Please Share
The Black Trillium
by Simon McNeil
Genre: Post-Apocalyptic Fantasy
Confederation rules in Trana—so says the king.
But Fredericton is a long way from the shores of Lake Ontario, and
schemes for power will bring together three extraordinary young
warriors.
schemes for power will bring together three extraordinary young
warriors.
Savannah
A desert girl who came to Trana looking for refuge but has never found
a home
a home
Kieran
A privileged city boy dreaming of rebellion and hardened
by cruelty
by cruelty
Kyle
The disgraced heir to the throne desperate to win back his place in his
father’s heart
father’s heart
Sworn enemies or reluctant allies, they all have one thing in common: an
incomplete half of the legendary fighting skill known as the
Triumvirate sword art. They fight for glory, for power, for the
monsters lurking beneath the streets, and for the mysterious society
moving in the shadows of Trana—the Black Trillium.
incomplete half of the legendary fighting skill known as the
Triumvirate sword art. They fight for glory, for power, for the
monsters lurking beneath the streets, and for the mysterious society
moving in the shadows of Trana—the Black Trillium.
Simon McNeil is
the author of The Black Trillium, a story of revolution and martial artsset in the ruins of Toronto. This novel is published by Brain Lag Publishing.
the author of The Black Trillium, a story of revolution and martial artsset in the ruins of Toronto. This novel is published by Brain Lag Publishing.
He is an online marketing
communications specialist with a major educational
institution when not wandering the world looking for trouble. He is a
life-long martial artist, has published several articles in Kung Fu
Magazine and he’s probably a little bit too fond of kung fu movies.
communications specialist with a major educational
institution when not wandering the world looking for trouble. He is a
life-long martial artist, has published several articles in Kung Fu
Magazine and he’s probably a little bit too fond of kung fu movies.
He lives in
Toronto, Canada with his wife who has happily laid out rules to prevent the
sword-through-glass-lampshade incident from ever happening again. The
Black Trillium is his first novel.
Toronto, Canada with his wife who has happily laid out rules to prevent the
sword-through-glass-lampshade incident from ever happening again. The
Black Trillium is his first novel.
SOMETIMES, WHEN THE WALLS of the ancient city press around too much and I feel a yearning for
the open spaces, I like to climb up to the highest tower I can find and just sit with my feet dangling
over the edge, watching everything below me. The sky seems bluer than it does on the ground, almost
as blue as it does in the lands of the red-brown dust that were my home.
I miss home but I can never go back. There is no home to go back to, not anymore. It’s all dust, bones
and broken dreams now. No crops grow in the lands of endless dust. The rivers are dry. All they
produce is refugees and lots of refugees end up in Trana. I don’t have to like it. I don’t like it. The
buildings make the places all too narrow.
When I tell people I hate the tall buildings they look at me strangely. They ask me, “Didn’t I see you
sitting on the edge of the 390 building just the other day?” I just smile and explain that it’s OK being at
the top of the buildings. I don’t mind it when there is just the sky above and the streets below. I’m not
afraid of high places even though I come from the flattest land. It is the narrow places I don’t like, the
tunnels and the streets.
It’s better in the districts a bit farther out from the center. Kensington is nice, though too crowded, the
same with Queeneast. I like Blasted Port; it’s nothing but open spaces. The problem with Blasted Port
is that it’s not a good place for a girl to be all on her own with no family. I’d almost rather be out there
anyway. The bandits are mostly in it for a profit, and there’s no profit in harassing a girl with nothing
but the clothes on her back.
I guess if it wasn’t for Boyd I’d probably have left Broken Tower by now, would have left behind the
skeletons of buildings with their ribbed rebar showing through the crumbling concrete.
But at least I felt like I had a place in Boyd’s court, even if it was as unstable as the ancient towers.
I crossed Confederation all on my own. I had to stick a man with a knife once when he tried to force
himself on me. These city people all think desert girls are easy prey; we’re loose girls they say, we’re
asking for it. They learn fast that trying to force a desert girl is asking for it. I was hunting scorpions for
food while most of the two-penny bandits in Trana were still playing games in their parents’ yards.
Boyd respected that. He came from out west too, even farther off, in the lands beyond the mountains
and I’ve always suspected that he thought the same of city folk that I did. Too soft, too weak, too
coddled.
Boyd calls me the Scorpion Girl and leaves me right the fuck alone except for when I come to his
court. I’m welcome there. He sees to it that I have food if I’m hungry, somewhere to sleep when it’s
cold. He never tried to force himself on me or nothing either. We have an understanding, a mutual
respect, and if somebody needs watching, he knows I’m good at sneaky.
I thought about Boyd, about being a sneaky refugee girl, dependent on his patronage to make my way
while the chill of early winter bit into my bones. I hugged a ragged old hide coat closer and hunched
my shoulders against the cold.
“LePine’s up to something, follow him,” Boyd told me the last time I saw him.He had a good point. LePine, the Under God-damned high minister of Confederation in Trana, was up
to something. Boyd was sure of it and if I had read the signs correctly he was probably right. It all came
down to Bart MacMillan and his fucking wars. The king of Confederation. It had been his damn wars
that drove me to Trana in the first place—they drove the ’Tobans west and the ’Tobans figured they’d
return the favour, pushed my people into the Great Desert. And then I’d ended up here, far from home.
Now MacMillan had his eyes on the Southlands and Boyd was sure that LePine wanted to involve
Trana. Like it or not, Broken Tower was the closest thing I had to a home. I was damned if I was going
to sit idly by doing nothing while Confederation drove me out of this one too.
I was sitting in my favourite spot, looking north at the boundary between Broken Tower and
downtown, wrapped in my thoughts as tightly as my winter clothes, when I heard a scrabbling behind
me. Nobody ever came up high like this. The scavengers stayed away because they couldn’t tear any
more rebar out of the walls without risking pulling the ceilings down on their own heads. The smiths
and the merchants never had cause to come up this high and nobody bothered living up at the tops of
the towers; at least, nobody sane.
Nobody sane except me, that is. I don’t think I’m insane after all. I turned to look and said, “Hello, is
there anybody there?”
The response I heard couldn’t really come from a human throat. The best I could describe it would be
as a nasty chuckle, a noise full of mirth and viciousness, a clicking sound that promised pain. I reached
into my jerkin and found my knife there. A girl had to be ready for trouble.
“Come out where I can see you,” I said and I tried really hard to sound bored, like I wasn’t impressed
by Mr. Crazy-laugh in the shadows at all. I was scared sick.
Just another one of those clicking little chuckles answered me.
“I don’t want to have to go looking for you,” I said and I wasn’t lying at all.
In the gloom of the building behind me I saw somebody, some thing, moving. It was shaped like a man,
naked and hunched over, almost crawling. I knew what that meant.
Trana didn’t have the Broken, not like Edmonton did or some of the other towns that survived in the
desert. This one had probably slunk here from Cleveland. I couldn’t think of any closer nests. I hated
and feared the Broken the same as everybody. They were cannibals, freaks; twisted and deformed into
something less than human by whatever had been done to them, whatever they had done.
They also rarely travelled alone. I was trapped and facing an unknown number of horrible enemies.
There was no need for pretence any longer. You can’t reason with one of the Broken and you can never
scare one into submission. I drew my knife and prepared to show them why I was called the Scorpion
Girl.
the open spaces, I like to climb up to the highest tower I can find and just sit with my feet dangling
over the edge, watching everything below me. The sky seems bluer than it does on the ground, almost
as blue as it does in the lands of the red-brown dust that were my home.
I miss home but I can never go back. There is no home to go back to, not anymore. It’s all dust, bones
and broken dreams now. No crops grow in the lands of endless dust. The rivers are dry. All they
produce is refugees and lots of refugees end up in Trana. I don’t have to like it. I don’t like it. The
buildings make the places all too narrow.
When I tell people I hate the tall buildings they look at me strangely. They ask me, “Didn’t I see you
sitting on the edge of the 390 building just the other day?” I just smile and explain that it’s OK being at
the top of the buildings. I don’t mind it when there is just the sky above and the streets below. I’m not
afraid of high places even though I come from the flattest land. It is the narrow places I don’t like, the
tunnels and the streets.
It’s better in the districts a bit farther out from the center. Kensington is nice, though too crowded, the
same with Queeneast. I like Blasted Port; it’s nothing but open spaces. The problem with Blasted Port
is that it’s not a good place for a girl to be all on her own with no family. I’d almost rather be out there
anyway. The bandits are mostly in it for a profit, and there’s no profit in harassing a girl with nothing
but the clothes on her back.
I guess if it wasn’t for Boyd I’d probably have left Broken Tower by now, would have left behind the
skeletons of buildings with their ribbed rebar showing through the crumbling concrete.
But at least I felt like I had a place in Boyd’s court, even if it was as unstable as the ancient towers.
I crossed Confederation all on my own. I had to stick a man with a knife once when he tried to force
himself on me. These city people all think desert girls are easy prey; we’re loose girls they say, we’re
asking for it. They learn fast that trying to force a desert girl is asking for it. I was hunting scorpions for
food while most of the two-penny bandits in Trana were still playing games in their parents’ yards.
Boyd respected that. He came from out west too, even farther off, in the lands beyond the mountains
and I’ve always suspected that he thought the same of city folk that I did. Too soft, too weak, too
coddled.
Boyd calls me the Scorpion Girl and leaves me right the fuck alone except for when I come to his
court. I’m welcome there. He sees to it that I have food if I’m hungry, somewhere to sleep when it’s
cold. He never tried to force himself on me or nothing either. We have an understanding, a mutual
respect, and if somebody needs watching, he knows I’m good at sneaky.
I thought about Boyd, about being a sneaky refugee girl, dependent on his patronage to make my way
while the chill of early winter bit into my bones. I hugged a ragged old hide coat closer and hunched
my shoulders against the cold.
“LePine’s up to something, follow him,” Boyd told me the last time I saw him.He had a good point. LePine, the Under God-damned high minister of Confederation in Trana, was up
to something. Boyd was sure of it and if I had read the signs correctly he was probably right. It all came
down to Bart MacMillan and his fucking wars. The king of Confederation. It had been his damn wars
that drove me to Trana in the first place—they drove the ’Tobans west and the ’Tobans figured they’d
return the favour, pushed my people into the Great Desert. And then I’d ended up here, far from home.
Now MacMillan had his eyes on the Southlands and Boyd was sure that LePine wanted to involve
Trana. Like it or not, Broken Tower was the closest thing I had to a home. I was damned if I was going
to sit idly by doing nothing while Confederation drove me out of this one too.
I was sitting in my favourite spot, looking north at the boundary between Broken Tower and
downtown, wrapped in my thoughts as tightly as my winter clothes, when I heard a scrabbling behind
me. Nobody ever came up high like this. The scavengers stayed away because they couldn’t tear any
more rebar out of the walls without risking pulling the ceilings down on their own heads. The smiths
and the merchants never had cause to come up this high and nobody bothered living up at the tops of
the towers; at least, nobody sane.
Nobody sane except me, that is. I don’t think I’m insane after all. I turned to look and said, “Hello, is
there anybody there?”
The response I heard couldn’t really come from a human throat. The best I could describe it would be
as a nasty chuckle, a noise full of mirth and viciousness, a clicking sound that promised pain. I reached
into my jerkin and found my knife there. A girl had to be ready for trouble.
“Come out where I can see you,” I said and I tried really hard to sound bored, like I wasn’t impressed
by Mr. Crazy-laugh in the shadows at all. I was scared sick.
Just another one of those clicking little chuckles answered me.
“I don’t want to have to go looking for you,” I said and I wasn’t lying at all.
In the gloom of the building behind me I saw somebody, some thing, moving. It was shaped like a man,
naked and hunched over, almost crawling. I knew what that meant.
Trana didn’t have the Broken, not like Edmonton did or some of the other towns that survived in the
desert. This one had probably slunk here from Cleveland. I couldn’t think of any closer nests. I hated
and feared the Broken the same as everybody. They were cannibals, freaks; twisted and deformed into
something less than human by whatever had been done to them, whatever they had done.
They also rarely travelled alone. I was trapped and facing an unknown number of horrible enemies.
There was no need for pretence any longer. You can’t reason with one of the Broken and you can never
scare one into submission. I drew my knife and prepared to show them why I was called the Scorpion
Girl.
I look forward to reading this.