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

by Jason Letts

  Maglum shouted to Hinkalo, who loped down the hill after the tent. He had the injured arm limp at his side and a pained grimace on his face. The shaking of the platform increased until it was nearly impossible to stand on, and Sierra braced herself with her legs apart, knowing that it was only a matter of time until the crash came. Not even Nemi would land on the rocketing structure.

  Razi shouted something, coals from the fire pit in the center were tossed in every direction, and the tent platform careened into the tempestuous waves. Hinkalo raced in a flat-out sprint even as the wooden platform, now essentially a raft, left the shore. He leapt, throwing his hands in the air, while Razi held one of the tent’s supports and reached out for him. Hinkalo caught her hand but dropped into the water, leaving him submerged as she and Maglum struggled to haul him aboard.

  Sierra was preoccupied with other problems. The coals were threatening to catch the floor and the hide on fire, and she did her best to kick them through gaps at the bottom without destroying the entire structure. The raft rocked violently when it smashed into a boulder, but eventually they got Hinkalo out of the water. When it finally peeled around the impediment, Sierra glanced at the spinning rain and darkness, wondering if she’d ever figure out where that cave was now.

  But staying on the raft in the middle of the torrent was not an option. They were safely away from the nomads, but there was nothing good to be found following the flood. As it traveled in a northeasterly direction, it was bound to take them deeper into the arid badlands where they could meet a three-hundred-foot drop before they knew it.

  Lightning bolts continued to strike the upper reaches of the valley, temporarily illuminating the shore. The foursome gathered on the deck area, trying to judge the spinning of the raft and how best to get off. When the next lightning bolt hit, they all dove for the shore.

  Sierra groaned when her side smacked against the hard ground. She pulled her legs out of the floodwater and got to her feet, and the group prepared to traverse the other side of the valley in search of some place to ride out the storm. Sierra had been soaked and aching for so long she thought it would never end, and it took at least an hour to hike somewhere that seemed to provide enough of an overhang to keep them safe.

  When they came to rest and Sierra dropped onto a dry patch of ground, her head was spinning with what she’d just been through. How could anybody actually live out here? How could the world be like this? She eventually came to grips with her actions and her experiences in the Plagrass Wilds right around the time that she finally passed out against a mound of sand.

  When she awoke, the rain had subsided, the darkness was starting to lift, and pangs of hunger racked her stomach. The edibles they had with them—tooth root, bar bread, and some pressed meat—wouldn’t last them long. The first thing they had to do was look for wreckage containing supplies along the course of the floodwater.

  Spending time scrounging around the bottom of the valley didn’t produce much. They found broken boards, bits of cloth, and even a wheel, but making another cart seemed like it wouldn’t be worth it if they didn’t have much to put in it. The best find they made early that cycle was a spear, which would make up for Hinkalo’s abandoned sword. Nemi settled on his shoulder, perhaps out of sympathy. The cut on his arm was not doing well, leading Sierra to worry about infection.

  She was scanning the dim surface of the ground for anything noteworthy when she took another step and tripped over something. Her knees slammed against the rocks, and she looked back at what had gotten in her way. It made a coughing sound, and Sierra realized it was a man. But he wasn’t one of the nomads; his clothes were work overalls, a jacket, and boots like what might be found back home. He was unshaved, and had dirty blond hair. Something from the storm must’ve opened a cut in the side of his head. Blood had dried against his forehead.

  Razi and the others came over at once.

  Sierra knelt down next to the man. It was heartrending to look at him.

  “Can you hear me? Are you OK?” she asked. This man wasn’t from Plagrass. There was a chance he could understand her. He continued to sputter as the others joined them. They looked the man over, finding a few odds and ends in his pockets. The most curious item that the man carried was a glass jar half-full of water.

  “Hello? What’s your name?” Sierra asked, sure he wasn’t lucid enough to respond.

  “Tommack,” he wheezed before losing consciousness.

  CHAPTER 6

  As the plane hit the runway and slowed to a halt near the terminal’s glass doors and windows, Taylor’s breathing grew deep and even. He could feel it inside of him waiting to get out, that strange sensation constantly pushing him forward. The pent-up discontentment and dissatisfaction coalesced into power that wasn’t human. The Ma Ha’dere had made him an agent of change, and the time was coming when he’d be able to let everything inside of him out. The anticipation was killing him.

  Once the plane came to a stop, the pilot came out of the cockpit and gave him a look. Taylor took his bag, though he doubted he’d have it very long. Angela Lu had told them who’d be waiting at the airport for him, and as he stepped down the stairs to the tarmac and saw how few people and planes were around him, he understood how quickly they would find him.

  No one was at the terminal counter when he pushed open the door. Seats were empty. The large board against the wall had only listed two flights, and one of them was from two cycles ago. The fluorescent lights were off, but a TV in the waiting area was on and tuned to the news. Usually Taylor ignored the news, which had a tendency to celebrate people like his father and mother, Melody Hockley, that he had never liked, but this story immediately caught his attention and made him smirk.

  “We’ve got reports coming in today from across the Still Sea in the city of Madora, where the exalted and wealthy leader of the people known as the Virtuoso is finding herself with all kinds of money and nothing to spend it on. MMC has exclusive images of a city in dire need of construction materials and foodstuffs. We turn to our senior foreign correspondent, Allitron Nikasa, for more,” the news anchor said.

  Already footsteps echoed from down the hall, but Taylor had to watch the pictures of Madora flashing on the screen. It was going to work.

  “I’ve got to hand it to you, Dad. You pulled it off. Now I guess it’s my turn,” he said softly, taking another deep breath before turning to the approaching Guard members.

  Taylor stood his ground, watching six men and one red-haired woman approach in black lycra suits that were much like his except for a white ring around the collar and the symbol of the Guard, two crossed fists, embroidered on the left breast.

  “You, stop right there!” one of the men said.

  “What took you so long?” Taylor sighed, shaking his head. “And in case you didn’t notice, I’m not moving.”

  The seven of them entered the waiting lounge near the terminal and fanned out around him. Most likely this was the entire contingent assigned to the airport, possibly even most of the area around Ristle. They were in their late twenties or early thirties, all of them with a decade more fighting experience than him. But he had something they didn’t.

  “State your name and purpose,” one of them said.

  “Taylor Bracken, I’m—”

  “He’s one of the traitors! Take him into custody. We’ll let the captain make the final call on how to dispose of him.”

  When a few of the guards came up to apprehend him, it took all of the willpower Taylor had to go along with it. The first thing they did was gag him. They were smart to cut him off in mid-sentence to stop him from saying what his clothing made clear was coming, but one of the guards stupidly leaned in front of him while performing a search, practically begging Taylor to steal his saber and slice his neck with it. If this were how sloppy the Cumerian Guard had become, maybe Taylor would be better off getting his part of the plan done on his own.

  Two of the guards stayed to search the plane while another handcuffed Taylor an
d the rest marched him outside, where a van with a coal-furnace engine waited to take them back to base. Seeing the vehicle, an obvious symbol of a partnership between the Aggart government and the Wozniak family’s mining company, brought back all of the revulsion he’d felt toward them during the fight in the ClawLands. Taylor tested the handcuffs—another sign of their cooperation, probably made of some hybrid of aluminum and steel made right in Wozniak factories.

  Although the airport looked like a ghost town compared to what it had formerly been, the city of Ristle and the road leading to the base presented an even starker picture of what had happened to Cumeria. The city already appeared as though it had been the setting for some intense fighting. Buildings had all manner of damage, from broken windows to entire chunks blown out from explosive damage. The fighting in the ClawLands had just been the beginning, and now it seemed a number of groups were vying for assets all around the country.

  The van turned away from the city and veered northwest along a narrow path barricaded on both sides. It extended for miles through dense forest and then out into the open country, until it led to a large concrete encampment in the middle of nowhere nestled against the side of a hill. It had bunkers, black helicopters sitting on pads, and training facilities made of ropes courses and wooden structures.

  This place was one he’d never seen, a far cry from the regional camps where the Youth Guard trained. The van’s occupants had maintained strict silence until coming within range of the enclave, where the red-haired soldier used a radio to make contact and announce their approach. The Guard base’s front gate was a nasty mix of barbed wire and protruding metal that gradually parted and allowed them to enter. The gate made the place look like a prison, which, for Taylor, it could very well prove to be.

  “Get out,” one of the guards said, grabbing him by the sleeve and pulling him onto the worn treads in the ground where the vehicle had stopped. Taylor barely had time to roll onto his knees and look up before he realized a dozen guns were pointed at him from various bunkers and sniper holes around the enclave’s exterior. One of the guards pulled a baton from inside the van, took a look at it in the morning light, and swiftly used it to crack Taylor in the jaw, sending him flopping back against the dirt.

  Taylor groaned through his gag, but the pain felt good enough to want more. The time when he’d have as much as he wanted was quickly approaching.

  The clanging of metal signaled the unlocking of the front door, which opened for a man who was undoubtedly Captain of the Guard. Either that, or he’d just made himself a fancy hat to look important. But the hulking man with graying stubble whose eyes appeared to be made of stone walked forward, hands held behind his back.

  Taylor got to his knees again and received another whack from the baton. This time he didn’t play along and fall over, instead glaring at the guard who, in moments, would be his first victim.

  “It’s a Bracken, sir,” the soldier said.

  “Are you going to let him look at you that way?” the captain asked in a deep yet raspy voice.

  When the guard reached back to deliver another blow, Taylor strained to snap the chain holding the cuffs together and bowled into his attacker. The impact knocked the man clear off his feet and onto his back a few yards away, while the others who had taken him captive at the airport rushed to restrain him.

  These were members of the Cumerian Guard, trained to fight to the death and withstand pain in the name of their country, and that meant it took all of Taylor’s skill and strength to fend them off. They never left themselves open or over-extended an attack as any street punk would. The only option for Taylor was to trade blows for blows, taking a punch to the gut from one so he could palm his head and slam it into the side of the van.

  The red-haired guard stomped on the back of Taylor’s knee when his back was turned, leaving him kneeling while another came at him straight on with a baton. Taylor took the baton strike to the forearm, grabbed the man’s chest, and threw him back against the woman. The pair spilled onto the dirt, groaning.

  Winning wasn’t an option, not with all those guns trained on him and more Guard members coming through the front door, but Taylor had to perform well enough to prove he still had it, still knew the sweet art and rhythm of uninhibited combat. The captain continued to watch from a short distance away, slowly wringing his hands as the circling guards knocked Taylor back and forth. It was time to play his only card.

  Taylor tore the gag from his face, spitting out the taste of bleached fabric with it.

  “I want to join the Guard,” he wheezed immediately before taking an elbow to the face. That would leave a bruise, bleed in his mouth, and make his jaw sore for days. It hurt to talk, but he had to keep going.

  “You have to let me in. No Youth Guard graduate has ever been denied,” he said. If it didn’t work and they decided his brother and father’s status as traitorous, wanted men for sparking the Cumerian civil war was enough to keep Taylor out, they would kill him. Especially when the chancellor was already cozy with the Wozniaks, it must’ve been easy for them to place all of the blame on the losers who weren’t around to defend themselves. Considering what Taylor himself had done to the Illiams, he was as responsible for the inter-family warfare destroying the country as anyone, though he couldn’t have guessed their greed would push them to keep grabbing for more land and power even after taking the ClawLands.

  Successive blows from fists and batons took their toll on Taylor, who kept his arms out in vain to give him space, even if it meant he was largely left undefended. The pain was almost unbearable, but Taylor roused himself for one last show of his power. The surge of discontentment and rage within him was too much to bear, and it burst through his hands in a subtle blue glow.

  Taylor listed to the side toward one guard, smashing from high to low in a windmill motion. The guard put up his forearm to block, but the blow smashed right through to his face, breaking his arm and jaw in the process. That man wouldn’t get up anytime soon.

  The others were clearly awestruck but not in the least deterred. One threw a baton at Taylor and ran in behind it, but wasn’t at all rewarded for the move. Taylor caught the baton and feigned a strike with it only to head-butt the man in the chest, knocking him back. The red-haired female caught Taylor’s wrists when he threw a punch, leaning back and snapping her foot up to kick Taylor under the chin. The blow stung, but she held on to his arm a moment too long. Taylor dropped down and slammed her against the ground as if she were a club.

  When Taylor spun around, he found the captain not more than a foot in front of him.

  “Do I need to get involved here, son?” he said, a look of annoyance on his face.

  Taylor reached back to punch him, a dazzling blue bursting from every blood vessel in his hand, but the captain still managed to strike first. Lightning fast, a chop to the neck immobilized Taylor, who slumped to the ground and lost consciousness.

  When Taylor woke up, he discovered he was in a small cell containing a wooden bench with a thin mattress pad, a dirty toilet, and a door with a window near the top that allowed some light in from the hall. After wiping his eyes and acclimating to the groggy, aching feeling saturating his body, Taylor also found on the wall a scalpel with a small chain on the end hanging from a nail right beneath a sign with red letters saying “Exit.”

  Taylor wondered how many prisoners here availed themselves of that exit, but he still held out hope he’d find his way into the Guard. Everything he heard while going through the Youth Guard emphasized the importance of respect, the rules, and the rites of passage. The Guard valued its traditions and wasn’t likely to deviate from them. That’s what Taylor and his father were banking on. But the Guard also had a history of silencing problems and locking them away. Taylor needed to get in and he needed to have access if his part of the plan was going to work.

  Taylor had no idea how long it was from when he arrived at the Guard enclave and when he woke up in his cell. There wasn’t enough light to get a g
ood sense of how his bruises were healing. But his head and mouth hurt constantly. He dozed off and woke up again later. It must’ve been at least two cycles since he’d had anything to eat or drink, and that was starting to take more of a toll than the beating. It made his mind foggy and his body weak.

  The first sign of life came when the door cracked open and the captain dragged a stool in. He set it beside the bench and snapped his fingers to coax Taylor out of his daze. The man in uniform looked utterly without emotion.

  “Hey, can you hear me? Do you know who I am? I’m the commander, and I’m in charge around here. I don’t know what kind of stunt you were trying to pull,” he said before pausing to scratch around his mouth. “Hey, are you listening? Blink twice if you’re a fucknut.”

  “You have to let me in,” Taylor muttered, becoming more lucid. It hurt, but he struggled to sit up against the wall. His eyes drifted to a tag on the man’s chest identifying his name, Keran.

  “How can I put this in a way that’ll make it clear to you? Cumeria and the Brackens are finished. You are on Chancellor Aggart’s official shit list. He wants you dead. He wants your family dead. The only thing about you that will endure is the memory of how treasonous you were,” he said.

  Taylor could fill in the rest from what he’s heard from his father and Randall. Chancellor Aggart had pushed a virtually baseless investigation through the Private Oversight Committee in order to bring tensions between the Brackens and the other premier families to a boil. That justified his grab for power, wiping out the Grand Council along the way. It was the story Aggart told of unruly, feuding families that gave him the right to rule indefinitely, and that was what the Brackens had to change.