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

by Jason Letts

  “That’s a saurus!” Sierra gasped, holding a hand against her bleeding ear. Although the existence of saurus was not disputed, as dragons were, seeing one seemed just as farfetched. As Sierra reeled from the unexpected attack, the two men helped Razi to her feet. Sierra stood as well, and turned to face a very penitent group of raiders.

  “Demanum windra okso kodorenti,” Razi said, which Sierra took to be an apology. Razi examined her bleeding ear and grimaced. Once they bandaged it, Sierra thought it would be fine, but she released a sigh and pondered how much more careful she’d need to be out here.

  Her journey was already proving to be hard, and this was just the beginning.

  CHAPTER 3

  “Where’s Dedrick?” Tris asked, regretting her inability to keep a note of desperation out of her voice. He was late, leaving Tris and Lowell hanging around the stuffy orange hut.

  Tris was nervous, as usual, but today of all days she had plenty of reason to be. Sierra, Randall, and Taylor had all departed on dangerous missions that she had no confidence they’d come back from, her defunct market had left her artisans and their families destitute, and now she and Lowell were about to put their own part of his plan in motion, the success of which would sit upon a razor’s edge.

  For his part, Lowell didn’t seem the least bit troubled. He sat in a wicker chair in a dusty, stiff suit he’d managed to pick up in Lyria while flying over to the only place on the Plagrass mainland with an airport, Iron City.

  “The boy’s becoming less reliable,” Lowell observed with his eyes closed. “He keeps running off and coming back covered in mud as soon as he’s hungry. We had cats like that, remember?”

  “And we loved them to pieces,” Tris said, casting a glance at the open door and the sandy street outside. The sun was starting to set, and it would be so much harder to find where they needed to go in the dark.

  Whether it was her nerves or Dedrick’s inconvenient absence, the tension roiling in Tris over Lowell’s plan began to surface. There’d been lonely nights in Madora when she told herself she’d do anything to have him back, and now he was asking her to do things she had no confidence she could do and no stomach to witness. It wasn’t just that she wanted to support Lowell in his fight for his family’s legacy; her understanding of the Cumerian premier families and the cutthroat behavior she’d seen in Copia and Madora had taught her how important stability and structure in society were. The Brackens needed to form that structure, not just for themselves, but for everyone. However, to be the Virtuoso and save Madora and Cumeria, she’d have to give up everything. Thinking about it made her second guess herself.

  “Are you sure we have to do this? It’s not too late. We can find another way,” Tris pleaded.

  Lowell opened his eyes and regarded her with a soft expression. His hand went to the left side of his chest, where she knew he kept the black contract the family had signed. She expected him to hold her to her signature, but he didn’t.

  “I know I’m asking you to do something that’s harder than anything you’ve ever done before in your life, Tris. After it’s over, you’ll wish you hadn’t. You’ll kick yourself and call it a mistake every day, but when you do I want you to remember something. This is what I want more than anything else in the world. My love and respect for you are unconditional, but if you can do this for me, I’ll feel validated that I did what it took to restore the Bracken name.”

  Tris sighed and stood up. He had a calm, confident way of talking to her that he knew she couldn’t fight against. She got up from the bench, dropped her hands to her sides, and took a deep breath. He rose and put a hand on her shoulder to stop her from pacing. Soon she had her hands on his broad shoulders and was staring into his dark brown eyes. The years weighed heavily upon him, as they did her, but even here and now his handsomeness was resilient.

  She melted at his kiss, mentally absorbing herself in its soothing relief in the hopes it’d keep her worries and obligations away, if only for a moment. She wrapped her arms around him and soon they engaged in a gentle hug.

  “I love you, Lowell.”

  “I love you too, Tris.”

  They didn’t even hear Dedrick at the door until they shared another kiss.

  “Eww.” Dedrick squirmed, causing the pair to abruptly break apart. Tris’s cheeks flushed. It’d been a long time since she’d been caught kissing, and surprisingly it made her feel a little younger. Exchanging glances with Lowell, they chuckled briefly.

  “Come along with us, Dedrick. We’ll see which one of us remembers the way.”

  Taking to the dusty, crowded streets, Tris, Lowell, and Dedrick started down the city’s long artery to the port and the wide ocean stretching out to the horizon. Tris kept her eyes to the rooftops, sure the Defender was watching her. Though the three children were gone, what they were about to do would unequivocally make him an enemy.

  “You’re looking for him, aren’t you?” Lowell whispered beneath the street noise.

  “He won’t stand for this,” Tris said.

  “That’s part of the plan,” Lowell added. He had his sword sheathed at his side, but neither of them had anything that could hold off the Defender. As far as they knew, there was only one person who did. Making a friend was at least as dangerous as making an enemy, probably more so because enemies could be counted on to be predictable.

  “You have to assume the Mind already knows everything,” Tris said.

  “Don’t worry. I’ve got it covered,” Lowell said, brandishing a subtle grin. “Unlike the Lus, who need to believe they have the upper hand, it already knows it’s holding all of the cards. Only the strength of the argument will carry the day.”

  Tris fought off the urge to roll her eyes. It was a bit presumptuous of Lowell to claim so much certainty over someone he’d never met, but she knew he’d spent more time negotiating than most people ever would, and that had to count for something.

  When they reached the docks with the salty sea air, grimy sailors, and great galleons arriving and departing for ports all around Iyne, the three of them turned around and faced the wide street cutting a row between the crammed-together buildings stretching as far as the eye could see.

  “Do you remember the way, Dedrick? Let’s see!” she said in his ear, hoping to make a game of it. On a day that seemed so long ago, Tris had given a letter meant for Lowell to a sailor and turned for home only to be sidetracked by a man with glasses and a fancy suit. Now Tris retraced their steps, hoping to spot the same alley they’d ducked into and make the correct series of turns necessary to find a vacant hut containing a rug and a stairway leading deep underground.

  “Here!” Dedrick said after a few blocks, but Tris wasn’t at all sure. The corner seemed like any other with signs that didn’t stand out. Already feeling confused, Tris had no choice but to trust the young boy’s recollection. Maybe he did as well with directions as he did with language. Dedrick led them through a maze of back alleys and crawlspaces, at one point circling around and returning to the same spot.

  “Oops.” He shrugged sheepishly. Lowell appeared none too amused. She could tell he was thinking about how absurd it was that everything they’d planned depended on finding one hut out of thousands in a massive city. They couldn’t be far away though. It had to be around here somewhere.

  Dedrick took a left at an intersection, but the vague inkling struck Tris that they were going the wrong way.

  “No, it’s a right here and then a left,” she said, going with her instinct.

  From there, finding the secluded, easily overlooked shack tucked behind a few other buildings was a snap. Taking one last look around, they ducked inside, pulled away the carpet, and followed a long set of solid stone stairs deep underground. At the bottom, smoldering torches reflected off of elaborate spider webs. The three of them pressed onward past wooden beams supporting low ceilings.

  “This is a mine shaft,” Lowell remarked, letting his fingertips graze one of the beams. “Not too different from the ol
d Bracken mines back in the ClawLands. My ancestors dug the first tunnels themselves as a way to hide moonshine and cattle from thieves and self-appointed tax collectors, but once we realized the granite made for sturdy building material, we used slave labor to mine it and ship it all over Cumeria. That was the first Bracken Empire, before we figured out how to trap the gas. It’s a wonder nobody found anything similar of value down here.”

  The group continued on through the long corridor, which grew progressively darker and narrower. The ground underfoot changed to the metal of the underground bunker. Tris’s nerves flared again, either due to the enclosed space or the imminent meeting. But the corridor emptied into a large room, where Tris and Dedrick had met the Mind of Madora before. Only now it was empty.

  “What?” Tris gasped. “It was all right here. I remember it. The blinking lights and the beeping printers. There were people rushing in and out of those pathways.”

  Now not even a light occupied the room.

  “We have no choice but to move on and try to find them,” Lowell said, making a move for another adjoining tunnel.

  “But we could get lost down here,” Dedrick moaned. Tris came up next to him and put her arm around his shoulder. She knew Lowell wouldn’t stop for anything.

  “We’ll be OK,” he said, coaxing the boy along.

  Even in the dim light, Tris could see the fervor in Lowell’s eyes. They were close to getting what they needed and couldn’t let it slip away. Tris always prized Lowell’s ability to stand firm and make the hard decisions, but she never could’ve imagined that the same quality would take so much away from them. In many ways she could still see the man she had first fallen in love with; though decades had passed, a tour of the coast left him with a light tan that never went away, and wrinkles nipped at the corners of his eyes.

  “I’m right here,” Tris said, trying to comfort Dedrick as they entered another corridor. The ensconced torches illuminated metallic sheets covering the walls. Up ahead was a light with a purple tint that was so bright it hurt her eyes even when she closed them. Putting her hands over her eyes did little to help. The light seemed to penetrate everything.

  “Tris!” Lowell said, yanking her by the wrist so she didn’t fall behind. The sound of humming bulbs filled their ears. A few more steps brought them beyond the lights. Tris noticed the sound of footsteps behind her, but they were receding. Finally she could open her eyes again with the lights some distance behind her.

  But sound of the bulbs gave way to a soft whirring, which had to be that of a computer. Sudden excitement filled Tris, urging her onward. She exchanged smiles with Lowell, who appeared equally ready to reach their destination. The long corridor split a few more times, but the whirring always kept them on track.

  Soon they came around a corner and found another larger room full of brightly lit screens, desks, and couriers running in and out. At the same moment the ground shook and the sound of a crash echoed faintly from behind them. They stepped inside and found the one they were looking for seated at the middle desk on one side of the room.

  Awash in the light green glow of the screens, the Mind of Madora seemed to be working furiously, though its two expressions were perfectly calm. Two hands never ceased typing on the keyboard, and the third, which sprung out of the left shoulder blade, scrawled in a notebook on a thin, tall table. Both of its faces—one a man’s and one a woman’s—had brittle-looking skin and stretch marks, as if the skin of one person had been pulled over two.

  The Mind never even glanced at them, but it began to speak in the same manner that Tris recalled. Its two mouths alternated phrases or words at random, sometimes cutting the other off or speaking simultaneously. Though its voices were not deep, the effect of the dual speakers firing off language like a cannon proved unsettling.

  “You were followed,” Dedrick translated. Tris remembered the sound of footsteps after they’d crossed the light.

  “That couldn’t have been all. What else did it say?” Lowell asked.

  “That’s all it said to us,” Dedrick snapped back.

  “Ask him about the light,” Tris said, catching a glance from Lowell. This conversation was already off track.

  “The Virtuoso will always be followed in Madora. She knows the Unseen Man is hunting her, like he hunts the Mind. Did you hear that noise? It was an explosion at the entrance you took, which was just destroyed. He hopes to suffocate us all underground in the one place we can elude him: behind a spectral light that repels all shadows. He will never stop coming for me,” Dedrick said in a halting voice as he struggled to process its speech.

  Tris’s mouth went dry at the talk of the Defender, also known as the Unseen Man, following and hunting her. It’d been so long since she felt truly safe, not since seeing those photos of the other women with the same X-shaped scar cut into their necks, but the Defender had said those women had all left the city under their own power.

  “Why does he hunt you?” Lowell asked the Mind, who brought all four eyes up to view them for the first time. The black eyes appeared hollow, like a great receptacle that could absorb anything.

  “My power is information. I search for the knowledge that will allow my city to hold ranks with the most-sophisticated places in the world. For that to happen we must extend our influence and be influenced in turn. The Unseen Man despises all things foreign and expects Madora to excel through sheer force of will alone. He is obsessed with his vision of Madora as the sole beacon of power, but that is not the only reason why he wants to kill me. I know the secret of his being,” Dedrick translated, getting the hang of it.

  Tris’s brows furrowed. The Defender could vanish into shadow, had strength and agility that defied imagination, and she’d seen him take a bullet without much concern.

  “What is his secret?” Tris asked, her voice soft and hesitant, not sure she really wanted to know. The Mind began to speak, breaking in the middle to release a sharp cackle that must’ve been a laugh.

  “Do you not find it strange that the Unseen Man strives to expel foreign influence but seeks salvation from a foreign woman? Humanity flocks to contradiction like a moth to light. Even you, Mr. Bracken, claim to want to save the Brackens while going to incredible lengths to destroy them. This type of irony fills you like the air you breathe,” Dedrick translated.

  Tris glanced at her husband, who pursed his lips and crossed his arms.

  “And what about you? Are you exempt from hypocrisy?” Lowell snapped.

  “Like having two eyes, having two heads gives one added perspective that could not otherwise be achieved. Imagine losing your depth perception, having no idea how close or far things are. That is exactly like your thoughts and those of other persons, which you cannot judge for accuracy to the truth of reality.”

  “But what is the secret?” Tris insisted.

  For the first time, the Mind paused and all three of its hands came to rest. After it spoke, Dedrick looked back at Tris and Lowell with a puzzled expression.

  “The Cumerians believe that after death people go to a place called After, where the full width of life comes together in one supernatural state. You might say that the Unseen Man comes from a place called Before. You see, he was never born. Part of the Virtuoso’s legend is that her unborn son was assembled. Um, no, that’s not the right word. I mean he was created with a sword in hand that he used to cut his way out of his mother’s stomach, killing her in the process. Now he searches for a mother to give birth to him, and until then he can never die. He exists in a different state apart from the link between life and death. He can see the pull and push of death upon the living, and this is what he calls Moa.”

  Tris and Lowell, awestruck, turned to Dedrick as he struggled to express the Mind.

  “Are you sure you got it right? I’m sure it’s not lying to me, but I’m having a hard time believing that,” Lowell said.

  “That’s what it said,” Dedrick returned, defensive.

  Tris found herself reeling at the bizarre no
tion that she was expected to give birth to a fully grown man wielding a massive sword. It seemed an utter impossibility.

  “What happened to the other women that he marked with the sign of the Virtuoso? You said he killed them. He said they walked out of the city under their own power,” Tris said.

  “Can’t we both be right? The previous Virtuosos all died in a birthing ritual outside of the city. They went there voluntarily, but all of them failed and met a grisly death at the Unseen Man’s sword. I do not know the details of this ritual, and the bodies of these women have never been found, but they were last seen walking to an area just south of the city called the Jagged Edge.”

  The unsettling feeling in Tris became a crushing discomfort. Somehow she’d preferred the Defender when he was just a deranged killer, but now there was some method to the madness, and that meant he would never relent. Still, nothing could compel her to voluntarily go to this place called the Jagged Edge.

  Although Tris already felt dizzy from the implications, Lowell grew increasingly incredulous.

  “How do you know all this? You say the bodies were never found, so how could you know they were killed and that he killed them? Ask him that, Dedrick,” Lowell instructed. Once the translation got to the Mind, both pairs of lips curled into a subtle smile.

  “Do you take me for a liar, Mr. Bracken, someone who trades in false information? Is my word not enough? Or do you need evidence as solid as steel? I know you’ve seen the Unseen Man and his sword, the Moan Soothsayer. This otherworldly weapon is made of the fabric of reality, something the Unseen Man brought with him from Before. It is an embodiment of the intersection between time and event, and the markings on it are a living record of the past, right down to the very first cut out of the Virtuoso’s womb.

  “The runes and markings on the sword are in code, which I’ve been able to deconstruct from rare pictures taken. But more frequently I identify them on the bodies of his victims. Each cut tells a story, and I’ve read enough of the gashes, lacerations, and incisions in human skin to understand his origins, his actions, and his intent to complete his ritual. The only way Madora can be rid of him is if he succeeds, but until then he’ll continue hunting foreign women while fighting to keep the city free of foreign influence,” Dedrick said.