by Jason Letts
He exchanged hard glances with Milford and the other men on the table, all of them knowing the choice he faced. If he gave Milford free reign, that alone might cost him the support of the other department heads. Could he place all his trust in a man whose services shouldn’t have ever been necessary in order to subjugate the rest?
“I…” Lowell stammered, his heart rending. When the elevator door opened, the relief of being able to avoid the choice soothed Lowell until he heard the hard tap of Carlisle Empry’s cane against the floor and new anxiety engulfed him.
The chairman of the board of directors, with a forest green suit and graying blond hair, strolled in and took a deep, smug breath.
“This meeting is over,” Carlisle announced. “And you, Lowell Bracken, are finished here.”
The department heads surveyed each other’s shock. Lowell had to pull himself together before they all gave him up for dead.
“I am still the chief executive, Chairman Empry. And you’ll pay me the proper respect and accept that you are not permitted in this room now,” Lowell declared.
“Don’t subject us to that blather you usually finish your meetings with. I never want to hear those words again as long as I live. If the rest of you want to keep your jobs, get out now. Get out!” Carlisle demanded.
People are our business. The men in the room didn’t know what to do, not one of them daring to even take a breath. But Lowell realized it had reached a breaking point, and he’d have to settle things with Carlisle himself.
“It’s fine, guys. If Chairman Empry insists on barging in here and being rude, we can accommodate his severe lapse in decorum. Let me know if the investigators give you any more trouble in your departments,” he said.
“The investigation is over,” Carlisle said as the men started to rise. “It was just a formality to begin with, to make sure you felt the heat. Private Oversight Committee Chairman Qi Ptock has had everything he needed against you from the beginning, and Inspector Toggler is at the ClawClinic now confirming the rest of the deceit you perpetrated against your own company. Once they publish their report in a few cycles, the board will convene for a vote and your tenure with Bracken Energy will formally end.”
Lowell felt on the edge of a great precipice with nothing but a long fall waiting for him. He got a few more glances from the department heads, who kept their heads down as they passed Carlisle on their way to the elevator.
“If there’s so much as a spark anywhere around here, I’ll shove the next bomb straight up your ass,” Carlisle said to Milford, setting a hand on his shoulder before the man scuttled away. Another opportunity lost.
Lowell turned to Carlisle once the elevator door closed. The loathing in his voice, the barely concealed wrath, gave Lowell enough evidence to sort out the true source of his problems.
“It was you,” he mused. “We grew up with this company together, Empry. How could you do this to me? And over what, trying to hide a freak attack in the parking lot? Over wanting to merely put Bolt & Keize out of business rather than bury every employee they had?”
He’d only just heard the news from Randall and hadn’t wanted to believe it, but now the full implications of this sickening deception choked Lowell. How long had Carlisle buttered Lowell up with his “sirs” and his decades of unquestioning obedience, all the while poisoning the board against him and waiting to strike? Lowell had never seen it coming.
Carlisle chortled, a bizarre cross between laughter and rage. He clutched the handle of his cane and pointed a finger at Lowell.
“You have no idea what this is about, do you? We’ve been waiting for this moment a long, long time, when we could finally cast down you Brackens like the dogs you are. I can’t believe I’ve been honored with the task of running you out of town, out of a company built on such a revolting foundation.”
“The Ma Ha’dere,” Lowell said, and Carlisle shook his head.
“I still have no idea what that nonsense is. No, you blithering idiot. You may have forgotten where you came from and what you’ve done, but we haven’t. You beat us and used us for your own ends, but there are hundreds of us descended from the survivors of the old Bracken slave mines, and we’ve grown strong enough to topple you. You have a legacy of bones, in case you’ve blocked it out. It’s all over for you, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”
Lowell balanced himself against the cool stone of the battlefield as the outrage swept over him. The old family sword, still pristine, was so close. In Carlisle, his whole family history was standing right in front of him. Somehow the things he hated about himself and refused to teach his children had chased him down, despite the fact that he had done everything he could to get away from them.
“That was hundreds and hundreds of years ago! And since then the Brackens have given our people the local schools, the ClawClinic, all free of charge. I’ve spent my life trying to do right by the ClawLands and put ancient history to rest! How can I be held accountable for this?” he shouted.
It was insane. The Wozniaks up in the OrePlains fed their people rocks and were worshipped for it, but no matter how much Lowell and his family gave, the sour stench of guilt continued to fester within him. He knew the people of the ClawLands didn’t remember and were happy enough with what they got from the Brackens, yet their support and approval weren’t enough to assuage his chronic turmoil.
“These crimes cannot go unpunished!” Carlisle roared, waving his cane. Lowell furrowed his brow and succumbed to the strange tingling in his arms and back. The furor rose in him.
“You’ve plotted against me for decades, betrayed my trust and confidence. You’ve jeopardized the entire company and much of Cumeria to play out your twisted revenge fantasy, but it ends here. I’m my own man, and I won’t lay claim to the injustices of ancient history,” he said.
“You’ll pay. You’ll pay with everything you have,” Carlisle swore, his voice low.
“But if you want to bring back the old ways, you can have them,” Lowell said. He knew what he needed to do.
Setting one foot on the chair and climbing onto the battlefield, Lowell looked down at the sword stuck in the table with its red tassel curling around the hilt. Once he had a good grip, Lowell jerked hard, but the sword wouldn’t budge. He took it with both hands and pulled with such fury that he would surely tear off his arms if the sword didn’t come free.
All at once, the steel slid from the sleek black stone and rose high overhead, almost dragging against the ceiling. Lowell marveled at the breathtaking shimmer and the weight in his hands that felt so right. With visions of his descendants wielding this sword, Lowell saw a chance to rewrite history by making Bracken Energy a better company. But he also saw the sword plunging straight through Carlisle’s heart for his misguided attempt at vengeance.
When he finally returned his attention to the mutinous chairman of the board, Lowell found him standing on the opposite end of the table. Completely unaware of when or how he got there, he watched Carlisle twist the cane and slam it against the side of the table. The exterior of the cane fell apart in two halves, revealing a long, slim blade within.
Carlisle smiled. That cane was another lie he’d carried with him every day he’d entered the towers.
Unable to bear any more, Lowell burst forward, racing across the long table with the sword over one shoulder, and took one hard swing that would lop Carlisle’s head clean off. With little effort, Carlisle leaned back and allowed the sword to pass a few inches in front of him. The momentum of the swing carried Lowell around a full one hundred and eighty degrees.
“Do you even know what you’re doing with that thing?” Carlisle mocked, and Lowell received a kick in the lower back that almost sent him falling forward.
Turning around, Lowell swung again, slashing right to left and left to right, but Carlisle flicked away each swing with a simple parry. In truth Lowell didn’t know what he was doing, but how hard could it be? Swing, hit, cut—what else was there?
He found
out quickly, as Carlisle broke from his defensive posture and began to advance. He moved much faster than Lowell had ever seen or could’ve imagined for a middle-aged man, while Lowell already felt fatigue clogging his muscles. Carlisle appeared to move with the sword, as if they were a single entity. What had he been doing with his free time all these years?
It took all the skill Lowell had to ward off even one blow, and when the next one came his only option was to dive from the table, landing flat on his side on the hard floor and letting the sword drop from his hands. When he went to pick it up, Carlisle’s foot came down on the sword, and he held the edge of his blade to Lowell’s neck.
Not ready to relent, Lowell kicked at Carlisle’s feet, forcing him off of the sword. But Lowell’s blade cut through his pant leg, tearing it wide open and nicking his skin. Carlisle laughed as Lowell staggered to his feet.
“This skirmish is an excellent example of your endemic ineptitude,” Carlisle said. The statement elevated Lowell’s ire, but he had nowhere to direct it. He knew he was outmatched. The man was so close, but he couldn’t touch him. After another swing, a thrust, and a low chop, Lowell left himself open again for an embarrassing shot to the head. The butt of the cane sent him sprawling back against the glass windows.
Carlisle leapt forward, pressing his left forearm to Lowell’s neck. Lowell saw something insane in Carlisle’s pale green eyes, a hatred he had been born with that stretched back generations.
“Are you going to kill me?” Lowell asked, and Carlisle threw him back onto the ground. Lowell’s body was so tired that the sword was nothing more than a cane now.
“And deprive you of the destitute life you have left? I wouldn’t dream of it. Every day I want you to curse what’s happened to you, because that’s what we did, and that’s what you deserve.”
But that didn’t stop Carlisle from pummeling Lowell with the flat edge of his blade. Lowell took hits against his left shoulder, right thigh, his rib cage, and his back in such rapid succession only the sudden bursts of pain told him he’d been struck.
Knowing any chance of walking out with both his job and life intact had been lost, Lowell careened back against the closed elevator door and smacked the button, quickly raising his sword in a feeble attempt to fend off more blows.
The elevator door opened, Carlisle broke from his fighting stance, and Lowell ducked inside, suffering the searing indignity of being run out of his own office, not to mention the numerous crippling injuries disheveled appearance.
“You haven’t seen the last of me,” Lowell promised.
Carlisle stepped forward and reached into the elevator to tap the button for the ground floor.
“If that’s the case, next time you might want to do a little better, because I will kill you if you insist upon it.”
The elevator doors closed, giving Lowell a final glimpse of Carlisle’s triumphant, gloating face set against the black clouds of the smokestacks behind the battlefield. Once he was safely out of sight and the elevator began to descend, Lowell slumped against the wall and tried to pull himself together.
“Mr. Bracken?” the security guard inquired when Lowell plodded past the front desk.
Sword in hand, Lowell skulked through the lobby and through the doors without saying a word to anyone. He couldn’t bear the shame of looking a single person in the eye, but he felt as bad for them as he did for himself, knowing what they were in for with Carlisle at the helm. There had to be a way he could still fix things.
He couldn’t make it across the plaza between the towers fast enough, and standing around at the platform while waiting for the train, catching disturbed glances from everyone, was worse. He spilled into a seat and set the sword down next to him. He’d let his family down by failing to wield it properly, and by failing to wield his position as well.
The train could’ve taken him all the way to Ristle, his ultimate destination and last hope, but he mustered the strength to get off at a small stop just outside of town that looked like it hadn’t seen a visitor in ages.
Descending the cracked concrete steps to an overgrown dirt path, Lowell hobbled along toward a creaky cabin set against the jagged hillside. The smell of the gas, like musty incense, wafted through the tiny cracks in the ground and into the air.
It would’ve been wiser to go straight to Ristle, but there was something Lowell needed to see. The sign read, “Bracken Historical Preservation Society,” marking the decrepit homestead that was the first of his family’s. It harkened back hundreds of years, before Cumeria and the capitol buildings of Toine, before the Bracken empire that now hung by a thread.
“Why, Lowell Bracken!” an old woman in a rocking chair near the entrance remarked. “And you carry the Timme Bracken’s sword, the first forged from the great gas-smithy at the ClawWorks.”
“Please,” he said, unable to bear two voices in his mind.
He’d given the woman her job decades ago and paid her out of his own pocket to keep her out of poverty. The entire place was a vanity project, one that even the public didn’t much care for because of its inconvenient location. One of the first things he’d done was scrub the place clean of his family’s true origins, but burying the past had only served to blind him to its relevance, and now he searched for a reminder that it had been with him all along.
A small fire crackled in a hearth, which Lowell passed in favor of the back of the building. There a gray wooden board covered a gap in the stone flooring that led to what could only be called a pit. Carrying a candle, Lowell took the steps down to the bottom and turned to face a few stacked crates enmeshed in spider webs and mold. More than a few bones poked through the soil. This was where he’d hidden his family’s legacy.
He used the candle to scare away a long-legged spider, and then removed the gritty lid from the crate. Inside were old books, photographs, mining instruments, and chains. He grunted as he dragged the top crate off of the others. It split open when it hit the ground, spilling its contents all over. But Lowell moved on to the second crate, which contained a wooden crest with the symbol of the Claws and the words “People are our business” in ornate lettering. What should’ve been a prized heirloom had been shunned, because on the back someone had carved, “From your ashes, we rise.”
On the train back to Ristle, Lowell had plenty of time to ponder the one warning he’d thoughtlessly ignored. At some point early on, he must’ve seen what had been chipped into the crest and laughed, thinking it an idle threat that time would make impotent. But instead his position and his family’s security were now on the brink because of it, and the repercussions for the people of the Claws and all of Cumeria would be massive if Carlisle felt he could exercise that power with impunity.
A sword was not a normal thing to carry through the station at Ristle or in its streets, but then again, neither was it normal to have one pant leg torn open or a few dozen bruises ripening all over one’s body. Lowell made it to the stone crag of a building adorned with all manner of monsters that housed Fiori Law.
“I’m here to see Ralph. Lowell Bracken,” he said through gritted teeth to a secretary.
“Twenty-fifth floor,” the young man replied, in awe. He’d picked up the phone before Lowell could take two paces, but that was fine. Ralph would know he wasn’t a threat. Despite the sword, he’d never been less threatening in his life.
After another elevator ride, he emerged onto the ornate and glittering palace that was the firm’s top floor. The only disruption was a construction crew making some modifications to an office on the left. Peeking in, Lowell could’ve sworn they were building a bedroom in there.
The doors at the end of the hall burst open, and Ralph Fiori rushed over to help Lowell shamble in. Though he appeared a fair shake better than Lowell, Ralph still didn’t look to be doing well himself. He’d gained more weight and had crumbs on his jacket.
“What a couple of hard-luck cases we’ve become,” Ralph joked. Lowell chuckled until it became too painful, eventually slumping
into a plush chair near the desk and dropping the sword onto the floor.
“I’m sorry to show up like this,” he said, but Ralph waved him off.
“Forget about it. You can always come to me. And I already talked to Sierra. She’ll be up any minute,” he said.
Hearing those words felt better than any medicine. With Sierra and Ralph, he’d find a way to salvage the situation, but that didn’t mean he could get away without telling them how bad it really was.
“Look, Ralph. We’ve been friends a long time, right? I’m in a bad place now and I need help. If something doesn’t happen soon, the company will be out of my hands…forever.”
Ralph chewed his lip, set his elbows on the desk, and leaned forward. He could be a hard man, but the look on his face showed a soft spot one might not expect.
“We’re going to take care of this for you. I promise you that. It’s what we’re here to do and we do it better than anybody else,” he said.
The door opened and Sierra walked in. She looked so put together in her skirt suit and lens-less glasses. Her light brown hair was up and she had a smile on her face. More than anyone else, she’d always been his little angel.
“Sweetheart,” he said, getting up. When she saw his full state, her shock was unmistakable. She stared at the sword on the floor for a moment, and that seemed to drive home the fragility of the situation.
“Tell me everything,” she said, giving him a gentle hug. This time he’d have to tell her the things he’d hidden from her all her life.
Lowell slumped back into his chair as Sierra took one to his left. He scowled as if he were about to bite into a bar of soap.
“This isn’t easy for me to say. I never wanted you to have to carry the burden of this, like I have my entire life, but it’s at the root of everything here and you have to know.”