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

by Jason Letts

  It was a compelling argument, and from Taylor’s position he couldn’t see a reason to turn down the gift. Ideological differences over who controls what commodity and who could buy what from whom didn’t mean everyone on the losing side had to die. But the chancellor remained recalcitrant.

  “I’d like to pose a question, if I may. Have any of these humanitarian aid shipments already been sent?”

  “No, they have not,” the emissary replied, focusing carefully on the chancellor.

  “I warn you not to lie to me,” the chancellor said, the tone of his voice making even Taylor’s heart rate jump. The emissary put up his hands to backtrack his previous statement.

  “Some of our trade shipments had small amounts of supplies that we handed over simply as a gesture of goodwill to those needy souls on the other side,” he shrugged, forcing a weak grin.

  “Our Guard captured some of these accompanying supplies and perused the contents,” the chancellor stated.

  “Oh, you did,” the emissary said, withdrawing his hands from the table and glancing at the door. The man appeared to want to sink into the floor.

  “These humanitarian shipments contained food and blankets, sure, but we also found shivs, arrows, crossbows, dynamite, and what crude guns you people could cobble together. Here’s my second question. Do you take me for a fool?”

  The emissary was shaking visibly, his breathing erratic.

  “What would you like me to tell the Lyrian High Chamber?” he muttered, not looking up.

  “They’ll get the message.”

  In one swift motion, the chancellor rose from his seat, snapped an arm over the width of the desk, snatched the emissary by the shoulder, and began smashing his face into the granite table. The force of the blows crushed the dark glasses, and the emissary released a few incoherent moans before a pool of blood soaked the papers and his face was reduced to putty. Aggart finally let go, and the fresh cadaver slid onto the floor.

  Taylor watched it all, not needing to try to keep himself awake. When the chancellor finally got up, adjusted his uniform, and went for the door, Taylor now had to avoid gawking at him.

  “Meeting adjourned,” Chancellor Aggart said, clearing his throat and leading the way out.

  The only thing worse than sleeping with the ants was going without any sleep at all, which was exactly what Taylor needed to do to put together the final pieces of his plan. Keeping out of the streetlights and any fellow guards who might see him out, Taylor slunk through the streets on the way to the printing press, an auxiliary service performed by the government that disseminated public information and produced the chancellor’s daily copy of Early Edition.

  It was extremely late, and Taylor had to argue with the press’s doorman, security retainer, floor manager, and editorial chief to get them to start the next day’s printings early enough to give him time to do what he needed to do. Each argument ended when Taylor played the trump card—that he was part of the chancellor’s personal guard, and it had been demanded of him to deliver Early Edition even earlier. Standing near the massive printing press, the editorial chief continued to quibble.

  “But if the typesetting isn’t done properly, the entire paper could be a mess!” he said, throwing down his arms like a child.

  “It doesn’t matter. Just print the paper,” Taylor insisted.

  “We usually don’t start the printing for hours. This is when our sources come in, and if we don’t wait, it’s possible we’ll miss something big!”

  “You can send a pamphlet later, but the chancellor needs you to get this started now. Do you want me to tell him you gave me a hard time?” Taylor said, imitating something of Aggart’s voice and directness. That threat ended any further debate, and the editorial chief started the presses and did a rush job of the chancellor’s special Early Edition. Taylor held the paper in his hand, saw that it looked fine, and hoped that it would get the job done for him.

  “I hope you’re happy with it,” the editorial chief sighed.

  “There’s only one way to tell.”

  Back in his room, Taylor soaked the paper in the saline solution containing the dissolved Full Tense fungal powder. Although the powder would get absorbed through Aggart’s fingertips while reading the paper as he always did, the effect wasn’t exactly immediate and required a lot of exposure. After reading a few pages, the chancellor would most likely begin to stretch his arms and legs. A few more pages would leave him unable to get out of his chair or yell for help. Once his breathing locked up, it would all be over.

  Careful to use his mask and gloves, Taylor pinned the saturated pages to clotheslines and let them dry in the room, kicking himself when the ink on one of the pages began to run and he had no choice but to throw it out. If the chancellor noticed the paper wasn’t the proper thickness, he might suspect something. Or worse, he wouldn’t spend enough time touching the pages to absorb the powder, leaving him with aches and muscle spasms he could fight through while pulverizing Taylor’s head against the tabletop.

  Finally the paper dried enough, and Taylor bundled it together, packed it in a bag, and set off to the Spiral for what was likely to be the last time. Taylor wasn’t ever seriously stricken by nerves, but the adrenaline coursing through his veins alerted him to the importance of the situation. By the time breakfast was over, his brother would be the new chancellor of Cumeria. Whether Taylor made it out alive would be a historical footnote.

  It was only halfway through the long, uphill walk when Taylor remembered he was wearing the gloves he’d used to handle the poison. They were a dead giveaway, and he quickly took them off only to discover the blue tint to his hands from the Ma Ha’dere’s energy, which looked like every vein carrying blue blood had exploded. Crossing his arms and hiding his hands under his armpits, he struggled to calm himself.

  The Ma Ha’dere’s energy seemed to always push Taylor to the brink. He recalled the cloaked professor’s hands on his scalp when he unlocked the power combining strength with unquenchable dissatisfaction. This was his chance to lash out at the world, really change things, and get revenge for his father, which was why he’d joined the Ma Ha’dere in the first place.

  The mental effort was excruciating, but Taylor managed to return his hands to normal. After meeting with the guards at Entrance 995, he entered the chancellor’s private suite and gathered his breakfast, placing the tainted paper on the right side. Everything looked exactly as it always had.

  Finding it hard to breathe, Taylor headed through the suite to the main office, where the chancellor was predictably poring over some documents. The man never seemed to sleep. He looked up when Taylor took his place and held the tray.

  “Oh, good!” Aggart said, getting out of his seat and coming over. This was the moment when he’d reveal if he thought anything was amiss. He reached out for the tray and then stopped.

  “Are you trying to kill me?” the chancellor said, aghast.

  “What?”

  “Eggplant for breakfast? What are they thinking? Maybe I’ll go without for once,” he said, turning on his heels and returning to his desk. “Just put that anywhere and someone’ll come by to clean it up eventually.”

  Taylor reluctantly set the product of his elaborate murder plot on a table supporting a lamp, where it would eventually be thrown out. Standing in his spot by the door, he tried not to look at it or show his frustration that he now needed to find another way to kill the chancellor. The days were ticking by, and the election would be here before he knew it if he didn’t act fast.

  The chancellor said something that snapped him from his pessimistic thoughts.

  “Do you know why I picked you? Roark?” he asked, the name getting mangled in his mouth.

  “Uhh, no. I don’t, sir.”

  It was always uncomfortable having the chancellor’s eyes on him, but at the moment it was downright brutal. He looked subtly angry, just as he did when meeting with the Lyrian emissary. From what Taylor had seen, that focused look was the only indi
cation he ever gave that he was about to turn the tables on someone. The chancellor had promised pain Taylor couldn’t imagine but might experience very soon.

  “You’re hiding something from me, aren’t you?” he asked, running a finger along the edge of his mouth.

  “I’m sorry, but I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “There’s a reason you’re here, a reason you wanted this job. Something is driving you to do this,” the chancellor went on.

  Taylor struggled to control his breathing when the chancellor casually rose from his desk and meandered over. Aggart must’ve known he was Taylor Bracken and was there to kill him because he was Lowell’s son and Randall’s brother. He cast an inquiring glance in Taylor’s direction.

  “Anyone would want this job,” Taylor said, keeping his voice steady while worrying that the chancellor would snap at him for lying and smother him with the poison newspaper sitting by the lamp. He’d be just another dead member of the chancellor’s personal guard.

  “That’s hardly true,” Aggart scoffed. “But there’s a reason you wanted it. I could see it in your eyes when you were there on the bleachers. I felt it in that kick. It’s inside you, trying to get out, riding you so close to the edge every second.”

  Taylor’s eyes narrowed, trying to parse the comments.

  “No, sir,” Taylor muttered. The chancellor was so close now, looming over him. The blow could come at any second. Even with Taylor’s energy, he might not be fast or strong enough to fend it off.

  “I want you to know that I feel it too. You’re not alone. In fact, the world belongs to people like us.”

  “What?” Taylor gasped, suddenly confused.

  Chancellor Aggart took a step back and held one wrist as his hands took on a deep blue tint that spread down his arms along his veins, disappearing under his uniform and reappearing in lines stretching up his neck and over his jawbones. The chancellor’s eyes developed an azure sheen that was captivating and disturbing. Whatever else he suspected, he had the energy too.

  The newspaper never received more than a passing glance.

  CHAPTER 14

  “Trissandra Bracken.”

  That haunting voice came again from the shadows, prickling her ears as she slumped in the corner of her room. In the past two cycles, she hadn’t eaten a bite, barely spoke to anyone, and cried far more than was healthy. Now he had come.

  “Yes.”

  Numb, delirious, she tried not to think of how perilously depleted she felt. She’d made the ultimate sacrifice and her husband, Lowell, was gone forever, but despite everything going according to his plan, none of the rewards he’d promised her would ever come. The Madorans sensed it, too. Having him around gave them the optimism they needed to make great things, and without him the entire city felt deflated.

  “The fault lies not with you,” the Defender said.

  Considering he had tried to sabotage the meeting himself, it was charitable of him to comfort her failure as the Virtuoso who would bring prosperity to city. All she had to give to anyone now was the pain of loss and the crippling despair of a bleak, loveless life without the one person she had been put on Iyne to be with. But how could she be blameless if she’d gone along with it all?

  “No.”

  She hugged her knees closer, feeling so very old.

  “’Tis true. You were deceived by the two-headed freak who conspired with the foreigners by revealing your identity and your plans, thus ensuring your doom.”

  Tris remembered when they were in the dark bunker, listening to Lowell, Dedrick, and the Mind of Madora argue with each other over how they would manipulate the Wozniaks and the Illiams. The Mind had no intellectual equal. It must’ve known, must’ve wanted this. There’s no way she could’ve brought such misery upon herself, right?

  “Yes.”

  The Defender inhaled an audibly stilted breath but remained perfectly concealed. Tris cast her beleaguered eyes about the dark room and the rafters without catching a glimpse of him. He was a shadow, unborn and hanging on the edge of existence.

  “We can have our revenge on the one who betrayed us,” he whispered.

  The Defender hated the Mind, but Lowell and Tris had sided with him anyway because it fit into Lowell’s plan to trick the Cumerian premier families. He was convinced they were the only path to resurrection, but after she’d played her part he had come to her, pleading with her to take it back because there was another solution waiting in the wastes. The Mind must’ve known. He was luring them into a trap of their own making, letting Lowell stretch himself so thin he would snap. No one in their right mind could’ve believed in such a plan.

  “Yes.”

  The voice came to her ear one last time, seeming so close the Defender might’ve been hiding inside her own head.

  “You know what you must do.”

  The Jagged Edge. Tris gasped at the thought of undergoing the ritual as the presence of the Defender faded. Whether the Mind had betrayed them or deserved to be punished was immaterial. The Defender had been right that Madora had all it needed right within reach without needing to sell itself to foreigners. The Virtuoso was an imaginary figure built on lies and spilt blood, but Tris had taken it to heart along with Madora’s beautiful city. There was only one way left to fulfill her duty: make the sacrifice that was necessary to save the city, and meet Lowell in After, where they would rearrange space and time to wipe away all this madness.

  Lurching to her feet, Tris staggered for the door and spilled into the hall. The compound was empty, stripped of anything of value and exposed to a humid draft. The gates were unguarded and open. Not even the Commerce Titans bothered to harass them anymore. She ventured out into the sunlit streets heading toward the southern end of town.

  Within a block she happened to cross paths with Agjam, who had suffered greatly at Bracken hands. Her husband was gone and her hopes were dashed, much like Tris’s. Without thinking, Tris reached for the scarf around her neck that Agjam had made, one of the ones from her stand and the little market. She pulled it off and handed it back, revealing the X-shaped scar on her neck that the Defender used to mark her as the city’s Virtuoso.

  Agjam took the scarf but offered little sympathy and no words. The people didn’t want her there anymore and would never accept the leadership of the Brackens, not after the disaster that continued to echo through time.

  Tris walked south to the edges of town, occasionally noticing people gawking at her scar. Perhaps they remembered the last time a poor foreign woman had voluntarily walked to the Jagged Edge and submitted to the Defender’s mysterious birth ritual. Had they all been chewed out by Madora and left to believe they had nothing else of value to offer?

  The sandy road stretched out ahead along the curvy coastline. Tris had no idea what she was looking for or what the Jagged Edge even was. The sun quickly began to bake her brain. She ascended and descended hills, looking for something, but only the tossing waves and grass blowing in the breeze were there to greet her.

  At the top of the next hill, a strange configuration in the land presented itself. A towering pile of sharp stones jutted into the shore, creating a channel of racing water that crashed against the rocks and flew into the air at regular intervals. It was curious, and Tris hobbled closer, glimpsing a narrow tunnel running along the channel.

  “You came.”

  The Defender appeared suddenly beside her, giving her a momentary fright. He still wore his cloak, armor underneath, and had his decorated sword sheathed at his back. The pair continued on to the Jagged Edge together, while Tris wondered what exactly this ritual would entail and why so many others before had died from it.

  “What choice did I have?” Tris asked.

  The dark hood concealed most of the Defender’s face, but he produced a subtle smile encased in stubbly skin that disturbed her.

  “The Madorans need to unify around a single leader who can bring out their natural gifts and show them the way forward without whoring oursel
ves out to foreign interests. Fighting from the shadows is one thing, but until I can stand as one of them we’ll never achieve our long-destined triumph,” he said.

  “You were right. Madora had everything it needed all along,” Tris said absently. Her feet slid across the loose rock and sand as the stone formation came ever closer.

  “Everything except you. Moa is the call of death, a link that can pull life under in the blink of an eye. For some the draw is lighter, as if only a strand of hair tugs toward the end. I’m afraid your existence may persist longer than your desire for it, no matter what comes.”

  “And yours?” Tris asked, trying not to think about how own distaste for life and the prospect of there being so much more of it. The Defender offered a more genuine smile.

  “I won’t know until the ritual is complete. But a life of consequence is better than infinite time looking in from the outside.”

  They approached the tumultuous, rocky channel, and Tris got a better look at the water-worn tube running through the middle and emptying out into a small pool at the end where the waves crashed against the rocks. The surf came roaring in with such furious intensity that the howling wind it carried threatened to knock her over.

  “What are we going to do? How can you possibly be born here?” she asked, becoming nervous about the pounding water and the rocks despite her ardent dejection. The Defender took a deep breath and held up his hand. Being close and calm beside him for so long allowed Tris to see that the light wasn’t hitting him right. He seemed to hide from it in a slight shadow of his own conjuring.

  “The Jagged Edge is the birthplace of all living things on Iyne. This one place where sea, land, and air meet in such a state of torrent gave rise to the first, most basic algae, leading to countless other species and spreading around the globe. An ancient tribe known as the Inans resided here and gave worship to the waves as they bounced off the rocks and took flight. In their ritual, life only truly began at age thirteen, when a young boy or girl would let the waves sweep them through this tunnel. Three quarters died, but the survivors were imbued with an appreciation for life like none other,” he explained.