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

by Jason Letts

  Iyne shook when the scaly beast slammed into the ground, knocking Lowell and most everyone else around off balance. Lowell collapsed onto his back and watched a great tail flash across his field of vision as it connected with the large man’s middle and swatted him away.

  The Titan started running for nearby alleys, but he didn’t make it more than a few feet before the dragon’s neck snapped in his direction. He didn’t even have time to scream before he was locked in the dragon’s jaws.

  Lowell heard a familiar voice.

  “Careful down there, old man!” the voice shouted, and Lowell was gradually able to look past the dragon’s broad face, long snout, and massive teeth to the people sitting between the spines on its back.

  “Sierra!” he called. “How did you find me?”

  “We saw some bright flashes from above and figured you were up to your neck in it again,” she said.

  Another dragon of equal size landed several yards away, screeching and carrying the rag-tag team of Madorans Sierra had set out with. If the dragons were any indication, she’d succeeded in finding their home. The whole spectacle of these giant, terrifying creatures left Lowell so awestruck he forgot to pick up Legacy. Onlookers peered at the dragons through windows and any foes kept a safe distance.

  “Are you making friends with the natives?” Sierra asked, jumping off of the dragon and landing on the dirt street. Someone was behind her, a man of lighter complexion than most Madorans and a healthy if lanky build.

  “Friends and enemies,” Lowell sighed, glancing back at Milorka, who was still on the ground. “If we can get him some help, he might make it.”

  “OK, but we’ll have to leave it to the Madorans. I need to talk to you now.”

  Lowell knew better than to argue with Sierra when she had that determined look in her eye, so he had Leeser and the large woman in Sierra’s party carry Milorka off of the open street and to one of the local medicine men. The sooner the shrapnel from the grenade was out and the wounds were bandaged up, the better his chances would be.

  “And who’s this?” he asked, once again appraising the man who’d joined her group somewhere out in the middle of the Plagrass wastes. Sierra rolled her eyes.

  “This is Tommack, the liar. Don’t believe anything he says,” she explained.

  “Umm, it’s nice to meet you,” Lowell uttered, at a loss for what else to say.

  “She saved me from a storm and I made up a story about myself when I didn’t know what she wanted with me,” Tommack said, shrugging and somewhat penitent. Lowell knew full well how often people changed their tune when they realized they were talking to a Bracken, but the real question was why Sierra wanted to keep him around at all. An obvious reason came to mind.

  “He left out the part about how he was working for Bolt & Keize,” Sierra said. She had the little dragon, Nemi, on her shoulder.

  “Just to pay some bills and allow me to keep traveling,” Tommack added. Lowell happened to notice that he had something bulging underneath his jacket that he was carrying.

  “Can we get to the thing that’s so important?” Lowell asked. Sierra blinked hard and reached out to touch his arm.

  “I came to stop you from giving yourself up to the Wozniaks,” she said, and Lowell immediately shook his head.

  “We’ve already been over this. The Wozniaks and the Illiams are here now negotiating with your mother. Nothing’s changed since you left,” he said, but Sierra took a deep breath and let it all out at once.

  “No, everything’s changed! Out in the wastes where the dragons are, we discovered a sprawling deposit of hematite, pure iron ore, sitting right on the surface at the bottom of a canyon. There’s so much of it that it makes the Wozniak OrePlains back in Cumeria look like pebbles in a sandbox. It would be easy to get the Madorans to help beat a path there to mine the ore and transport it back. We wouldn’t need anything from the Wozniaks, and you wouldn’t need to give yourself to them!”

  Lowell was speechless for a moment, and his eyes nearly popped out of his head. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

  “The whole point of the black contract was that it would give us the raw materials we need to build a new empire. Are you really saying they’re just sitting out there in the wastes?”

  Sierra nodded so hard she risked snapping her neck, and the ideas came crashing through Lowell’s mind.

  “We could use the Mind’s stockpile of weapons to fend off any of the hill tribes. Then the first thing would be to put together a railroad system between Madora and the site. This city would be the point of distribution for the entire world. We’d have it all and we wouldn’t be dependent on anybody for it. The Madorans would have all the jobs they could want and a better standard of living, and we could find a way back to the ClawLands after bankrupting the Wozniaks with cheaper goods.”

  Overjoyed, Lowell and Sierra wrapped each other in a bouncing hug, neither able to contain their excitement.

  “We’re going to make it back,” Sierra said, grinning. The Brackens would succeed, all because of her bravery and willingness to step into the unknown. Before Lowell knew what he was doing, he broke away from Sierra and started toward one of the roads leading for the south side of town.

  “I have to tell Tris. It might not be too late to leave me out of the deal!” he said, his trot becoming a run.

  “Wait, I don’t know where you’re going. And you forgot your sword!” she said, picking Legacy up off the ground.

  “It belongs to you now,” Lowell shouted back. It certainly wasn’t the perfect, heartfelt moment he’d imagined that passing the sword to her would be, what with him loping like a wounded nag in the opposite direction, but life never seemed to play out in the way he would’ve liked. And if Lowell didn’t move his ass, he risked not having many more moments of life at all.

  The streets were unusually active, most likely the result of all of the activity. Many crossed Lowell’s path with a mystified look in their eyes that told him they had dragons on the brain. He managed to cross the main road and make it a few blocks before his stamina gave out and his pace slowed. It was all for the better, because running into a member of the Wozniak or Illiam camps would cut his chance to make it through the night.

  It surprised Lowell that he knew the filthy, poor city of Madora well enough even in the dark to make it the back of the Bracken compound, where a pile of rubble purposefully concealed a back entrance. Removing a few stones opened up a path to a hole that required Lowell to crawl through on his belly. Straining, he got up and covered the distance to the back building beneath the bell tower, hoping to find Tris in one of the private quarters designated for the Virtuoso.

  As luck would have it, he turned the corner down a hall and ran into Agjam, dressed in the elaborate costume they’d made for her. Her presence signaled that the meeting had ended, and Agjam pointed to a door at the end of the hall where she could presumably find Tris. He wondered if Tris had really gone through with her part of the bargain and promised him to the Wozniaks and Illiams. He’d pleaded with her to do so, but Sierra’s revelation made those pleas a bitter memory.

  Lowell couldn’t walk away without saying something to Agjam, who may have sacrificed a lot more that night than she knew.

  “If Milorka doesn’t make it, I want you to know he died a hero. Because of him, the Commerce Titans’ grip on Madora will never be the same. I know he wasn’t that great of a husband, but he had a real impact that’ll put Madora on a better course.”

  He left Agjam behind, no doubt confused and maybe even scared, on his way to Tris and the room at the end of the candlelit hall. He put his ear to the door, heard nothing, and slowly pushed it open.

  Inside, he found Tris sitting with her knees against her chest on a mat in a dark corner where the light of a few candles on a table could barely reach her. She didn’t seem to acknowledge his presence, looking more worn out than he’d ever seen her. She must’ve been miserable, and Lowell knew this was the real cost of havi
ng her offer him up as bait.

  “I’m sorry—”

  “Don’t say that to me!” she said, immediately getting to her feet and approaching him. “If you were sorry, you wouldn’t have made me do what I did.”

  Tris had never had the slightest temper, but she was angry now, fuming. Her eyes were wide and her cheeks flushed. The pressure he’d put on her had changed her.

  “Tris, I have to tell you something. Sierra came back and told me that she found a huge deposit of iron ore in the wastes. We need to find a way out of the deal, because we don’t need their steel anymore and there’s no reason for me to give myself up,” he said, causing Tris to break down.

  “You’re killing me, Lowell! Do you have any idea what you just said? This whole time you went on and on about how there was no other way, that we had to do this for the family, and now you’re coming in here to tell me that it was all a mistake and it was pointless for me to promise you to people who want nothing more than to kill you?

  “It’s too late now. The deal is done and those awful people expect me to give you to them, and the sooner the better. Trying to go back on it—there’s no way. When I told them I had you, the entire focus of the conversation changed. They barely cared about the terms anymore and were immediately asking how you got here, what you were doing, where you were, and what I was doing with you. I have no doubt in my mind that they’ll tear the entire city apart to get to you, killing everyone. They have thousands of people on those ships, and so many more weapons than any of us could fight against. We can’t let that happen to Madora,” she said, breaking into tears.

  Lowell didn’t know what to do, so he wrapped his arms around Tris and let her sob into his shoulder. She’d fulfilled her part of the contract at incredible personal cost, and now the risks for Madora if Lowell backed out had grown incredibly great. He knew his only option was to fulfill his part of the bargain. The iron in the wastes would still prove more valuable than anything they got from the Wozniaks, and hopefully any Illiam food would be put to good use, but Lowell wouldn’t be around to see it because he’d been so focused on his plan that he’d never imagined a boon falling out of the sky like this.

  “I’m going to carry out my part of the deal,” he said.

  Lowell had hoped the reaffirmation would soothe Tris, who’d see her city spared, but she only became more distraught.

  “How am I going to go on without you?”

  “You’ll find a way to make it work, you and Sierra. And Taylor and Randall are still out there doing their part. The family will go on, and maybe one day you’ll forgive me for this.”

  Tris pulled back to look him in the eyes. She stared at him, in seeming disbelief as the candlelight dappled against her cheeks.

  “How could I ever forgive you? Never in my life have I ever had to lie as much as I did tonight, about me, about you, about everything. And to send you away like this? I promised I’d never let you go, and now I’ve let myself become the instrument of your destruction. Forget forgiving you. I’ll never be able to forgive myself.”

  Dead inside. That was the only way to describe how Lowell felt. He had been wrong about one crucial thing in all of his planning. The end wouldn’t come for him once Velo and Portia decided to put him out of his misery; he’d died the moment he forced the love of his life to turn her back on him. She’d resigned herself to his end now, and even Lowell saw no point in delaying the inevitable.

  “I think it’s time I make my appearance then,” he said.

  “Just one last kiss,” Tris said.

  The momentary embrace was not long enough to convey much emotion, and the best that could be said of it was that they shared those sentiments together. Once they pulled away, they walked slowly to the door and started down the hall beneath the bell tower behind the throne room. A few of the Madorans were around casting melancholy looks at the doomed couple. Agjam emerged through a doorway, her royal gown replaced by her usual rough fabric. When she saw Lowell, she slapped him in the face. Lowell took that as a poor sign about Milorka and continued on next to Tris.

  The throne room, another elaborate sham, was vacant now, and they walked toward the main entrance, where he could hear voices coming from the rooms at the front of the structure. No words offered themselves to his ears, but he heard tension and trepidation in their tenors. Lowell leaned against the doorframe, just out of sight, and put his head down. He hated these people, the ones who’d driven him from the ClawLands and forced him into this madness. No, Lowell only had himself to blame. He couldn’t accept defeat and live as a pauper, not when there was a chance he could restore the Bracken legacy. Tris set her hand on his shoulder.

  “I’ve failed you,” he whispered.

  “The world failed us.”

  When Lowell finally turned the corner, he mustered the strength to stand tall in the face of two of his greatest enemies. Only Arnold Keize and Chancellor Aggart could’ve rounded out a group of people this vicious.

  Velo Wozniak, that slick snake in the silver suit, blinked twice when he looked up and saw Lowell enter the room. Portia was standing over his shoulder next to one of her little lapdogs and smiled as if she’d just been presented with a bouquet of flowers. Tris kept her distance and crossed her arms, lest they give away more than they needed to.

  “Fancy running into you here,” Velo said. His soldiers needed no orders; they immediately apprehended Lowell and forced his hands behind his back, tying them together. Once he was restrained, Portia came around to mock him from a much closer vantage point.

  “You were always nothing more than a bargaining chip,” she said, though they were all pawns in Chancellor Aggart’s game. The only difference was that he’d been sacrificed while they’d been rewarded.

  “I told you this was a filthy city,” Velo added, getting up. “Never would’ve guessed we’d be taking the worst of it back with us.”

  The soldiers forced Lowell toward the exit, past Tris, who looked like she was about to say something. Lowell gave her a look urging her restraint. Over his shoulder, Lowell saw Portia extend a flat hand to Tris, who had returned the veil over her face.

  “Forgive us if we don’t stay, but we’re excited to play with our new toy. We’ll prepare the first shipment as soon as we return home. Nice doing business with you.”

  Because he was looking back at Tris, Lowell nearly tripped when he was forced out the doorway into the dark courtyard facing the front gate. Eventually she was forced out of his view, and an uncomfortable chill quickly settled into Lowell’s stomach. They hadn’t taken more than a few steps before Velo caught up to him.

  “Let me see if I’ve got this straight. One wife betrays you for your money, and now the other trades away your life. That’s got to hurt,” he said, laughing.

  CHAPTER 11

  “So what do we do now?” Tommack asked Sierra, who had her arms crossed and was looking down at her feet.

  “I just need a minute to think,” she said, but any clarity was increasingly difficult to find as the bustling crowd gathered to look at the dragons. Razi emerged and rejoined Hinkalo and Maglum, the three of them soaking up the attention and posing in front of the beast. Sooner or later someone in the crowd would become emboldened and approach, then more, finally leading to a situation where the dragons became hostile and people were in harm’s way.

  Sierra tried to think it through like her father would, but in the end she had only the burning feeling in her stomach to guide her.

  “The black contract is nullified because of the ore deposit we found in the wastes. We can make steel, trade it for food, and we won’t need the Wozniaks or the Illiams for anything. Those people invaded my home, burned our town, and brought an early end to countless people I’d known my entire life, all for the simple reason that they thought they were stronger. And now they’re right here, far away from their own homes and entrenched defenses. They must have people guarding them, guns, and maybe more, but whatever they have couldn’t stand in the way of
these dragons. If the revenge you dreamed of were so close at hand, what would you do?”

  Tommack raised an eyebrow at her and scratched the stubble on his chin. A smile emerged on his lips and he dragged a foot across the sand.

  “The laws of the wilderness always give the advantage to those who make the first move,” he said.

  “I’m going to cut them once with this for every life lost during that attack,” she said, holding Legacy’s hilt and testing the weight with her hand. She’d seen this sword buried in the Battlefield table at the top of the Bracken Towers, admired the blood-red tassel coming out the bottom. Now she understood the responsibility of it that tied her to the generations of her family that came before and drove her father to do anything in order to protect the Bracken name and help its members flourish, even at incredible personal cost.

  “Sounds to me like you mean business,” Tommack observed.

  But the question remained about whether or not the dragons, which had somehow understood the need to fly to Madora and readily complied, would allow Sierra to use them as weapons in battle for a fight that in all honesty wasn’t theirs.

  “Nemi sol,” she called to her longtime friend, who immediately flew into her hand and settled in. “You were there when the Wozniaks and the Illiams invaded the ClawLands and tried to take my life. They drove us from our home, and with your help we can fight back against them and return to where we belong. I brought you to your home and fulfilled my promise to your first master, the old woman who brought you to Cumeria despite not knowing a word of the language. Will you and your family help me and mine?”

  The tiny dragon stared at her intently but gave no sign of comprehension. He had intelligence, to be sure, but whether or not he’d actually done anything to communicate her meaning to the others was something else. Did he need to squawk and fly about, or did the other nearby dragons simply understand? There was only one way to find out.

  Wary of getting back on the dragon’s rough, silvery hide, Sierra took a deep breath and reached up for the dragon’s protruding spine when Tommack stopped her.