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  Unraveled

  Heritage of Power, Book 4

  Lindsay Buroker

  Copyright © 2018 by Lindsay Buroker

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Contents

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  Thank you, dear reader, for continuing on with my Heritage of Power series. Before you jump into the story, please let me thank my beta readers, Cindy Wilkinson, Rue Silver, and Sarah Engelke for giving early feedback, and my editor, Shelley Holloway. Also, thank you to Deranged Doctor Design for the cover art. We hope you enjoy the story!

  1

  Lieutenant Rysha Ravenwood murmured and made soft exclamations as she studied one of two journals she’d recovered during the last week’s mission. The scribbles of her enthusiastic pencil filled the hostel room as she took notes. At least, they did at the moment. Often, the shouts, thumps, and screams from the other rooms and the alley outside drowned out her quieter noises.

  “It’s disconcerting to hear someone making such pleasure-filled sounds while reading a book,” Major Kaika said, pausing her push-ups to lock her arms in the board position, or the “rest position,” as Rysha’s instructor in the elite troops training program called it. As if one could rest while one’s arms were quivering from holding up one’s weight.

  “It’s a journal, ma’am, not a book.”

  “That makes it much better. I hope that’s not the one from the dragon-rider outpost. Didn’t you say the title translated to How to Be a Delusional Cultist in Six Easy Steps?” Kaika lowered herself halfway and held the position.

  “That wasn’t the precise translation.” Rysha felt guilty for sitting cross-legged next to the shuttered and barred window with her books instead of joining in with the exercises. By now, she had missed so much of her training that she feared she would have to wait a year for the next session to start. “The front half of the cult book does have the history, bylaws, and ceremonies for the Brotherhood of the Dragon, but it’s the back half that’s more interesting. It’s written in Middle Dragon Script and was copied from a much older version of the book, I believe—maybe the original from over three thousand years ago when the cult was founded. I’ve only got a few pages translated.”

  “And that’s what has you more excited than being handed a freshly dipped dragon horn cookie from Donotono's Bakery?”

  “Actually, that journal is disturbing. I do need to go over it so we can return it to—”

  “Return it? You want to walk past a hundred angry cultists to put it back in their sacrifice room?”

  “I was thinking we could leave it outside for them to find. Or drop it in the entry hole.”

  Kaika grunted and rolled onto her back to torture her abdomen muscles with leg raises.

  “The journal I’m reading now is the one we found in the dragon’s lair. I believe the man who dropped it…” Rysha hesitated, reconsidering her word choice. The man hadn’t dropped it. It had been in his pack when he’d been slain, and then the scavengers living in those tunnels had eaten the flesh from his skeleton and chewed on his bones. “I believe the previous owner was traveling in the same party as Trip’s mother.”

  “His surrogate mother?”

  “Apparently so.”

  Since they had all been there for the discovery of Trip’s heritage, and the fact that he was one of nine half-human-half-dragon offspring that had been born thousands of years earlier, she didn’t think she needed to bring it up. Trip hadn’t stopped calling the woman who had found and raised him his mother, so Rysha would use the same word.

  “The journal isn’t particularly organized,” she added, “and there aren’t any dates, but it’s quite fascinating. It details a lot of the research the party did that led them to find the dragon’s lair in the first place. Unfortunately, it doesn’t name the members or talk about if someone brought the team together or if the individuals formed it themselves. There is mention of someone financing the expedition, possibly someone local. I flagged that. I need to find a map to see if I can put together the clues. I’m also still looking for a confirmation that Trip’s mother was indeed in the party.”

  “Is there any reason we need that information now?”

  “Well, I think Trip would like to know it, and I find the events that resulted in his existence in our time to be quite fascinating.”

  “I see. Trip is the reason you’re making those noises.”

  The look that Kaika slanted her was hard to read, but Rysha thought she saw disapproval in it. Kaika didn’t object to dalliances with men—she seemed to dally more frequently than the next person—but she didn’t believe dalliances should turn into an obsession—or affect a woman’s career.

  Rysha didn’t think she was obsessed, but she had been willing to risk punishment and expulsion from the elite troops training program when she’d chosen to stay here in Lagresh to help Trip unravel the Dreyak mystery. If Kaika had been able to find passage back to Iskandia, she would have already left and reported that Trip and Rysha were… AWOL, essentially. The minute Trip had said he intended to stay here to investigate Dreyak’s death, he’d been on a personal mission rather than one assigned by a commanding officer. That meant Rysha was too.

  Was that a mistake? Rysha had made the decision in the moment, acting on instinct—and feelings—rather than well-thought-out arguments.

  “The events that resulted in his existence are fascinating to me,” Rysha repeated firmly. “He’s not just some boy I’m making moon eyes over. In addition to his greater than average potential to help Iskandia in the coming years, he has all those half-dragon baby siblings over there who could also grow up to help the country.” She waved at the compact stasis chambers, stacked against the wall like kegs in a brewery, hoping she could imply that her interest in Trip’s past was part of some grander scenario, one from which Iskandia would benefit.

  “So, the half-lizard baby brother in that one on the end is what’s attracting you to Trip? Or is it that furry panda-looking thing?”

  Rysha sighed. “Ma’am.”

  She didn’t argue further. Kaika didn’t seem to have maternal instincts. Rysha hadn’t thought she did, either, but when she’d looked at the human babies nestled in the stasis gel, their features just discernible through the semi-transparent lids, she’d felt the urge to protect them. More than that, she wanted them to be hatched from those prisons where they’d been held in perpetual hibernation for thousands of years, and she wanted them to have wonderful childhoods and good lives.

  A boy and a girl—twins, perhaps—were in side-by-side chambers on the top of the stack, each with dark curly hair and their thumbs in their mouths, and they reminded her of her little cousins, Frian and Themala, when they had been little. She could easily imagine the babies growing into toddlers and playing in her family’s valley, chasing squirrels in the orchard and swimming in the lake.

  “Why don’t you take a break from the books and come exercise?” Kaika asked. “We can do unarmed combat drills too. I’d like to see you return to the capital,
having equal or greater ability than the rookies that have been training the whole time we’ve been away on these missions. If you don’t pass the test at the end of the spring, then you’ve got to wait another year to reapply to the program, and there’s no guarantee that you’ll be selected again. Do you want to go back to overseeing a crew of thugly gun huggers on the wall of the fort?”

  Rysha hadn’t minded her job as an artillery officer, especially since aiming guns effectively employed her mathematics background, but she’d mostly gone into that specialty because it was one of the few combat jobs open to women. She’d believed that background would make her more appealing to the elite troops recruiters. Everything had been a careful calculation, with the end goal to become only the second woman to pass the training and be accepted into the unit.

  And Kaika was right. She was potentially giving all that up because of Trip.

  She could tell herself that his path and potential were greater than hers and that he could use the support of someone who cared about him, someone who might eventually love him, but was she positive that was the truth? Maybe she just liked having sex and snuggling with him, and she was deluding herself about the rest. After all, since she’d been chosen to wield the chapaharii blade Dorfindral, she, too, had the potential to play a great role in protecting her country and her people from dragons and other enemies.

  Rysha rubbed her face. Why couldn’t she have it all? Trip and the elite troops?

  “It’s not too late,” Kaika said quietly.

  “For push-ups?”

  Kaika snorted. “Never too late for them, but I meant to get back home in time to rejoin the training and graduate from the program. You haven’t yet… Nothing has happened that I would need to report. Admittedly, I don’t know what Blazer will report to General Zirkander about soldiers turning into bed buddies in the field, but since we haven’t been able to secure transportation yet, you haven’t technically chosen to go AWOL with Trip. We’re all stuck here until there’s a boat heading our way that we can get on. But once I find one, if you choose not to get on it…” Kaika shrugged. “I have to go back and report in, and Blazer tasked us with getting all those canisters home.”

  Rysha grimaced, imagining that Trip would object to them being taken away without him. Would he even allow it?

  “I’ll train with you, ma’am.”

  Rysha closed the book. She would stay up nights to finish reading the journals if she had to—she could sleep during the voyage back to Iskandia. Besides, how valid was her argument that she needed to finish studying them when she hadn’t even read the one that had come from the outpost, the one she’d essentially stolen and should return before they left?

  “I haven’t given up my dream, not for Trip or for anyone else,” Rysha added. “I want to make it into the elite troops.”

  “Good.”

  Kaika rose to her feet and lifted a hand, as if to wave Rysha over to join her, but she paused in the middle of the gesture. Frowning, she grabbed her chapaharii blade, Eryndral, and strode to the window. She leaned her ear toward the shutters, some of the desert’s harsh sunlight slipping through and creating the slashes of light Rysha had been reading by.

  Rysha raised her eyebrows and mouthed, “What is it?”

  “I hear voices,” Kaika said quietly.

  Rysha spread her hand, palm up. She’d been hearing voices all day and through most of the night too. Deals being cut and threats being delivered. Twice, gunfire had woken her with her heart slamming against her rib cage. She didn’t think the people in this city ever slept. Especially not in this neighborhood.

  Their hostel was close to the waterfront, so Kaika could go down every morning and check for passage on new ships that came in, but the location was the only good thing about it. The room itself was a sewer pit with the lumpy mattresses on the floor providing the only furnishings, if they could be considered that. They were made from dried cactus pads, with some but not all of the thorns removed before they’d been stuffed into the cases.

  “It’s quieter than it’s been all day.” Rysha had been doing her best to block out the interruptions.

  “That’s what concerns me. Two different groups of idiots tried to mug me this morning when I was on my way down to the harbor. To say this city is dangerous is an understatement.”

  Kaika had neglected to mention that earlier.

  “Were they random mugging attempts, or did they target you for a specific reason?” Rysha looked Kaika up and down.

  They were both clad in their gray uniform trousers but not the jackets or caps that would have left no doubt that they were in the Iskandian army. Kaika wore a creamy button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up, a tattoo of the first grenade ever invented inked in black on one of her ropy forearms. Even if she hadn’t been carrying the sword and her pistol, she wouldn’t have looked like an easy mark, not with her six feet of height and athletic build.

  Rysha was close to six feet tall, too, and strong and agile if not quite as lean, but her spectacles always seemed to make people think she was a librarian rather than a warrior. She could easily imagine muggers targeting her.

  “I assumed they wanted the sword.” Kaika tapped Eryndral’s scabbard. The blade only glowed green when a magical item or someone with dragon blood was nearby, but the scabbard still looked old and valuable, with elaborate runes running down the sides. “But it’s also possible someone thinks we have something worth money in our room. Numerous street toughs were watching from the shadows as we unloaded the wagon last night.”

  Rysha glanced again at the stasis chambers. They’d done their best to keep them covered, and she doubted anyone could have guessed what they were, but someone could have assumed they were valuable. Twice that morning after Trip had left, someone outside had attempted to open their locked door.

  The doorknob rattled, and Rysha jumped.

  “Sword,” Kaika said, pointing to where Dorfindral leaned against the wall in its scabbard.

  Rysha grabbed it and belted it on. She pulled the blade out a couple of inches to see if it was glowing. It was, but she remembered that it had been glowing a little ever since they had recovered the stasis chambers. Every time Rysha picked it up after it had been set aside for a while, it sent an urge through her to heft the sword overhead and smash it into the magical containers.

  As that urge came over her now, she started to whisper the new “stand down” command term that she’d chosen and that Trip had programmed into the sword. But she hesitated before finishing it. She might need the sword alert to guide her movements if someone with magical means attacked them.

  “Stand back.” Kaika stepped away from the window, facing it and the door, and drawing her own sword.

  Eryndral also glowed green, and Kaika’s jaw clenched as she glanced back at the stasis chambers. But she narrowed her eyes in determination and faced the door.

  Something slammed against it. The lock snapped off, and the door flung inward.

  Kaika tossed a compact cylindrical object Rysha hadn’t noticed her pull out. An Iskandian military smoke grenade. Something else was tossed into their room at the same time, an oval object that almost knocked into the cylindrical one.

  Rysha had no idea what the other object was, but she scurried back, worried it was something deadlier than a smoke grenade.

  Kaika had the opposite reaction. She sprang forward and smacked the oval projectile with the flat of her blade before it struck the floor. It flew back out through the doorway, Kaika’s accuracy impressive.

  Several alarmed shouts sounded in the alley, coming from at least four different voices.

  An explosion boomed scant feet from their doorway. Light flashed, and shrapnel—or were those pieces of the wall?—hurtled into the room as smoke flooded the air.

  Rysha lifted an arm to shield her face as shards pelted her body and clanged off the stasis chambers.

  Not showing a similar self-preservation instinct, Kaika leaped through the doorway, her sword
cutting for a target before she landed fully in the alley. A thud sounded, followed by a yell of pain. Not hers.

  The smoke wrapped around Kaika as she lunged toward someone else, and Rysha lost sight of her.

  Realizing Kaika might need help, Rysha ran toward the doorway. Her instincts should have been to attack right away rather than to defend. But Rysha halted before crossing the threshold. The stasis chambers. If she left the room, someone might sneak in and get them—or damage them.

  Hoping Kaika wouldn’t believe her cowardly for staying inside, Rysha crouched next to the doorway, Dorfindral ready to strike at intruders. The smoke stung her eyes and her throat, and she had to fight the urge to cough. She didn’t want their enemies to know she was there.

  Clangs and shouts came from the alley. Something—or someone—flew into the bars of the window, and the shutters rattled.

  Rysha bit her lip as the battle raged outside and seconds passed with her doing nothing. Should she peek out and see if she could help? The smoke hadn’t yet dissipated, and she doubted she would see anything.

  She was on the verge of leaning out when a scuffling sounded in front of the doorway. Rysha crouched lower, ready to spring.

  But the intruder didn’t come inside. A gun fired, and bullets slammed into the back wall.

  Cursing, Rysha glanced toward the stasis chambers. She had to do something—if they were hit, they might be destroyed. But she couldn’t fling herself into fire. Bullets kept streaking through the doorway.

  From up high, she realized as most of the bullets slammed into the wall at head height. And they were coming straight in, not from an angle. The gunman had to be right in front of the doorway.