Valverna

by A Clarkson

  "They agreed to sell me a two percent share of the rybrum crops at a discounted rate if I dropped the whole thing,” Chelsea continued. “So I did. Happily I might add. With me in the club I no longer wanted anyone else to join. It cost all of my parent’s savings but I finally had what I wanted, and all I needed to do was wait for my money to grow.”

  Her smile turned bitter, “And then John comes to see me and excitedly tells me that he has found an alternative to the rybrum. He was so happy. Absolutely thrilled that he solved the global energy shortage. And I listened, and tried to pretend to be happy, when all I could think was that my parent’s life savings had gone down the drain. If the rybrum price crashed, I would have nothing. So I had to stop it. I needed to make sure that this discovery was buried as deep as possible.”

  “It took me a while to find the right person, but when I realised old Brian had been one of the lead researchers on the project, I knew I had my man. We worked together briefly on the medical initiative I started with John, and I knew that not only was he a selfish bastard who only liked projects that promised a big pay out, he was also psychotic. I gambled that he didn’t know John’s plan to take this new discovery public, and I was right. The rest was easy. I left Brian to take care of the problem in Caldessa and promised him his own lab here in Valverna.”

  “But you never had any intention of giving him a lab. You wanted to own the rights to the gavarnium yourself,” Ira guessed.

  “Of course not,” Chelsea laughed. “That man was a psychopath.”

  “But then you realised John had taken a copy of the research,” Ira said, choosing not to call the other woman out for her hypocrisy.

  Chelsea scowled slightly. “John was always going to die. I planned to simply poison his tea or something and let him slip away peacefully. But then Brian’s partner destroyed the only copy of the research we had. We needed to know what he had done with the research, and if he told anyone else of the discovery.”

  “You got him into the lab,” Ira said as the pieces clicked together. Gary told them that Chelsea had been at the compound only days before the attack.

  “Yes. I snuck him in before I left. Nobody saw him arrive because he was already there.”

  “And you just let a lunatic run around poisoning and torturing people?” Ira accused in outrage.

  “The poison was all Brian's idea,” Chelsea conceded with a small smile. “Some concoction of his own. I tell you, the man really was a lunatic. You did the world a favour by killing him.”

  “How did David find him?”

  “I wondered the same thing,” Chelsea admitted with a bemused expression. “My guess is John suspected Brian would turn on him. He must have left Maureen with a description or photo in case he approached her.”

  Looking at the still slumbering boy in her arms, Ira tried desperately to think of a way out of this situation. Not only was she trapped under William, but she was still severely injured, and Chelsea was holding a far superior weapon. Ira wasn’t sure she would be able to reach a weapon before Chelsea fired.

  As if realising that Ira was only buying time, Chelsea said, “That’s enough questions. I'll be taking that stone now.”

  Ira must have tensed slightly as William began to stir. Holding her breath in terror she looked at Chelsea with pleading eyes as she desperately hoped the boy would fall back to sleep.

  “The stone Ira,” Chelsea reminded her, refusing to remove the gun from where she held it pointed at the seated pair.

  Indicating to the cabinet behind Chelsea, Ira directed the woman to where she had returned the brooch only hours before. Ira may have accepted that she wasn't getting out of this alive, but she didn't need to hand over the research to this conniving bitch either. Let her have the other stone. It was the one she wanted after all. Ira hoped Chelsea spent the rest of her life trying to force it to uncover the research it didn't have.

  “I suppose you are the one who told Brian that Magnus had it?”

  “Yes,” Chelsea confessed. “When Brian told me the research was stored on a stone I spoke to a connection at the Citadel. He was very interested in Brian’s discovery and explained what kind of a rock we were looking for. My men searched the barge while we were at the compound and my contact was able to verify the description of the brooch.” Sighing Chelsea added, “If only he recognized it for what it was. We could've had this sorted out days ago.” Pulling the brooch from a small silk bag Chelsea gave Ira a victorious smile. “This will make me richer than you could ever imagine. You have made me a very happy woman Ira.”

  Turning to raise the gun to Ira’s face, Chelsea continued, “But alas, you won’t be there to see it, because you and that little boy know too much.”

  “You said he would be safe!” Ira accused in horror.

  “I lied,” Chelsea said with a shrug. “He saw me at the orphanage,” she explained. “I can’t have him recognising my face in one of the posters that will soon be littering this city when news breaks of my discovery.”

  As the barrel of the gun rose to her face, Ira closed her eyes. This was it. This was the end. Ira wasn't scared of dying herself, but she hated that she failed the kid. The gunshot would be loud. He would wake up, only to be shot down by Chelsea moments later.

  A loud crash followed by a deafening bang brought Ira to her senses and she realised she was not dead. As the ringing in her ears cleared Ira realized that the child in her arms wailed in fright, and she automatically tried to sooth him, searching frantically for a bullet wound, unsure what had happened. She was so sure that was going to be the end.

  The shocked and drawn face of Adrian Sarcosa was like a jolt of adrenaline straight through Ira.

  He stood above Chelsea’s prone form, his hands coated in blood from the knife wound to her back.

  Ira nearly died. William nearly died. But they were alive. Adrian had saved them.

  He was just a child, and he had killed Chelsea. Ira could see the horror dawning on his face as he realized what happened. Could see the moment when his brain caught up with what his body had done automatically. She wondered how many years he had been learning to fight, learning to protect himself. How many times had he performed that exact maneuver on a dummy or a guard?

  Lee and several other of Magnus' men came racing into the room with weapons raised, and only served to scare poor William into even louder wails.

  For the first time Ira noticed that her feet were suddenly cold and wet. The barge was leaking, she realised. The bullet must have pierced the hull. She wondered idly how long the blasted boat would take to sink.

  Registering that Adrian still stood before her, all of the surrounding chaos instantly vanished as she zeroed in on the only thing that still mattered. “Magnus?” she asked desperately.

  Panting heavily as though having just run the three thousand miles from Sarcosia rather than magically teleporting, Adrian bent down to catch his breath, before looking up into Ira’s pleading gaze.

  “He’s okay," he breathed. “He’s going to be ok.”

  Message relayed, Adrian bent over and threw up all over the floor.

  Epilogue

  “What are you going to do?” Pete asked softly.

  He contacted Ira yesterday asking if they could meet up, and unable to think of a reason not to, she agreed. Ira wasn’t feeling particularly chatty, but knowing Pete, he had something he wanted to tell her, so she could just listen for once.

  Ira looked out the window into the fields of rybrum below her. She hadn’t been to this cafe since the day she brought Magnus here. That felt like an eternity ago, so much had changed. She barely recognised the woman she had been then.

  “I’m leaving,” she responded simply.

  The decision had been easy. Her life in Valverna had been torn to pieces, and she didn’t know whether she could rebuild it without Clarisse and Bill. She didn’t know if she wanted to. But more than that, she still had so many unanswered questions, so many things she wanted to understand, and none
of those answers would be found in Valverna.

  When Magnus’ men offered to take her with them to Sarcosia to recover Magnus, Ira agreed. It was where she wanted to be after all.

  Pete nodded as though he expected that. “Magnus asked me to look into Bill and Clarisse,” he said, explaining the purpose for his call.

  She waited for him to continue. Pete always was one to draw out a conversation. “Well?” she asked eventually when it looked like he wasn’t going to carry on. “What did you find?”

  Ira eyed Pete curiously as he rapped his knuckles on the table between them. She hadn’t seen that nervous gesture in years. Whatever Pete found had shaken him up enough that he had fallen back into his old tells.

  Ira imagined she normally would have been more sympathetic at seeing him keyed up like this. But she had been vibrating with tension for the past four days, waiting for some word from Adrian about how Magnus was doing. At this point, she felt as though her body had burned through so much adrenaline, it would be months before she felt anything but apathy.

  “Nothing,” Pete said eventually, licking his lips and looking at Ira nervously.

  “You don’t want to tell me?” she asked, suddenly confused. Hadn’t he invited her here?

  “No, I found nothing,” he clarified.

  Ira still wasn’t really sure what he was trying to say. “Nothing as in, nothing out of the ordinary? Nothing note-worthy?” she ventured.

  Pete shook his head in frustration, “No, nothing, as in, nothing at all. As in, Clarisse and William Donoghy didn’t exist until twenty years ago when they showed up at the orphanage with a baby that they claimed to have found on the side of the road.”

  “Are you sure you just couldn’t find anything on them before then?”

  “Jesus Ira, are you listening to me?” He was practically vibrating with anxiety now. “Two people by those names did not exist before they came to Valverna. I don’t know who they were, or what they were running from. Or why they had you with them,” he added with a glance in her direction. “All I know is that the day they showed up here they ditched whoever they were before and adopted new identities as Clarisse and Bill Donoghy.”

  Ira looked down at her hands where they lay in her lap. Learning that Bill and Clarisse weren’t who they claimed didn’t seem so crazy anymore. Hasn't everything she learned since their deaths been hinting at that? Or maybe she simply became numb to it all.

  She had so many unanswered questions, what was one more to add to the list?

  Ira had reconnected with Francis, and together they confirmed that Chelsea’s Citadel contact was a member of the Brotherhood. Francis believed they had been working as a royal advisor, and therefore may have had authority over Lucien and the poor dead messenger. Ira wasn't so sure. In her time at the Citadel she had never seen the guards follow the orders of anyone other than their officers or the royals themselves. If Lucien was here, he either came of his own volition, or because the Brotherhood had gained a foothold amongst the military’s senior officers. Or among the royal family, but as the most powerful family in the world, Ira didn't want to imagine that possibility.

  What Ira didn’t understand was why? Why were the Brotherhood trying to establish a presence in Valverna? Why were they interested in helping Valverna become even richer by suppressing a discovery that could solve the world’s energy crisis?

  It felt as though they merely scratched the surface of something so much bigger. Brian and Chelsea spoke of a future where the world would be divided into leaders and followers, and as much as Ira wanted to dismiss the notion as the ramblings of power hungry fanatics, there was something foreboding in their words.

  Ira was terrified of what would unravel when they started pulling on those strings.

  And finally, Ira still didn’t know what Clarisse wanted to speak with her about. What had been so urgent? Had she known Brian was coming for her? Had she wanted to tell Ira about the dragon eye? About the Ravens? Did she know where Ira came from?

  What had she wanted to say?

  With so many questions swirling through her mind, Ira couldn’t seem to muster a better reaction to Pete’s news.

  Heaving a sigh, Ira looked back up to meet Pete’s gaze and said simply, “Thanks for telling me.”

  He stared at her in shock. “That’s it? Thanks for telling me?”

  Ira nodded and rose to her feet. “Yep. That’s it.”

  A giant shadow moved over Ira, and she turned to see Francis’ fiery red locks heading toward her.

  “All done, Little Raven?” the big woman asked with a flick of her head in Pete’s direction.

  Nodding, Ira turned back to glance at the fields below her one last time.

  Ira had spent her life hiding in this city, waiting for life to find her. She was sick of burying herself in booze and anger. If she hated this world so much, hated the way it had become beholden to the greed of this city, it was time to make a change. If she could find the Ravens, she could access the amulet’s memory, and change the world. She had the power to solve the energy crisis.

  For now though, the Brotherhood were still after her, and she needed to find Magnus.

  “Yep,” she said, turning her back on the fields for the last time. “We’re all done.”

  Acknowledgement

  This book would not have been possible without the love and support of my friends and family. Thank you for reading my many drafts, and helping me bring Ira and Magnus to life.

  To my darling husband, thank you for listening to all my crazy ideas, and for always being willing to debate agriculture and economics with me. Thank you for always believing in me.

  Books In This Series

  The Valverna Series

  Valverna