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

by Jason Letts

  “Lowell!” Tris shouted from behind him, while Lowell’s adrenaline surged. He let go of the captive and reached for his sword, sure that the stealthy assassin had chosen this moment to finish them. The Defender brandished a sword of his own, long and decorated in cryptic runes. His presence distracted Taylor, which allowed the captive to get free and scramble for a passageway into the market.

  Lowell and the Defender stared each other down.

  “I’m not your enemy here, but the Virtuoso has made her own enemies. That man and his accomplices work for a group called the Commerce Titans. It appears they decided your expanding market was too much of a nuisance,” he said. Though Lowell understood him perfectly, the sounds spilling out of his lips didn’t seem at all like Cumerian.

  “How do we know you’re not involved? We know about the other women you marked and killed,” Lowell said, never taking his eyes off of the Defender. Tris had explained how he moved like the wind, could vanish without a trace, and didn’t hesitate to kill.

  But now a smirk marred the hooded man’s unshaven face.

  “You’ve been talking to that two-headed freak. The Mind of Madora is dangerous and untrustworthy, smart enough to prey on your fears, to spin lies to turn you against me. He says I killed those women when they walked out of town under their own power. I defy you to show me a body. Foreigners have no place in Madora, and all of you should leave immediately. It’s for your own good and the good of this city.”

  Lowell cast a quick glance at Taylor, wondering what he would do if the man advanced. To his surprise, Tris’s voice followed.

  “If foreigners don’t belong here, why did you call me Virtuoso and tell me to save the poor of Madora?” she asked. The Defender’s guarded expression gave away nothing.

  “The story of the Virtuoso is a delicate one. A woman from a distant land arrived with nothing, became a Madoran, a rose up to lift the people into a golden age. It only takes one savior of the people to cultivate their prosperity, one who understands them and champions them. You are Madoran now. These others here only want to manipulate and leech from them their strength and labor.”

  Lowell had been in enough negotiations to know when a man believed what he said. It struck him as strange that the Defender held tight to the belief that foreigners were parasites when the people of Madora were so impoverished they’d never be able to help themselves. Tris and himself were the best chance this city had to make serious gains in generations, though that was only if his family agreed to his plan.

  “If your fight is to keep this city free of outside influence, your fight is in vain. Tapping into the world market is the best way to create work and increase productivity. Besides, you’re never going to manage to keep all of the foreigners out of the city.” Lowell wheezed, aware he was far outmatched if it came to blows.

  “You don’t understand Madora the way I do, the enchanting mysticism of its people who swell together in one great outburst to be free. There are the midnight prayers to Stram the Eternal, creator of worlds, and the reverence for the ears and shoulders as the most sacred parts of the body. We won’t let you corrupt us, and if you stay I promise the day will come when you’ll wish you’d left.”

  “Not if I have anything to say about it,” Taylor said, rushing forward at the Defender despite empty hands and the cries of his family. Lowell watched his skin take on a shade of blue and understood that the Ma Ha’dere’s energy and the urge to fight had gotten the better of him.

  Sure Taylor was about to lose his head, Lowell gasped when the Defender drew back his sword, the mysterious runes seeming to harness and reflect the faint light. Taylor bolted forward, but the Defender stepped back into the shadows and then reemerged from above, catching Taylor by the neck, lifting his chin, and pressing the blade up against it.

  “Only two types of men advance against the Moan Soothsayer’s blade unarmed: those who ask for death and those who demand it. Which one are you?”

  “Let me go!” Taylor gurgled while the Defender stayed clear of his grasping blue hands.

  “So you demand it, do you? It’s just as well. This trickster’s power you have is weakening your Moa.”

  Intent not to lose his son, Lowell took a step forward and looked for an opening until the Defender noticed him.

  “Step no farther! Your Moa is even weaker, and the pull of death pulls you inexorably closer. Soon you’ll have as much to fear from the sharp edge of a sheet of paper as you do from this sword.”

  With Taylor held down, Lowell knew there was no possibility to get him free. Sierra sent Nemi floating in the air above them, but the only outcome Lowell could see was the body of his youngest son bleeding out in a dusty alley.

  “What do you want?” Lowell asked, desperate to make a bargain.

  In an instant, the sword disappeared from Taylor’s throat, the Defender kicked him flat onto the dirt path, and Madora’s most dangerous man stepped back into the darkness.

  “I want you to leave this place, now!” the voice echoed around them. Nemi dove into the shadows but fluttered out a moment later, apparently having lost his target.

  The family regrouped and quickly exited the alley for the street in front of the market. A few of the carts had smoldered to ashes, the customers and mercenaries had fled the scene, and only the broken dreams of Tris’s prosperous enterprise remained.

  Tris took a step forward into the wreckage at the corner of the street and the market alley.

  “The Commerce Titans?” Tris muttered in seeming disbelief. Lowell sighed and reached for her shoulder. Being back together brought back all of the bliss of when they were first married, but Lowell felt the responsibility of supporting her too.

  “We’ll have to find out what he was talking about,” Lowell said, adding, “This means the plan is our only option.”

  “Yes, I suppose it does,” she said, turning to look into his eyes. Her eyebrows were furrowed and she clasped her hands. She feared the consequences of the risks they were taking if they fought to right the wrongs that had been done to them.

  Back at the clay hut, the candle burned low and the contract was nothing more than a sheet of paper drenched in ink. Lowell felt the gravity of what they were set to embark on. Once the pieces started moving, there was no turning back.

  “For the Bracken legacy,” he said, taking the charcoal pencil and scrawling his name on the paper. Randall took the pencil next and began to write.

  “My life was taken from me,” Randall said. When he set down the pencil, Lowell wondered who would come forward next. Without that market, they had nothing more than each other.

  Taylor took a step toward the rickety table, eyeing the black document as one would a growling dog.

  “With such a huge opportunity at hand, how could I resist?” he asked.

  After Taylor signed, Lowell cast supportive glances to his wife and daughter. Tris didn’t have a malicious bone in her body, but Lowell knew she understood that signing would require her to take at least one life.

  “If it’s this hard and I’m doing it anyway, it must mean I couldn’t possibly love you any more,” she said. She bit her tongue and squinted her eyes shut as she wrote her name.

  Now everyone looked at Sierra, her bandages, and the dragon on her shoulder. If she didn’t also sign, the whole thing would be off, and Lowell had no confidence that she would. After everyone stared at her in silence for a full three minutes, she began to crack, tears welled up in her eyes, and she gritted her teeth.

  “What a family of fools we are,” she said. “Fine, if this is what you want to do, I’ll agree to it, but it’ll never turn out this way. I promise you it’ll never need to happen.”

  Between the ink and the charcoal, not a speck of the page was unblemished. Lowell picked it up, folded it, and tucked it into the pocket of his ragged dress pants. Sooner or later he’d end up back home in Cumeria, if all went according to plan.

  CHAPTER 2

  The pop of the gas gun. The burst of fla
me inches away from her face. The searing pain that clawed its way inside her mind. Memories of the fight in the fissure below Bracken Energy’s power plants were so vivid Sierra could see still see them happening in front of her. But a month had passed since her flight from Cumeria, and the intolerable, interminable pain had subsided. Now the bandages covering her face were coming off.

  “It wasn’t that long ago that I was where you are now,” Sierra’s mother, Tris, said. As Sierra reclined on stiff chicken crates in a shabby hut decorated with colorful scarves, Agjam peeled away the mask she wore to hide herself. It should’ve come off a week ago, but one more cycle wearing bandages meant less time embracing the hideous scars she’d have for the rest of her life.

  One by one, Agjam removed the yellowing strips and wadded them into balls. Everyone was there watching her—her entire family, Nemi, her tiny dragon, and even some Madorans who’d gawked at her as she walked around town.

  The last bandages prickled against her skin as they peeled away, and the sight of her exposed face elicited immediate shock from everyone present. Their intense expressions and gasps were enough to make her want to hide in a hole for the rest of her life.

  “Stram pa wacqua,” Agjam prayed, putting one hand behind the other and staring into her palm as the Madorans did when they spoke to their gods.

  “I can’t believe it!” Tris cried. Her knees buckled, and she could barely drag herself to Sierra’s side. It wasn’t until she saw Sierra’s dad’s smile that she realized something was not how she had expected it to be. They weren’t repulsed at all.

  “What is it?”

  “Your skin, it’s like a newborn baby’s,” Tris said, breaking into euphoric laughter.

  “You look even better than you did before,” Randall said.

  Agjam brought a mirror, and Sierra saw for herself that the skin on her face didn’t have a scar, wrinkle, or mole on it. Somehow the explosion had burned off her face and healed all fresh and new. Tris smiled so wide it pinched her skin.

  “Now that’s a lucky break,” Sierra said, getting up.

  “No matter what you look like, you’ll always be my beautiful girl,” her dad said, wrapping her in a hug.

  Although the bandages had come off, Sierra received no fewer stares when walking around town. Nemi always caused a jaw-dropping reaction, but now even without him people seemed to be awestruck by her. Sierra’s lighter complexion and above-average height made people wonder, but the looks she received now were disconcerting, almost menacing. It seemed some people distrusted her for her appearance.

  The best respite was spending the end of cycles in her curtained room with Nemi, who padded about on a lumpy rubber cushion. He had lots of energy and displayed his affection for her by nuzzling in her hand and making sure he controlled his temperature enough to avoid starting fires. Sierra recalled the promise she’d made to his old caretaker, and she withdrew the map from her case and spread it on her thin, scratchy bed.

  As he had before, Nemi immediately flew to the spot in the center of the Plagrass continent’s arid, jagged interior.

  “You want to go home, don’t you? Me too.”

  Watching Taylor and Randall prepare to leave Madora was like seeing dead men walking. She knew her father’s plan was an incredible mistake, but everyone else in her family was going along with it like there was no risk at all. Taylor and Randall would be its first victims, then Dad and Mom. By the time its course was run, she’d be the only one left.

  “It’s time for us to go,” Taylor announced after ducking his head in their hut. Once outside in one of the city’s main arteries, Sierra found Randall in a Madoran suit made of fine dyed straw that crinkled every time he moved. He stood next to a caravan of half a dozen men, a couple of women and children, and a few donkeys pulling carts. The journey up the spider’s silk path to Iron City would take two hundred hours, if they didn’t get lost or impeded.

  “Come here,” Lowell said, pulling Taylor and Randall close. By a shaded wall, Sierra was just in earshot. She loved her dad, but she wondered if he’d be contrite about the possibility of sending two of his children off to their deaths.

  “Listen to me for a moment,” he began, rubbing his chin. “This has to be done very carefully. We know the Lus are trying to make inroads in Cumeria, and there’ll never be a better time than now for them with the country in such disarray. But you have to get Angela Lu to make the proposal or the plan will never work. Have you got that?”

  Randall took a deep breath and nodded.

  “I can do this. You don’t have to worry about me,” Randall said.

  “I hope not,” he said before turning to Taylor, who wore the same sleek black Youth Guard uniform he’d worn in the battle of the ClawLands. Taylor, still so young, had new demons to wrestle with since getting involved with a group of cultish anarchists known as the Ma Ha’dere.

  “I know what you’re going to say, and I’m on it,” Taylor said, and Dad stifled a smile.

  “But you jumped the gun again. You’ve got the most sensitive task of all. You’ll need patience, you’ll need restraint, and you’ll need brute strength too. Wait for your opportunity, and then don’t let anything stand in your way.”

  Taylor nodded. It seemed the caravan was set to depart. Rarely did Sierra have the chance to play the part of a big sister, but at the moment she felt so strongly the urge to protect her little brothers, yet was powerless to do so.

  “Be careful!” she shouted to them as they said goodbye. She was sure she’d never see them again. Disturbingly carefree, Randall shrugged and waved before turning to leave with the caravan.

  “Well, that’s that,” Dad said, and Sierra bit her inner cheek. He’d not said a word about the dangers of what they were getting themselves into. Disappointing, but she’d see if he reacted the same way when she announced a plan of her own.

  “I hate to see them go,” Tris said, crossing her arms and watching. Her goodbyes had started hours earlier. Once Randall and Taylor were out of sight, Dad and Mom started away but stopped when they realized Sierra wasn’t accompanying them.

  “I’m leaving too,” she announced when her parents looked back.

  “What?” Lowell asked, his eyes widening.

  “You don’t need me to do anything for your plan other than sit back and watch the disaster unfold, so I’m going to fulfill a promise I made to bring Nemi back to his home in the center of Plagrass,” she explained.

  “Oh, no, Sierra. You can’t do that!” Mom said, reaching for the shoulder that Nemi didn’t occupy. Sierra couldn’t wait for her father to react in the same way, tell her it was too dangerous and that she’d get herself killed; she’d throw it back in his face. He gave her a hard look and pursed his lips.

  “Make sure you prepare yourself, and no one goes into the interior alone,” he said, turning toward their hut. Sierra blinked and found herself tempted to ask if he really approved of her decision, but Tris beat her to it.

  “You don’t have a problem with anything she’s about to do?” Tris asked, incredulous. Lowell glanced over his shoulder and shrugged.

  “She’s fully capable of deciding what she wants to do on her own, and I’m certainly not in a position to tell anyone not to take a risk,” he said, continuing on.

  “Great. Then I’ll start getting ready,” she said, still off put. He could’ve at least done her the favor of acting like a hypocrite. Now she was stuck doing something crazy and couldn’t back out without looking weak.

  “Dedrick, we need to find someone to guide me into the WildLands,” Sierra said, storming down a noisy street with the boy.

  Preparing to venture into the arid wastes of the center of Plagrass was not a task Sierra took lightly. She gathered water, food, and supplies enough to start the journey in less than an afternoon, but getting trustworthy people to assist her when the supplies ran out and they were leagues away from anyone and covered in perfect darkness was another matter.

  “Do this, do that, talk, tal
k, talk,” the boy, who was covered in sand, said, making Sierra wonder if her family was leaning too heavily on him to interact with the Madorans.

  “We’ll take care of you, I promise. The Brackens always look out for their helping hands.”

  Dedrick’s complaint didn’t prevent him from tackling his new task head-on, and he led Sierra from the docks to the caravans to the washers at the river in search of someone willing to take on an adventure. The boy seemed to know half the city and garnered pats on the head and broad smiles from everyone he approached.

  But a solid lead on a guide proved more than he could gather, until they stopped by a trading post peddling reptile skins and arrowheads. A bald man with a thick black mustache whittled a nude female figure on the side of a log. Dedrick took one of the reptile pelts and covered the figure’s body, making the owner laugh. Within moments of talking, he reported what he’d learned.

  “He says there’s a group of scavengers who trade with him once a week. They were here not long ago, and after trading they always to go the temple of Stram the Eternal to give thanks for their bounty.”

  “Scavengers?” Sierra considered, not at all optimistic. If they took a liking to some of Sierra’s things, she’d only have Nemi to protect her—if Nemi wasn’t their target to begin with. But their frequent trips to the temple made it seem like they couldn’t be that bad. Perhaps they were just hard off and couldn’t find another way to survive than to wander around looking for something salable.

  “We might as well check them out,” Sierra decided.

  Once Dedrick had a solid description, the pair left the trading post and trekked several blocks to a hulking, round building of dark stone with alternating short and tall towers. On the stone, people had drawn countless hands with chalk or stone.

  “They say Stram made the world with his many hands, each one a god of creation and destruction. Madorans think a person’s power is in their hands, and the shoulders and the neck are sacred for controlling the power.”