays.

The rules are framed in mahogany on the white washed wall: no foul language, no char-latin, no anti-royalist, anti-religious or anticlimactical notions, no games of chance, no business dealings, no magic.

Yes indeed, The Angel is a perfectly respectable place. It must be. The patrons run the great societal gamut from the lowliest mill worker, to dockers, street traders  and Sho’vani barge folk; from town Tinkers like The Time Keeper and The Spoon Smiths, to landlords like Montmorency and Clitheroe, even true aristocrats like Lord Ashton and Lady Grace and wizards like that so-called ‘Dr. Smith’…

The Angel is always full, never a spare room in the place. Kitty rents rooms alright but you’d be damned if you could ever get one. Very particular is Kitty Flynn about who she’ll let a room to and once she gets a tenant in, they tend to stay for a very long time.

We, certainly, intended to stay for a very long time.

Because once you’re in, like us, there’s only one way out – and it ain’t pretty. No, indeed, it really ain’t. Dying in a Hex fight, your atoms ripped apart by some aether-wielding maniac, is no one’s plan for their day trip to Abney Park. Certainly, it has never been our aspiration.

Being an entertaining and informative piece of travel writing by a couple of rogues on the run as they attempt to avoid the machinations of wizards, monarchs and a ruthless band of beatnik poets, deflect a civil war and deliver a priceless, historical tea set before the owner finds himself at the gallows.

rainbow flower image courtesy of mariah22 at http://www.freeimages.com

book cover image by Renphoto