The Cumerian Unraveling Trilogy (Scars of Ambition, Vendetta Clause, Cycles of Power)

by Jason Letts

  “I know that face,” the woman said, the statement as clear as if she’d whispered it into his ear. It crushed him how much trouble this could cause his family, but at the moment all he could do was parry another swing and then deliver a jab to the stomach. The guard dropped to his knees, and Taylor withdrew the bloody knife.

  “How would you like it if we came to your home?” Portia Illiam asked, but Taylor had already broken into a dead run down the path. Nissa, who had climbed onto the other guard’s shoulders, used more of her blue magic to finish him off and then raced to catch up.

  More floodlights came on and the sound of those servants trampling from their pen made running all the way across the fields more perilous than it should’ve been.

  “This is so exhilarating,” Nissa gushed next to him. It was all her fault…‌hers and the professor’s. If only Professor Omicron hadn’t said what he had about his father, Taylor never would’ve bothered with this.

  The humming of a truck’s engine ahead forced Taylor from the path. He dove into the cornfield, stomping through the vegetation. Nissa was near his back, holding onto his arm.

  “Get away from me! That thing is going to blow any second, and you’re going to get me killed!”

  “You don’t mean that, Taylor. You want me too badly,” she said. He ground his teeth, hoping it wasn’t true.

  In truth, he didn’t have any idea how much time was left on the bomb. Hadn’t it been ten minutes? Had the Illiams found it and disabled it? It was hard to know if they were far enough away. Glancing over his shoulder, the top of that incredible monolith seemed to vanish into the night. They had to keep moving. It was coming. It was coming. It had to be coming.

  BOOM!

  The sound of the explosion ripped through Taylor’s ears. A wave struck his chest, knocking him against one of the cornstalks. Taylor knew he should’ve continued on, but the bright orange and red flare rising above the mansion arrested his attention. It looked like the building had caught fire but the statue might not move, but then the whole stone slab seemed to teeter just a bit.

  More and more, it leaned increasingly to the left. It was coming down—the crazed shouts made that clear enough—and Taylor and Nissa reemerged onto the road to get full view of the destruction of one of Cumeria’s most iconic structures.

  If the statue started falling slowly, it finished faster than Taylor could’ve guessed. It toppled like a great tree, the force of gravity never having a greater weapon with which to beat the planet Iyne.

  Nissa screamed when the impact was imminent. The statue crunched through an entire quarter of the mansion like it was nothing, finally slamming into the ground a couple hundred yards away, sending shockwaves that knocked Taylor and Nissa clean off their feet. Sprawled on the ground, Taylor felt his legs tingle. Nissa rolled in the dirt, shuddering in ecstasy.

  When Taylor got up, it was clear that the residents of the FarmFields were too preoccupied with the fallout to pursue them. The fallen statue blocked the main road leading around the estate and fires had broken out in the mansion. Taylor couldn’t believe how much devastation he’d let the Ma Ha’dere talk him into creating.

  Nissa gasped, running her hands over her body.

  “Fuck me right here. Please, please, please,” she begged, grabbing onto the bottom of one of the cornstalks near the path and grinding against the ground.

  If that wasn’t disturbing enough, Taylor noticed lights on the hill near the van. Someone had already made it back and the rest probably weren’t far behind. Even on the clear path, it would take Taylor another ten minutes of running until his lungs burned to get there. Would they even wait for them that long?

  There was only one way to find out. At that moment, Nissa could die for all he cared. Taylor ran across the fields for the hill like he’d be tortured and murdered by revenge-starved farmers if he didn’t make it. Running in the dark like that, considering what had just happened, brought a strange feeling. It was like he wasn’t making any progress. He felt trapped by what he’d done.

  By the time he made it to the fence, he had realized that those flashing break lights meant his group must’ve given them up for dead. Taylor only needed another minute or two to climb the hill, but the van pulled away and disappeared around the corner.

  “No!” Shaking the chain-link fence, Taylor grimaced. That two-hour drive would mean a seven- or eight-hour trot, not to mention the constant vigilance needed to avoid getting caught if the Illiams went looking for him. That economics test coming up just wouldn’t happen.

  By the time he’d mustered the resolve to get started, Nissa had caught up to him.

  “This’ll be a night we’ll never forget,” she sighed, as if that were a good thing. She didn’t understand what he’d have to say to his father and sister about what he’d done to them. The last thing the Brackens needed was another enemy, and food was an awfully powerful weapon.

  CHAPTER 16

  Scarves, beaded necklaces with shiny stones from the river, pastel-painted fingernails, woven orbs to ward off evil, earrings, and carved tree bark. It was quite an impressive collection of trinkets that Tris’s cadre of entrepreneurs peddled outside the market in Madora’s rich quarter. Most of them had already paid back Tris’s investment plus some, and she looked on with satisfaction at a half-dozen women who were climbing out of poverty.

  As another work cycle came to a close and the market shops boarded up for the break, Tris prepared to make the trip back to the city’s central slums, where she’d gotten a room of her own in the building behind Agjam and her husband’s. Transporting the carts was always the most dangerous part and Tris had hired a guard to protect them, but they rarely made it to their destination without some sort of obstruction.

  After only a few blocks, Tris spotted an older woman hobbling out of one of the clay homes with some embroidery in her hands. Where there was one, other were sure to follow, and immediately another poor soul walking the other way turned to Tris as she rolled up a sleeve to reveal a henna tattoo.

  Tris cringed. The embroidery was fraying and flimsy, while the henna appeared sloppy and unrecognizable. Instead of thieves and beggars, these people were the main peril Tris faced lately. They were the exact ones the Virtuoso of Madora needed to help, but having them in Tris’s market would make all of their wares less attractive. It was one thing to help creative geniuses that only needed a leg up, but what about those who didn’t have some undiscovered yet immensely marketable skill?

  More bodies congregated in her area. Some of them Tris had seen before, but she was sure that they waited along her regular routes until they could spring out. Now more than a dozen of them were crowding around, more than even the solitary guard could repel.

  “I’m really sorry, but no,” Tris said to them, but they didn’t understand and didn’t stop trying to wave whatever they had in her face. She’d been able to put a few to work helping Agjam make a daily supply of scarves or collecting other supplies, but there were just too many of them to employ.

  One of the women shouted at another and threw an elbow. They were harassing Agjam and the other artisans, as well, jostling their brittle carts as they pleaded for a chance to join them. Someone grabbed Tris’s sleeve, nearly getting a hold of the scarf that covered her secret.

  The group had almost reached the home of one of the artisans, whose husband came out and tried to lend a hand. The men were often skeptical until they saw the extra money, and then they became supportive and even protective of Tris. Some who didn’t have jobs tried to pitch their own trades. But this man’s efforts to clear out the intruders only led to increasingly frenzied behavior.

  “Please let go,” Tris said when one of them clasped her wrist and pulled her forward. There were probably fifty people in the street now, blocking other traffic, shouting, and clawing each other to get to her. A routine hurdle had metastasized into a riot.

  Someone had her by the hair, threatening to tear it out, but Tris was more concerned about the l
oosening scarf revealing the scar on her neck. She’d already had a reputation that called to the needy and the desperate, but how much worse would it be when she became that picture of the generous and benevolent queen with the X-shaped scar on her neck?

  Tris braced herself as the scarf slipped away, leading to a few shocked gasps and expressions that went from desperately wanting to awestruck. Even the other artisans didn’t know, only Agjam and her husband. It didn’t help that everyone who saw the scar immediately dropped to their knees to bow as if in silent prayer.

  Suddenly the chaos quelled, leaving an ensuing silence that made the penitent crowd more terrifying than any bloodthirsty pirate. Someone else might’ve enjoyed the attention, but the responsibility rattled Tris. And now, as her reputation increased and the expectations mounted, both would crush any possibility of success. She needed help.

  On top of a three-story clay structure hidden in the glare of the sun, the Defender of Madora watched over them. Tris pursed her lips at the phantom man in his cloak, and he gave her a strange salute with an open palm.

  “I hope you know what you’re doing,” she whispered.

  Perhaps the people were waiting for her to speak, but she would never be able to tell them anything they could understand. She took advantage of the surreal calmness to slink away through the kneeling crowd, whose outstretched hands brushed her but no longer clasped.

  She needed space to think and plan, but more than anything she needed to learn more about how Madora worked. Who paid the guards at the markets that protected her artisans? Was there any existing center of power in the city that she could use to her advantage? How could she mobilize more men to contribute? She would never know as long as the language barrier remained.

  Rather than traveling to the market the next day, she stayed in her room despite the entreaties of Agjam and her peers. It was no use anymore wearing a scarf to hide her identity, yet facing the public wasn’t a possibility, either. She slept the early part of the cycle away on her padded mat in the corner.

  “This night won’t last forever, not as long as we stick together. Sun, rain, or stormy weather, you’re my son and you’re my treasure.”

  When Tris heard that song amid the haze of semi-consciousness, she thought she’d been swept off into a dream. She’d sung that rhyme to Randall countless times, and the pang she felt missing her children was beyond unbearable. But some hint of the humming that followed stayed with her in her waking state. The voice had been a young boy’s, and she’d heard it with her own ears. As unbelievable as it seemed, someone was speaking Cumerian.

  Peeking out of her window, she glanced down each end of the street but couldn’t see anything. Venturing onto her narrow, sandy stretch of road, she tried to puzzle out the direction of the humming and wandered along the path in search of its source.

  “Sun, rain, or stormy weather. The night is long but love’s forever.”

  She caught a glimpse of a boy doing cartwheels on an adjacent street. He was small, five or maybe six years old. When he noticed her jogging forward, he scampered down another side street.

  “Wait!” she called. It must’ve got his attention, because he halted and turned. The boy had a cute face, but even his lips were covered in dark sand. His shorts and shirt were different from what the locals wore, though just as dirty. “You were singing in Cumerian. How?”

  “I speak Cumerian!” the boy said, waving his hands and hopping around on both feet in great leaps. He was a ball of energy, which Tris found delightful.

  “You must be from the Seasand Desert,” she observed. No one else had sand saturating their skin like that. “How did you get here?”

  “A ship! A ship!” the boy hollered.

  “Where are your parents? Who are you here with?” she asked, and the boy suddenly stopped moving. A swift melancholy seemed to crush him, and he curled into a ball on the ground. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean it.”

  Tris sighed. What a tragic nursery rhyme for him to be singing if he’d lost his parents somehow. It was possible he spoke Cumerian better than anyone in the entire city.

  “Can you speak Madoran?” she asked, and the boy mimicked her tone, though the words were not in her language. Maybe his parents were travelers, or one spoke each language. A ball of excitement overwhelmed Tris, who dropped to her knees right next to him.

  “Please, I need you to help me. I have to find a way back to Cumeria, any way at all. Can you do that for me? If you do I promise I’ll get you a nice home to live in and something to eat,” she said.

  The boy’s suspicious look unsettled her, but it was clear that his hunger was winning out. He nodded and she extended her hand to help him up.

  “If I help you’ll bring me home?” he asked, and Tris realized she’d gotten into sticky territory.

  “I need to find a way back to Cumeria, but I can’t go back. I have a letter to send. It’s very important. Then I can find a home for you here. My name is Tris and I’ve been lost a long time, but as long as we stick together we might be just fine.”

  “I’m Dedrick,” he said.

  It was clear that the boy didn’t find half as much meaning in their meeting as she did, but he seemed content to go along with it. Most likely for him it was just something that would make him a little less bored or aware of the hunger.

  But for Tris it was her latest long shot attempt to reach out to her family. She’d begged her way into the homes of wealthy market visitors only to discover that phone lines and wire networks couldn’t reach across the seas. She’d sent letters with the caravans, sure the paper would rot before it reached her loved ones. Resolute, she would never pass up a chance to get word home, no matter how unlikely it was.

  They returned to Tris’s room, where she gave him part of a brown, fleshy root she had gotten at the city bazaar and didn’t know the name of. While he chewed, she scrounged through her things until she had a charcoal pencil and some stiff paper. She settled on her mat and wrote against her knee, struggling to put into words everything she wanted to say. Finally she folded the felt, pinned it shut, and wrote an address on the outside.

  “I’m ready,” she said.

  Obliging, the boy escorted her out of the room and through the streets. Being able to write to her family was such a luxury, and she hoped the letter would make it to its destination in one piece.

  The smell of sea air made it clear that they were headed toward the docks, giving Tris chills as she recalled the circumstances of her first arrival. Most of the boats were those of local fishermen, some headed for the Copian Islands. Without being able to speak the language, she never worked out which one could help her, but with Dedrick things might be different.

  The docks were bustling as usual. All manner of boatmen hauled crates around on wagons. Tris had to call upon some of her fortitude to venture in here, fearing that some comrade of Lux or Zandy would recognize her and take revenge for what she’d done. But no one seemed to notice, and the boy appeared perfectly comfortable talking to the dockworkers.

  “It’s this one!” Dedrick said, pointing to a large clipper down the row. It wasn’t the largest ship, but it was close. Uninhibited, the boy raced up to a sailor about to take a ramp onto the deck and tugged on his wrist. The sailor nearly swatted him into the sea, but they began talking. After some encouraging nods, Dedrick brought the sailor over to Tris.

  “This boat goes to Iron City,” the boy said. After Tris explained where the letter needed to go, they worked out a path for it to get there, one she could’ve taken herself if she didn’t feel like it was her calling to stay. “Two cycles boat to Iron City, one cycle plane to Ristle, then train south to ClawLands. You pay half now and half when the courier returns.”

  “Just don’t stop for a layover in Pover. At least make it to Rock Shield,” Tris advised, her own bad experiences in mind. She sighed when it came time to part with her letter. It was so hard to ask her family for something when she would’ve been eternally grateful just to see t
heir faces, but Tris knew she wasn’t the same person she’d been when she’d left home. As long as she stayed in Madora, she couldn’t turn a blind eye to the problems of the world.

  “Take this to Lowell Bracken and put it directly in his hand.”

  The sailor looked like any other, one whose face would be forgotten as soon as he turned around. But it was worth the coins on the off chance someone would be able to follow through with something in this world.

  The sailor returned to his ship, leaving Tris with Dedrick by the docks. She had to admit that his ability to translate between her and the Madorans was invaluable. She knelt down and ran her hand through his sandy hair.

  “Hey Dedrick, that was pretty good. I said I’d take care of you, and I will, but I want to give you a job, too. You’re very special because of the languages you speak. My plan is to change things here and make the city better for everyone, but I’ll never be able to do that if I can’t talk to people. If you can be my ears and my mouth, we can change everything.”

  The boy looked at her, his head cocked to the side a bit.

  “OK,” he agreed, as if she’d simply asked him if he wanted to play. They turned and walked away from the docks, the whole city stretching up to the hillside in front of them. Tris was sure her efforts would pick up steam now, not just because of the boy, but because of the undeserved admiration she received from strangers on the street, many of whom clasped their hands together and bowed to her. More than just money, some cooperation was what it would take to change things here.

  While walking, Tris noticed a man beside them in a tan jacket, dressy pants, and glasses that made a stark contrast with the clothing of the poor Madorans. She tried to ignore him and hide her nerves, but he kept sidling closer until he was nearly right beside them. Her heart rate rose and she looked ahead to see if he was leading her somewhere, but saw nothing. No sign of the defender on the rooftops, either.