Valverna Read online

  Valverna

  Know Your Enemy

  A. Clarkson

  Copyright © 2021 Martha Nelson

  All rights reserved

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the author.

  Valverna

  Chapter 1

  The Jailhouse

  A baton clanging on the cell bars jarred Ira from her restless sleep.

  “Up! It’s time to move.”

  Ira groaned and draped her arms over her face to ward off the faint glow coming through the cell’s small window. Another loud clang on the door told her Bill hadn’t moved on. “Up Ira, your free night of electricity is over. You’ll miss roll-call if you don’t get a move on.”

  Raising her arm just enough to peek under her elbow, Ira squinted at the middle aged man grinning at her from the cell door. How was anyone this chipper so early in the morning?

  She groaned again, flopping back down. She knew Bill was right and dawn wasn’t far off. She needed to get a move on. She couldn’t be late again.

  “THE WORLD IS ENDING!” screamed a hoarse voice from the adjacent cell.

  Ira smiled into her shirtsleeves. It looked like the jail’s other regular occupant was awake.

  “The world ended over a hundred years ago old man!” yelled Bill from where he stood in Ira’s doorway.

  “Morning Henry” she called, willing her body into a seated position as she rubbed her sore head and tried to get her brain working. The last thing she remembered was starting a drinking competition with a red-haired giant from the western mountains.

  She’d have to go see Flor to get her winnings. It was safer leaving gold behind the bar with Flor, than risk getting mugged while stumbling along the dark streets of Valverna in a drunken haze - often by the same person she’d won the gold from. They tended not to be gracious losers - but that could also have more to do with her tendency to jump up and down singing "I win, you lose," after every competition. So she was a poor winner. Everyone had their faults.

  “HE OFFERS FORGIVENESS!” Henry continued to wail.

  "You need to get that looked at Bill. I know a decent medic I can recommend," Ira offered, rubbing her face.

  "What's that now?"

  "Your shocking case of the mornings. I've heard it's contagious.”

  An undignified snort left the older man as he threw a paper bag that hit her in the chest with a thump.

  “Some of us like to be on time to work, Ira.”

  She coughed, rubbing the now sore spot on her ribs and glared at her smiling jailor. “Think of the children Bill, you owe it to them at the very least to get treatment."

  “REPENT! THIS IS THE SECOND COMING! REPENT!” Henry exclaimed dramatically from the other side of the wall.

  Bill grumbled about crazy cult lunatics before fixing his gaze back on Ira. "Eat. Then get out of my hair. And go see Clarisse, that woman has been trying to get a hold of you and she knows you're dodging her. She can see straight through your bullshit you know."

  When most people saw Bill for the first time, Ira knew they saw a hard man. Over six foot and as wide as a doorway, Bill was liberally scarred from years of sword fighting, and had the leathery skin of a man who had spent most of his life under the sun. Age had turned his solid bulk into a mix of muscle and fat that Ira knew from personal experience was no less powerful for the passage of time. Thinning hair and crinkled eyes may have softened the faces of other men, but only added a sense of maturity to Bill’s that made it impossible to dismiss his obvious years of experience.

  Looking at her jailor, Ira saw all of this, but she also saw the warm eyes of the man who cleaned her scraped knees with careful hands when she fell as a child. The brown hands, covered in white scars that had shown her how to hold a sword.

  Bill and Clarisse saved Ira from life as a street kid when she ran away from the Valverna Home for Reckless Youth, the city’s one stop shop for orphans, troublemakers, and unwanted children. Clarisse was the orphanage cook, and the one ray of sunshine in that otherwise dark place. Unfortunately her kindness hadn’t been enough to balance the endless pain and punishments doled out by teachers and kids alike. So at barely six years old, Ira had run away.

  She was on the brink of starvation when Bill caught her a few months later stealing food from the market. Rather than taking her back to the orphanage, he invited Ira to live with him and Clarisse in their small quarters in the Citadel, the central stronghold in Valverna that housed the royal family and military. It was a crowded few years in their one bedroom unit in the guard barracks, but Ira delighted in having access to all the newest tech made available to Citadel residents.

  “Seriously Ira, I can tell Clarisse is worried. She’s become all edgy and irritable, which you know is bad news,” he said with a knowing look. “This is the third time this week you’ve been hauled in here overnight. What’s going on with you, kid? It’s not like you can’t afford the electricity yourself these days, Mrs High Roller” Bill joked, trying to lighten the mood, but the concern in his eyes was undeniable.

  She didn’t know when it started, but for as long as she could remember always feeling on edge in this city. Ira didn’t know if it was the greed or the selfishness that she hated.

  Perhaps it was the way the residents ignored a starving child on the street while shopping for fancy clothes. Or perhaps it was the general distaste with which they treated those lesser than themselves. Or maybe it was just the whole place, with its rings of power that outlined in no uncertain terms where you fell on the totem pole of society.

  For a people who recently had nothing, Ira couldn’t understand the scorn and disrespect those with greater power treated those with none.

  Ever since the Drought, the worlds’ power resources were finite. That was a reality they all lived with. Ira didn’t know what life was like before the planet suddenly stopped producing fossil fuels, but since that cataclysmic event over one hundred years ago, electricity had become the world’s most precious commodity.

  Ira didn’t understand why it wasn’t equitably distributed amongst everyone. Why were those with more gold given priority over a resource they all so desperately needed? Why allow one family to watch television, of all things, while another had to eat in the dark?

  Ira hated it. This city was toxic, and it was slowly poisoning her soul.

  So, she drank. She got into fights. And she drank some more.

  Ira had no intention of ending this habit any time soon. It was unhealthy, she would be the first to say so, but it kept the anger at bay. So for now, she would dodge Clarisse, and try to avoid being caught passed-out in the middle of Valverna’s high street by the night watch. At least, that’s what she thought happened. She still was a bit fuzzy on the details.

  “THE RIGHTEOUS WILL BE RESURRECTED!”

  “You tell em’ Henry!” Ira called back as she gave Bill her cockiest smile. Patting him affectionately on the chest, she gave him a peck on the cheek and squeezed past his large frame. It was a very tight fit, the man needed to start widening doorways. “You know me Bill, I always love a freebie. Plus, it came with breakfast!” she added, wiggling her eyebrows dramatically.

  She heard a harrumph from behind her as Bill started making his way down the hall to deal with his other detainee as he called them. Bill wasn't a fan of the word prisoner.

  “THE UNRIGHTEOUS WILL PERISH!”

  “Can’t you warn us of our imminent deaths while keeping your clothes on old man?” Bil
l grumbled in an exasperated voice. Henry had developed a love for being in his natural state when he spread the word of God. Unfortunately his target audience of the city marketplace hadn’t been overly receptive so far. It turned out most of Valverna’s residents didn’t enjoy having a naked eighty year old scream at them about the end of the world.

  “Thanks again for the roll!” Ira sang, waving the paper bag over her shoulder as she made her way up the small flight of stairs. The contents jingled slightly and she paused to turn a raised brow in Bill’s direction.

  “It’s your bloody necklace.” He said in exasperation as he wrestled the octogenarian into a coat. “The clasp is finally fixed and Clarisse has been hounding me to get it back to you all week.”

  She nodded in thanks and headed to join the hoards on their way to work on the already crowded streets. She needed to get moving if she wanted any hope of avoiding the far fields again today.

  Ira had been late to roll call several times in the past few weeks, which always left her assigned to the worst of the rybrum fields - those farthest from the city, and therefore with the highest number of slugs. She was not keen on ending another shift covered head to toe in slug slime if she could avoid it, and a day in the back fields always ended covered in slime.

  Pulling open the paper bag she withdrew a long chain and slipped it on, tucking the large circular amulet safely beneath her shirt. The cold stone was shocking against her warm skin. The necklace was the only thing Ira owned growing up at the orphanage. It had apparently been with her when she was first dropped off as a baby, barely days old. The amulet was large, at least two inches across, and housed a beautiful deep green stone with black flecks speckled throughout.

  Jogging as fast as her hungover brain allowed, Ira mused that passing through Valverna was like going back in time. The city’s center was a modern metropolis, complete with shining towers and flashing billboards with scantily clad models advertising the newest cosmetic invention. The further out you moved, the less evidence of modernity you saw, with tech almost disappearing when you reached the outer rings. Instead of skyscrapers with flashing lights, the buildings were single-storey wooden constructions lit by candlelight, where multigenerational families squeezed together into confined quarters.

  “Don’t risk smelling like a slugger, get clean with Avon’s hands-free body wash!” announced a soft voice from speakers buried into the wall of Valverna’s Guild Hall. “Just stand there and let the soap do the work for you!”

  “Or you could just clean yourself with your own damn hands like the rest of us.” Ira grumbled earning a sneer from a group of young women eyeing the ad approvingly.

  “Slug-grub.” One of them hissed as she passed.

  Pausing, Ira turned back to the billboard with a quizzical expression. “I doubt it. She hardly has the muscles for someone who spends her days in the fields.”

  The woman looked momentarily confused before understanding dawned and her expression darkened. “Not her, you!” she called out to Ira’s retreating form as she jogged off to the next ring.

  Valverna was designed with power in mind. And not political or economical power, but volts and watts.

  Twenty years ago Arnold Valverna’s discovery of the leafy eight-foot rybrum plants turned a small compound powered by a solar farm into a thriving metropolis, and an environmental scientist into a King. Not only were the plants the city’s largest trade export, the life-blood of Valverna’s economy, but they were also the only source of power that had been found since the cataclysmic event known as the Drought when the world’s fossil fuels suddenly vanished.

  The history books say it was like a tap suddenly turned off at the source, drills stopped drilling, miner’s stopped mining, and the oil pumps ran dry. Within a day the world was plunged into chaos.

  Millions in hospitals were the first to die, as power grids across the planet went dark. What had once been places of safety and healing, became tombs for those too old or ill to escape.

  The second wave died more slowly. Without fuel to transport goods, global supply chains shut down and food shortages spiralled out of control. City-dwellers around the world starved over weeks and months as disease and malnutrition set in. Some survived longer on the rats and racoons they could trap, while others fled in the hopes of finding sanctuary in the countryside. Most simply wasted away, desperate in their hope that the world would miraculously turn the lights back on, and things would return to normal.

  Cities were abandoned in favor of smaller communities that required less to survive. Borders of countries warped and moved as governments collapsed and were reborn on the shoulders of those who had the strength to protect scarce resources.

  Many, like Henry, flocked to join newly formed religious sects claiming to have answers in the wake of what some were calling the apocalypse. Although the majority were peaceful, the occasional militant cult would emerge. These groups would rally their flocks to arms under the pretense that the world’s problems could be blamed on others, and that God would return what he had taken from them, if only the problem could be eradicated.

  When one-hundred years after the Drought, a plant that produced a substitute to fossil fuels was discovered, the world rejoiced. Perhaps a solution to the greatest problem mankind had ever faced had finally been found.

  The rybrum’s discovery caused Valverna’s population to explode as people flooded to the city like moths to a flame, desperate for access to the world’s newest power source.

  Rybrum oil could do everything crude oil had done before. It could be broken down into direct fuel sources to power machinery and vehicles, or taken apart and rebuilt into physical tangible products like cloth and creams. It could do it all. Things that had been unattainable for a century began to reemerge, and a high street filled with stores offering the season's best looks and tech products was built to service the city’s growing appetite for material goods.

  Those who could afford to, lived in the city's upper ring in tech filled homes that were powered directly by the rybrum. Those of lesser means moved into the outer rings.

  Ira imagined that the city’s spiderweb design had been a practical choice, however the rings had become a way to demarcate the various levels of society, with the uppermost ring housing the wealthiest of Valverna society, and living on the outer ring being tantamount to a confession of poverty.

  This spherical design was further reinforced by a series of canals that weaved through a system of locks before ultimately stopping at the Citadel. The canals were intended to allow easy transportation of goods into the heart of the city from the Colorado River, while also offering an added layer of security to the Citadel. Only boats that were thoroughly inspected were permitted into the higher rings. Should a boat be considered a risk, the locks would stop moving, and the boat, cargo, and crew would be trapped within the lock at the mercy of the city’s guards.

  Ira groaned in dismay at the large crowd gathered at the next lock. The crossing must have been shut down to allow a boat to pass through, but based on the number of wagons, rickshaws, and delivery men waiting to pass, they had been held up for some time.

  Leaning against a building to the left of the crowd stood a lanky man in clothes that Ira knew were at least three sizes too big. Pete The Kid looked sweet and innocent with his too-big clothes, big blue eyes, blond hair and a face full of freckles. A young guy wearing hand-me-downs, that hadn’t quite grown into himself. Pete 'The Kid' O'Bride looked as non threatening as a young man could look, and was quickly dismissed by most people. That was exactly how Pete liked it.

  The youngest and smallest of five brothers, known collectively as the O'Bride Boys, Pete learned from a young age that being invisible was the best form of defense against larger and stronger foes. His brothers couldn't hit what they couldn't see.

  Mr. O'Bride, father of the O'Bride boys and head of O'Bride Industries, was the largest importer of both savoury and some less than savoury goods to the city of Valverna. He always was
a savvy businessman and quickly saw the value in Pete's skills in protecting their family’s interests.

  At ten years old Pete was sent out to hang around the docks and keep an ear on O'Bride's competitors. By fourteen he recruited a few of the younger street kids to eavesdrop on the city's merchants, and built up a network of clients willing to buy the info they learned. At sixteen years old Pete developed a network of spies across the city who ensured the O'Brides had eyes and ears in every nook and cranny of Valverna, and made a small fortune for himself in the process. Pete was a master at making money out of information.

  In spite of his success, Pete was unable to shake his childhood nickname and position as the baby to a large family who all towered over him at an average 7' and 300lbs to his 6' and 150lbs. In a family of giants, Pete would always be the kid.

  If Pete was here at the Main Street lock before dawn, Ira knew this wasn't a usual transport. He left this kind of recon to his minions unless he felt it needed special personal attention.

  Making her way down the hill, Ira saw to her utter frustration that the sun was almost cresting the horizon. She was definitely going to be late.

  "You've missed roll call again."

  “Does everyone in this city keep track of my tardiness?”

  Pete didn't take his eyes off the barge and city guards as Ira settled on the wall beside him.

  "You know Dad would give you a job on the docks, you don't need to be a slugger."

  This was a regular refrain from Pete, who had been friends with Ira since he'd first started spying for his Dad. Ira spent a lot of time at the docks when working as a message runner for the Citadel as a kid, and Pete no doubt found her a literal wealth of information.

  There hadn't been a lot of kids at the docks, so Ira always made an effort to be nice to Pete knowing what it was like to be a lonely street urchin, never imagining for one second that he was actually the son of one of the city's most powerful families. He'd eventually felt guilty when word got back to the Citadel that Ira had been unwittingly sharing confidential information. She received a severe beating in punishment, and Pete hadn’t been able to bear the guilt.