Shy South is a major POV character in Red Country. She comes home to her farm to find a blackened shell, her brother and sister stolen, and knows she’ll have to go back to bad old ways if she’s ever to see them again.
Appearance and Personality[]
Shy is a pale-skinned woman, with a long, pointed face, with red-brown hair. She is about twenty years old, but with the appearance that those years had been testing. Her mouth is often set in a suspicious frown, and she looks used to hard work and hard choices. She has a soft dusting of freckles across the narrow bridge of her nose.
Shy has a hard edge, but is a basically decent person. She is opinionated, confrontational and unapologetically abrasive; as well as an expert at haggling.
History[]
Shy grew up on a farm near the town of Squaredeal in Near Country with her mother, and siblings Pit and Ro; little is known about her father, except that he was part-Ghost. She had a number of different step-fathers as she grew up. One day, a scarred nine-fingered Northman named Lamb turns up at the farm, and is taken on as a farm-hand.
Shy had a wild youth, and at seventeen she fled the boredom of working on the farm. When she killed a boy, his family chased her, and she took to robbing, eventually falling in with some bandits. She carved a fairly bloody reputation for herself, with the alias Smoke. After an innocent girl was hung in her place due to a passing similarity, she retired from that life back to the farm. When her mother dies, Lamb promised to look after the children.
Red Country[]
Shy take her farm’s crop to market in Squaredeal, accompanied by her surrogate father Lamb, who is immensely strong, but as Shy puts it “some kind of coward” because of his meek, gentle nature. When Shy and Lamb return to their farm, they find it burned out, the old friend Gully hanged, and her younger siblings kidnapped.
They immediately set out to find the men responsible. They come across more burned farms and meet young Leef, who has also lost a younger brother. At a tavern in the town of Averstock, they find three men who have left the bandits. Shy is shocked when Lamb kills two of them, and forces the third to tell them all he knows. The leader Grega Cantliss is taking the children somewhere past Crease in the Far Country.
They join up with a Fellowship heading to Crease, formed by Abram Majud and guided by legendary adventurer Dab Sweet. Soon, Shy fishes up Temple from a river they cross. Majud will only let Temple into the Fellowship if he pays. Shy helps Temple, but is very specific about the amount he owes, and scorns Temple mercilessly. Later, a tribe of Ghosts attack the Fellowship. They are sorely pressed, but despite losses, including Leef, they drive the attackers away. During truce talks Lamb kills the leader of the Ghosts, Sangeed, and the others retreat. On the journey, Lamb makes friends with another old timer called Savian, who is travelling to Crease with his niece Corlin.
The fellowship arrives in Crease. The Mayor of Crease agrees to help Lamb and Shy find the children if Lamb fights to the death in the ring with Papa Ring's champion, Glama Golden. In the meantime, Shy asks around for Cantliss and the children, but he hasn't been seen in Crease for some time. Temple becomes flush with money after drafting a legal document for the Mayor, and he pays off his debt to Shy; they later end up in bed together. However, in the morning, the door is kicked in and Cantliss takes Shy hostage, while Temple dives out the window. As the fight between Lamb and Golden begins, Savian rescues Shy; in the end Lamb brutally kills Golden. With Cantliss captured, Shy and Lamb prepare to go into the mountains after Ro and Pit. However, Nicomo Cosca comes into town with his mercenaries, upsetting the balance of power. He also wants Cantliss, to guide him to the Dragon People, who Cosca believes have a fortune in gold.
Cantliss leads Shy, Lamb and Cosca from Crease to Ashranc. On the way, they defeat an attack by the Dragon People in a village called Beacon. The children are tracked to the settlement of Ashranc, carved into the mountainside and home to the Dragon People. The children are liberated, though Lamb almost kills Ro while in his Bloody-Nine state. Pit is fine, but Ro seems altered by her captivity, empathising with the Dragon People, similar to Stockholm Syndrome.
On the way back to Crease, Lamb decides to go back and rescue Savian in Beacon, who Cosca claims is the rebel leader Conthus. Shy, Temple and Sweet help; Sweet chases the horses away, while Shy and Temple steal the wagon with all the Dragon People's gold in. Some of Cosca’s mercenaries pursue them, and eventually the wagon topples over and Shy's leg is injured. They are saved when Corlin arrives with several rebels, who reveals that in fact she is Conthus.
Shy and Temple make it back to Crease. By the time Cosca tracks them there looking for his gold, the Mayor has signed a treaty with the Old Empire. Inquisitor Lorsen, not wanting to start a war between the Union and the Old Empire, has Cosca is arrested. The treaty is later revealed to be a sham, and Imperial Legate Sarmis was really the actor Iosiv Lestek. Lamb eventually wanders into Crease having survived Beacon, and meets up with Shy.
On the journey back to Squaredeal, they encounter Cosca, having escaped imprisonment, still looking to get his gold back. After a brief discussion, Cosca is knifed through the chest by one of his own men.
In the end, Shy settles in Squaredeal as the storekeeper, she and Temple have become close again, and Ro slowly seems to be recovering from her captivity. Caul Shivers wanders into town having been sent by Calder to settle his debt with Lamb, and as well as having a debt of his own. Finally face to face with Logen Ninefingers, Shivers hesitates, and then decides to drop his feud and tell everyone back in the North that the Bloody-Nine is returned "back to the mud." Despite Shivers leaving, Lamb realises that trouble will always follow him. He rides off into the sunset, leaving Shy and the children.
Sharp Ends[]
'Some Desperado': 584 (summer)[]
After robbing 2000 marks from a bank, Shy finds herself on the run, pursued by her three comrades who hope to take all of the money for themselves and collect the bounty on her head. When her wounded horse collapses from blood loss and exhaustion, she is forced to take refuge in a shanty town, which, to her mild dismay, she soon discovers to be abandoned.
