The king’s smile broadened. “Why are you looking to him, Sydney? Might it be, perhaps, that you wonder which lie to spin for me even now?” He cocked an eyebrow. “Or perhaps you wonder to which of us does Rupert’s true loyalty align?”
Sydney looked to him for any kind of sign. Rupert . . .
The only thing she saw in him then was a stony-face, devoid of any sentiment for her predicament.
The king called her attention. “Sydney . . . answer me.”
Sydney took a deep breath of Salt, exhaling through her gills before speaking. Rupert was worried about me, she said. And he was curious about Jun too. The rumors that . . . She glanced at her shark tail. He wanted to know if the rumors might be true.
The king tsked. “And you lied to him . . .”
Sydney looked beyond the king, her cheeks flushing as she stared into Rupert’s eyes. I did, she admitted. Only because I didn’t know what to do, or say. I was just happy to see my friend.
Rupert diverted his attention when Sydney’s voice broke, but he gave her no verbal reply.
The king sighed. “Yes, I’m sure you were quite eager to see Rupert there to stand between you and the Orcs. Say rather, to stop them from bringing you to face the shame and lies as you and your mother have furthered.” He waltzed around the tank. “And yet the Blackfin tells me he was on hand to hear you make a request of Rupert before the end of your conversation. Tell me true, Sydney, what favor did you ask of your good friend in that final moment, earlier today?”
He knows. Sydney shuddered at the implying tone from the king. But how much?
Rupert stared back at her with emptiness in his eyes.
I asked him to check on Roselani, the seahorse you gave me . . ., Sydney answered the king, opting for a half-truth to shield the hidden message within. I wanted him to tell Roselani how much I missed her . . . and how I wished that I could see her again.
The king turned to look on Rupert too. “Well? Was that the way of it? Is Sydney telling us the truth?”
“In part, aye,” said Rupert flatly, his gaze never breaking from Sydney’s. Almost as if he needed to see the hurt in her eyes as he betrayed her secret. “What she is not saying, Your Grace, is that Sydney also asked me to find a friend of hers and pass along a message to him. I think she used the seahorse as a ploy of her intended message for the Blackfin to hear. What she really meant was for me to understand the truer message to pass onto her secret friend.”
Sydney’s eyes narrowed. What are you doing, Rupert? Why are you telling him?
The king chuckled at the obvious disjoint between them. “A friend, you say?” Darius asked Rupert. “And did she give you his name, Master Bowrider?”
“She did, Your Grace,” said Rupert, his face darkening. “The brother of her former guardian. His name is Quill.”
Sydney sank inside her tank. Why are you doing this, Rupert?
Darius was coming back round the tank to confront Rupert too. “And did you find him?” He asked. “Have you discovered where Quill and his motley gang of sycophants and thieves are hiding?”
“Not yet, Your Grace,” said Rupert. “But I will do. My soldiers scour the city for him and his allies even as we speak.”
Sydney found some hope there. You won’t find him. She thought. If Quill survived the attack on Catcher’s Corner, he won’t be so foolish as to fall for any tricks with a Merrow lordling.
“How, then?” The king asked Rupert. “What makes you so certain that you can find him?”
“Because I won’t go searching for him,” said Rupert, his lip curling the longer he looked on Sydney. “If the rumors concerning Quill and his character are true, Your Grace, then the people protect him. They hide him in plain sight, just as they did for his sister and Sydney too.”
Aye, they do, Sydney thought to herself. And you’ll never find him. The only reason the Blackfin found us before was because of my stupid mistake.
The king scratched at his cheeks. “How then do you hope to draw him out?” he asked of Rupert.
“By passing the message along through another of Sydney’s friends,” said Rupert. “The people may protect Quill, but I doubt many will share the same affection for a Silkie runner with a generous royal bounty placed upon her head.”
Fear and doubt clutched at Sydney’s heart, then, the icy touch of both squeezing in equal measure.
“Silkie?” the king asked.
“Aye, Your Grace,” said Rupert to the king, even as his glare lingered on Sydney in her tank. “I’ll seek out the queen’s loyal subject and Sydney’s former handmaiden . . . a Silkie who wears a Southern Elephant Seal coat to match her brutish size. Her name is Ellie.”
Sydney fought off the welling in her eyes. No. Not Ellie too . . .
The king scratched his head. “What makes you believe this Silkie will have ties to Quill, or that she will know where to find him?”
“I don’t know for certain,” said Rupert. “But the queen gave the Silkie her freedom and ensured that she was given a high place at Sydney’s side. I imagine the queen positioned this Silkie brute as a spy, more than like. One well placed to move about the castle of her own free will, Your Grace, and all to do your wife’s bidding. I might add that Ellie also miraculously disappeared less than a few hours before you ordered the queen taken into custody. And, the next morning, the queen had arranged for another loyalist of hers to kidnap Sydney inside the stables before secreting her away.” Rupert shook his head. “There is too much coincidence there for my liking, Your Grace. If I cannot locate the savage, Quill, then I will at least find the Silkie spy to ferret him out for us. That, or else to confess what she knows of other allies close to the queen who may know where the prince has been taken and hidden away.”
Sydney shivered in the tank. We were never friends, were we, Rupert? She wondered, the realization striking her all the more for the coldness and easy manner of his speech. You played me for a fool just as everyone else has down here, didn’t you?
Rupert never looked away from the betrayal in Sydney’s eyes.
The king sighed, then nodded at Rupert’s claim. “Do it, then,” he said in plain view of Sydney, his sneer a reminder of his promise to make her feel his own hurt. “Do whatever you must to fetch truth from this Silkie handmaiden about the prince’s whereabouts. Find me this Ellie, and any others who might know of Quill’s location too.”
“And the message to pass along, Your Grace?” Rupert asked. “What would you have them say to this Quill character to lure him out of hiding?”
The king smiled in such a way that made Sydney cringe all the more. “Have those fools tell Quill that he may have stolen my love and lady wife away from me . . .” the king leered at Sydney. “But I have their daughter now.” Darius continued, even as Sydney reeled at the king’s admission. “And if Quill wants to see his bastard daughter live, let my old nemesis know that I am more than willing to trade his life for hers if he will dare to come and face me.”
* * *
Part IV
The Merrow Lords
21
SYDNEY
Quill . . . Sydney clung to his name as a ray of hope among the darkness and the glass, cell-like quarters confining her. She thought of the lessons and conversations between them in their short time together, back when she had only known Quill as Yvla’s brother and someone with tender affections for her mother.
The last she had seen of Quill had been when he saved her life during the Orc attack on Catcher’s Corner. Sydney had watched him stand against a handful of the Blackfin’s Orcs. Her last image of Quill had been to see him alone and wounded, fighting on despite the desperate situation, all so that she and Yvla might garner a few more precious moments to escape. To Sydney’s mind, Yvla’s capture and death thereafter had been proof enough that no one could survive such odds as Quill had faced.
Sydney’s heart urged her to believe otherwise.
Recalling Quill’s face and expression, she looked through the glass bott
om of her watery prison. The oubliette darkness lingered far below, taunting her with the notion she might be cast back into its depths at any moment by the Orcs who kept watch over her. For all the darkness beneath, Sydney held to the better memory of when Quill had come to her in a dream alongside Yvla, their twin voices offering some little advice and ray of hope.
Be brave, Sydney . . . Yvla had said.
Sydney remembered Quill’s voice too, her eyes stinging in acceptance of the truth that he had been her father all along, guiding her as Nattie would have done. His voice firm, his warnings consistent, each and every word preparing her, teaching her to open her eyes and see the world for good and ill. To face any number of harsh realities that the world would throw before her and to rise against them all the same.
Aye, Sydney, she clung to the memory of his voice and the message from the dream she’d had of Quill and his sister whilst trapped in the oubliette. And let you see light and no boundaries when others know only walls and darkness.
But how? She wished that she could ask him now. How am I see light or goodness in any of this?
She peered down into the darkness of the oubliette, praying the ghosts she had met with below might again come to her and offer some new answer.
The darkness was all consuming below. If any ghosts still resided there, none spoke to Sydney.
In her heart, Sydney guessed they never would again.
Fighting back her tears, she glimpsed movement beyond her tank cell. Sydney looked up in time to see the Orcs standing to attention as their commander, Solomon, led in. A moment later, he was barking orders for them to haul Sydney out of the tank and prepare her for another day of trials.
Sydney relented to the Orcs coming for her, knowing defiance for a lost cause when surrounded by so many larger and stronger than she. What am I supposed to do? Sydney wondered as the Orcs used a rope pulley system to maneuver her tank over and away from the oubliette darkness. How am I supposed to fight them?
Rather than wait for a ghost to speak, Sydney instead drew upon her memories of Quill, imagining his voice and lessons instead, reflecting back on the dream she’d had of he and Yvla speaking to her in the oubliette. You fight them by living. His phantom had said. And by learning to see. Sydney recalled him speaking softly. Seeing what could be, for good and for ill, lest you and those you love come to suffer for willful blindness.
But I am suffering now. Sydney argued with the memory of him as the Orcs drew near. And will suffer more soon enough, just like Mom and all my friends.
The Orcs leveraged the bottom of her tank to dump Sydney and the cell’s contents. The water cascaded out and took Sydney with it, flinging her into the waiting arms of her captors.
Solomon stood at the forefront of them, taking her roughly by the arm and pulling her up to stand. “Will you walk, girl, or must we carry you again?”
Sydney shouldered free of the soldiers, rising of her own accord.
Solomon gave a curt nod, then waved all to follow as he led out of the dungeon.
Sydney traipsed behind him, surrounded by the Orc pod on her journey through the maze of dungeon tunnels beneath the Nautilus. In monotonous routine, they carried on to another dungeon cell where the Silkie handmaidens again awaited to give Sydney her frigid bath and attend to her thereafter. Sydney endured the cold and harsh scrubbing they gave, telling herself that such momentary pain was nothing in compare to that which she knew her friends and family suffered.
Sydney forced herself to think of those same loved ones who had defied their captors despite their circumstance too. She would go to her grave remembering Yvla’s final stand. There was Owens too, inviting death for he and his father, all rather than give a singular lie that the Blackfin demanded. Much as Sydney had never imagined her former vice principal as being friendly, she drew strength from Ms. Morgan’s final proclamation too.
Long live the queen. Sydney thought then, gritting her teeth at the claw-like taunts of every brushstroke the Silkie handmaidens made to redden her skin. She made Ms. Morgan’s last words a constant in her mind as the handmaidens attended and finished their work of dressing and readying her for the continued act that she was the king’s favored daughter.
Long live the queen. Sydney repeated the defiant message on endless loop as Solomon and his Orcs led her through the maze of dungeon tunnels and then into the main arena of the Nautilus.
The king was waiting for her at the end of the tunnel, a violet curtain with the royal seal of New Pearlaya all that separated Darius and those with him from the clamoring crowd beyond. Sydney recognized the spite in Darius even from afar.
The two others waiting behind him held no such malice.
Rupert Bowrider frowned at Sydney’s approach, but he said nothing as Solomon and the other Orcs brought her forth.
Sydney did not bother to acknowledge her former friend and riding trainer either, her gaze drawn to the shackled and waifish prisoner that Rupert stood guard over. Mom. Sydney started forward and was then held back by the immediate pinch of Solomon’s tightening grip around her bicep. “Mom!” Sydney cried out when she could go no further.
“It’s all right, Sydney,” said Nattie. “You’re going to be all right.”
Sydney knew the truer answer when Solomon positioned her twenty feet from her mother’s arms.
The king gave a lazy wave in Sydney’s direction. “There she stands, my queen,” Darius spat the last. “Your daughter is alive and unharmed, as I promised you that she would be.”
Nattie’s face darkened. “Yes . . . yes, thank you for that.”
Thanking him? Sydney thought, repulsed by her mother’s words. Mom, what are you doing?
Darius nodded at Nattie’s acknowledgement. “Now, wife, for the final time, I beg you to give me the same peace of mind and end this madness . . . where is our son?” He quietly demanded. “Where is Jun?”
Nattie sagged. “Darius, I told you true already - I do not know where our son is. The last I saw of Jun was in the keeping of others I trust before I left our home upon the shore.”
All to come looking for me, Sydney sagged, her conscience noting the omission her mother made.
The king frowned at the queen’s answers. “And yet our son is not ashore,” he said to Nattie. “He is not in the home you made there either. Indeed, with credit to the Blackfin and his Violovar, our son is not at your self-proclaimed haven either. All of those other traitors to the crown you claim to have trusted at your precious zoo have all been delivered here.”
Not all of them, Sydney knew, remembering several notable absences from among those imprisoned during the trials. There was the elderly Wilda, the first Merrow outside of Sydney’s mother to reveal herself. She remembered her mother’s friend and fellow dolphin trainer, Barb, also. As Sydney reflected on all the faces that she had seen inside the Merrow cages, she breathed a momentary sigh of relief that she had seen neither of them among the others. They must have Jun with them, she thought. But where are they now? She wondered. If everyone else was brought here, what happened to Wilda, Barb, and Jun?
Sydney looked on her mother, then, watching the queen shake her head in answer of the king.
“If our son was not at our home, Darius,” said Nattie Gao, “If he was not at the zoo either, then I do not know where Jun is now. All as I have told you and the Blackfin over and again.”
Darius frowned. “Perhaps you did speak true in that regard, wife. But, while you may not know where Prince Jun is, let you search your mind further now and answer me true - where might Jun be going? Aye, where might these trusted and traitorous friends of yours be taking our sweet prince?”
“Far from here, I hope,” said Nattie, her chains clinking as she stood taller. “I would sooner have a stranger take both of my children to the moon if it kept them from you and all others like you.”
“Your children, aye, perhaps.” Darius stepped closer to her. “But one of them, at least, is not mine.” He glanced at Sydney before looking to the q
ueen again. “Or will you maintain your denial of that lie also?”
“No,” said Nattie. “No, I have confessed to Sydney’s origins already.”
“In private, aye,” said the king. “But, will you confess to your treasonous guilt and the truth of Sydney’s father before the people? For I think it one thing to suffer the consequences for your own selfish actions, my queen. Quite another to watch a loved one suffer in your stead. So . . . which will it be? Confess to me now where my son is,” Darius sneered as he glanced in Sydney’s direction once more, “or else you force me to reveal the truth before the masses. Aye, to cast your daughter in front of all those loyal to the crown. All who will soon come to recognize her for the savage bastard that she is and see proof of your sin made flesh and bone.”
Sydney’s brow furrowed when Rupert moved away to pull back the violet curtain shielding them from the view of the people beyond. Her body warmed when catching sight of her friends and her mother’s followers beyond – all fettered and locked inside their cages upon the pearl-like barge.
Sydney turned numb, however, when noticing a newer construction upon the stage. Built as the trial centerpiece, there stood a freestanding tank, filled to the brim with crystal-clear Salt water. Though it held no prisoner now, Sydney estimated the tank as being large and deep enough to house a single victim. Each of the walls were crafted of glass to provide all in the Nautilus stands a perfect view of whatever poor soul were cast inside the tank.
Sydney understood the king’s threat in full, then. Both she and Nattie’s faces paled in tandem as they looked at one another with horror in their shared gaze.
The queen reached for the king’s arm. “Darius, please. Do not do this! My actions were mine alone, not Sydney’s!”
“True enough, my queen,” he said. “And yet she will suffer for your crimes all the same if you will not give me what I require. Now, where . . . is . . . Jun?”
Salt Storm: The Salted Series: Episodes #31-35 Page 31