Ms. Morgan cackled again. “You speak as though it’s not known you’ve been banished all these years for treachery. Why then were you welcomed back with open arms by the same king who cast you out? Where does your truth lie there, boy?”
Sydney grinned at the terse reply, even as she feared it.
Malik placed his meaty hand on top of Ms. Morgan’s left shoulder. “Careful now, crone,” he said. “Let you mind your tongue before it lands you in more dangerous waters.”
“More dangerous?” she asked, barking a laugh in his face. “No . . . no, we both know how this ends today, boy.”
Malik sneered. “Stop calling me that.”
“I’ll call you as I like,” said Ms. Morgan. “Won’t matter soon for me anyway, will it? Ah, but you’ll remember me after I’m gone, won’t you, Blackfin? May I tell you a secret?” she asked, going on without receiving his permission, nodding toward the crowd. “Many of these here listening will remember me too. Aye, they’ll whisper on all that I’ve said today and happens here long after you and I are said and done, boy.”
Malik growled, already unsheathing his blade. “Aye, crone. I assure you they will remember well what comes next.”
Ms. Morgan snorted. “Best get on with it, then,” she said, cupping her hands and bringing them to her mouth like a megaphone to yell for all the crowd to hear. “Or don’t I get my confession first? This is a trial in search of truth and answers, no?”
Sydney scooted to the edge of her seat at the crowd’s applause and the cat-calls to allow Ms. Morgan speak. Sydney’s hopes lifted at the uneasy glance between Solomon and the Painted Guard, all of them looking to their leader for what to do, or how to act.
In the eyes of Malik Blackfin, there was only contempt. “Go on, then,” he said to Ms. Morgan. “Speak your truth.”
Ms. Morgan nodded. “Here it is, then, boy. Those zoos you speak of? The real zoos? Some are good. Some are bad. All depends on who is running the show, same as down here.” She raised a gnarled finger and pointed it at Sydney. “As for the princess and these others you’re on about, it’s true they ran away. Freed Brutus the Butcher too, or at least that’s the name some of our folk pinned on him during and after the Selkie Strife.” She shrugged. “But, let you ask the Selkies who survived and served alongside him. Ask them, and they’ll tell you such tales of Brutus the Brave what rose up against those meant to keep his kind in chains. Like all stories, boy, it all depends on who’s spinning the tale, don’t it? Aye, and what they hope to gain from the telling . . .”
“You’re spinning tales now,” said Malik. “And I grow weary of them.”
“That’s ‘cause I’m not yet at the end.”
“You’re very near it,” said Malik, raising his sword to rest against his shoulder, the glint of his glade shining in the surrounding torchlights. “Be done with it and quickly, lest you not finish your sad tale at all.”
Ms. Morgan huffed before going on. “You want to know why the princess left the zoo and ran away to the Salt? It’s no secret. It’s the same reason as all those who’ve ever left in the middle of the night when others wished to keep them tucked away and silent. And these two young ones here,” she pointed at Amelia, then Owens. “They followed their princess back to the Salt for the same reason as all us others did, long before, when choosing to follow her good mother ashore too.” Ms. Morgan’s voice shook with righteous thunder, a call that had tears brimming in Sydney’s eyes. “These children heard tale of a grievous wrong done to one of their friends! And these three here . . .” her finger shook as she wagged it for all to see, pointing at Sydney, Owens, and Amelia. “They defied the ones who love them most by stealing away with the hope that they set it right again! Aye, all to free an innocent friend from this harsh world we all know too well.”
Malik scoffed. “Perhaps the children should have put more thought into what their actions might cost them. They failed their friend . . . just as you are faltering in your poor attempts at twisting the truth of such matters now.”
Again, Ms. Morgan laughed in his face. “And you’re still failing to see the shades of gray, Blackfin. Then again, if you haven’t learned such things yet, boy, might be you never will.”
Malik snorted, then turned toward the king.
Sydney’s stomach dropped when Darius nodded. Before she could process what was happening, she glimpsed Solomon placing his hand upon Ms. Morgan’s left shoulder and then kicking the back of her leg to force her down.
Sydney stood up, then, the outcry of the crowd overwhelming.
Dropped to her knees, the elderly vice principal’s hands struck the ground before her.
In reply to the crowd, Malik Blackfin lowered his sword and rested its blade against the back of Ms. Morgan’s neck. “We have real truth to discern here today, hag . . . and I did warn you.”
“Aye, you did,” said Ms. Morgan. “Just as I warned you.”
“Scolded, rather,” said Malik. “Any last words before I send you to Fiddler’s Green?”
“Aye, boy. I have some final words left in me.” Ms. Morgan glanced up at her executioner with delight in her eyes. Then, before the killing blow fell, the vice principal of Tiber High School shouted her last with a purposed cry that Sydney knew would haunt her all the rest of her days. “Long . . . live . . . the queen!”
15
LENNY
Lenny Dolan stood outside the makeshift crematorium of Bouvetøya, numbed by more than the cavern’s Antarctic cold. So many dead. He thought to himself, glancing back at what remained of the crematorium’s shattered door, the jagged wooden pieces broken in by Jemmy T and Tom Weaver’s efforts to seek out further culprits of the Selkie massacre.
What they discovered within the mass-scale crematorium resembled much of what Lenny and the others had already seen outside – a collection of naked corpses, their bodies tinged blue and black from frostbite, their skin shrunk taut against their bones.
Of the living, the first that Lenny saw were a pair of starving walrus, their brownish skin clung tight against their ribs. Both were lashed together and crammed side-by-side in a ditch-like ring that had been carved out of the stone floor, now laced with ice and near filled with water. Like an old millhouse with a team of donkeys hitched to a wheel, left to walk in eternal cycle to grind wheat grains into flour, the walrus pairing swam in the only direction afforded them to turn their wheel of burden. The pulley that ran from their efforts acted as a crankshaft for a conveyor belt to creak and groan as it carried away the Selkie dead loaded upon it.
Lenny trembled as he watched the conveyor carry the frozen bodies up and away, all the way to the great urn at the crematorium’s center to feed the flames anew and keep them blazing.
There were also other slaves within – Selkie pairings in human form, tethered together in iron shackles. The chains between them both forced and handicapped the various slave pairings to act as a team in fetching corpses from the heaps and barrows to then place upon the conveyor belt.
A trio of Orc taskmasters kept their prisoners to the monotonous work. One had been in the midst of cracking his whip when Tom Weaver burst through the door with Jemmy T and Lenny close behind. Lenny could still hear the taskmaster’s gurgles as Tom Weaver strangled the Orc with his own whip.
Before reality settled in and Lenny had taken true stock of what he witnessed inside, Jemmy T had nocked one of his arrows. He set it loose to find its home in one of the other Orcs’ throats when the taskmaster dared to charge them.
The moment his fellows were dead, the lone remaining Orc cast his weapons aside and knelt to the floor with his arms raised in surrender.
Tom Weaver had the last of them slammed up against the wall in seconds. As his Orc prisoner squirmed, Tom looked to his nearest Selkie companion. “Jemmy?”
“Aye, brudda?”
“Search the place for any others,” said Tom. “Dolan, keep your eye on the door. Unless they’re one of us, make sure no one else comes in.”
Len
ny nodded, but did not stir from his position. His gaze held on the shivering Orc in Tom Weaver’s grip.
“Pl-Please,” the Orc cried. “Don’t kill me. I surrendered, sir!”
“And what about all these here, hmm?” Tom asked him, jerking his head toward the dead and the Selkie living who attended them. “What did you do to them when they surrendered, I wonder?”
The Orc shivered. “I-I don’t know. I wasn’t there. They never sent me near the killing fields. I-I couldn’t do what the commander asked of us. Please, I’m a coward, sir.”
“Coward, eh?” Jemmy T put in from above, moving quickly down the catwalk of the second story, his bowstring drawn taut. “No, mon. Him be playing at one. Finish him, Tom.”
“Don’t!” The Orc screamed. “Please! I’ll tell you anything! Just don’t kill me.”
“Give me answers, then,” Tom growled. “What is this wretched place? Who are you?”
“My name is Yusuf,” said the Orc. “And this is the end of the world, sir.” Yusuf swallowed hard, his eyes dancing in search for aid, locking on Lenny. “The end for Selkies, at least. That’s what Commander Pohl said.”
Tom Weaver gave him a shake to draw his attention back. “Your commander lied to you, soldier. Us Selkies you see here? We’ve been to that true end of the world and back.” He glanced over his shoulders at the piles of Selkie dead before resettling on his captive. “And for all my years in that frozen hell, I’ve never seen anything like this. Not women and children cast into the fires.”
“Please, sir, I’m no soldier,” Yusuf wept. “I didn’t ask to be here, sir.”
Tom lifted his chin toward the pile of bodies and the slaves who stood wide-eyed and unmoving at the intruders. “Think they did?” he asked the trembling Orc.
No. Lenny knew, steeling himself against Yusuf’s continued whimpering with the horrors that surrounded him and those that remained in his mind, the loss of his father chief of all. None of us did . . . but I don’t see no Orcs in them piles of bodies.
“Please, sir,” Yusuf pled with Tom, his voice shaking nearly as hard as his hands were. “Mercy, please. I-I didn’t want to be here. I never wanted to be no Painted Guard, nor Violovar seawolf neither. They gave me no choice, sir! None of them. It was serve or die!”
Tom grunted. “Looks to me like your folks gave these Selkies here the same choice.” He glanced at the starving Selkie slaves who had been left to tend the dead. Then, he looked to Yusuf again. “Let’s give your prisoners the choice of what to do with you, then.”
Lenny tensed as Tom hauled Yusuf toward the conveyor belt and cast the Orc taskmaster stumbling on the floor in front of them. Where Lenny imagined he would see the starving Selkie slaves relish the thought of revenge and take it out in full, instead his gaze was met by hollowed looks not unlike the corpses the slave pairings carried to the conveyor belt.
Tom approached the slave closest to him, one that Lenny swore was a woman based on the slave’s size and frame. As he looked on the slave further, Lenny knew it for a man long-starved and hunched by unending hunger and laborious work.
The slave cowered in the looming Selkie’s shadow.
“It’s all right,” said Tom to the withered slave. “We’re not here to hurt you. You’re free now. We’ve taken over the cavern. We’re all Selkies here, like you.”
The slave dared to look up, his brow furrowed in disbelief at the giant Selkie dressed in the Orcish armor of the Painted Guard.
“We’re Selkies,” Tom reassured the slave. “What’s your name, friend?”
The hairs on the back of Lenny’s neck raised when the slave still refused to speak.
The unease had taken hold of Tom too, the crimson-haired giant looking to the other crematorium slaves as well. When none of them spoke up, Tom kicked at Yusuf. “Why aren’t they talking?” He nudged Yusuf further. “Hey! What did you do to them?”
Yusuf put his face to the floor, his body wracked with his sobbing. “It wasn’t me . . .” He wept. “Please, sir. I-I couldn’t stop them. They beat me too when I tried.”
“What are you talking about?” Tom demanded. “What did you Orcs do to these people?”
“It were Commander Pohl, sir,” said Yusuf. “And his captains. They gave orders to cut out these slaves’ tongues, so they couldn’t tell the others what was being done to the rest.”
Lenny’s eyes widened at the admission, his gaze flitting from each slave to the next as they looked on the fallen taskmaster. His thoughts turned to his own experiences with taskmasters back in Crayfish Cavern; of Oscar Collins, Tieran and others there who routinely sought out the weakest of slaves for wicked sport. Lenny reached into his hidden Selkie pocket, then. His fingers closing on the hilts of his daggers, he started toward the weeping Orc.
Tom Weaver beat him to the punch, delivering Yusuf a swift kick in the ribs along with a string of curses. Before he could land another, Tom was halted by the Selkie mute that he had questioned for a name.
With a light touch upon the arm, the waifish Selkie slave extinguished the fight.
Lenny stopped too when the Selkie slave knelt beside Yusuf and lay across the Orc’s body, shielding the fallen taskmaster as best as he could manage with his withered frame.
What’s he doing? Lenny wondered. He and Tom exchanged a confused look as the Selkie slave remained atop the Orc, shielding his captor whilst Yusuf whimpered beneath.
“Don’t know what you’re trying to say here, buddy,” Tom Weaver said to the slave. “But I’m guessing you don’t mean for me to kick him again. That about right?”
The slave looked up, his gaunt expression plain enough in confirmation.
He trying to tell us this Orc is one of the good guys? Lenny wondered. His grip relented from the hilts of his blades when the slave stood up and tapped Yusuf on the back to draw his attention.
The Orc sat up too, then, his eyes red-stained and wary of Tom Weaver.
“At ease, soldier,” said Tom, his lip curling. “If I was gonna hit you again, I’d have done it by now. What’s this Selkie friend of yours doing by stopping me from getting after you again? Hmm? If I’m to take it as you and this slave here being friendly, that is.”
“No,” said Yusuf, unable to meet the eye of the slave who had saved him. “Not friendly. I-I don’t even know his name.”
“No?” asked Tom. “Then, why’s he laying across you like he done?”
“I don’t know,” said Yusuf. “M-Maybe because I . . . I tried to stop Commander Pohl and the others from doing what they did. Or that I slipped these Selkies some bread when I could manage . . .”
The slave looked to Tom and nodded in silent confirmation.
“So, he’s telling the truth, then?” Tom asked the slave to further nodded replies. The Selkie giant frowned as he refocused on Yusuf. “So, what exactly is going on down here, Orc? Other than the obvious slaughter, what’s all this about? Why are you killing all of these Selkies?”
“Not me,” said Yusuf. “Never me, sir. And I-I don’t know for certain why the others did. Just rumors that I’ve heard.”
“Like what?”
“Some say King Darius has gone mad . . . that the Blackfin sits at his right hand, whispering all manner of things in the king’s ears. There are rumors beyond counting that come out of the capital with every shipment sent down.”
“Every Selkie shipment, you mean,” Tom clarified. “People, Orc. They’re not things.”
Yusuf nodded.
“How often?” Lenny piped up. “How often does the train come down here delivering Selkies?”
Yusuf’s face reddened. “Every day . . .” he said quietly.
“And the train cars?” Lenny asked, his fists clenching once more. “How many Selkies on board?”
Yusuf did not answer at first. Not until the slave began to scoot away, opening a line for Tom Weaver to attack the Orc taskmaster again.
“How many?” Lenny repeated the question, his thoughts turning to each and every bundl
e of Selkie skins he had seen packed and stacked together on wooden pallets outside the crematorium.
“I don’t know,” Yusuf muttered under his breath. “Commander Pohl told us to stop trying to count them months ago. Said it was time better spent taking them all to the killing fields and clearing out room in the cages for all the other shipments to come. He said it were mercy to give the Selkies quick deaths, rather than have them starve or suffer from the cold.”
Lenny took a step back at the Orc’s admission. And we could’ve been some of them trapped and killed here, Pop. Lenny thought to himself, remembering when he and his father had been brought down from the capital with Jemmy T, all of them packed to the point of suffocation.
“Why’d they send us down to the ice mines in Røyrkval, then?” Lenny asked the cowering Orc. “Why send some of us to the City of Song if the whole point was to kill as many Selkies as ya could?”
Yusuf shrugged. “Your group was stronger than the rest, perhaps? I don’t know. All the ones who land here are marked for death. Truly, there is nothing else for them to do here but die.”
“But why?” Tom asked. “Why kill them? The women and the children?”
“I-I only know what I heard,” said Yusuf. “They’re just rumors.”
Tom grabbed Yusuf by his hair, forcing him to look on the strewn, Selkie corpses as if the Orc had been blind to his previous work. “They’re not rumors, you fool! These people are dead! Can’t you see that? Hmm? Now, tell us why! Spit it out, before I decide to take your tongue out too and cast you screaming into the fire!”
Yusuf cringed at that. “Some . . . some of the other soldiers said that the Merrow king . . . that King Darius is superstitious, sir. He believes in the old stories of the Ancients warring with the Sancul. They say it’s why he sent the Selkies to work the mines in Røyrkval in the first place.”
Lenny cocked an eyebrow. “Superstitious?”
“Aye.” Yusuf nodded. “They said he thought there was some kind of mystic treasure hidden in the lost city . . . some kind of power tucked away, deep inside the ice.”
Salt Storm: The Salted Series: Episodes #31-35 Page 23