“I don’t know.” Nattie wept. “I swear to you.”
“You swear?” Darius scoffed. “And what value do you believe your oaths still hold with me? Marriage? Loyalty? Love?” He spat at her feet. “You have broken every one of your vows to me. No, Nattie, such promises from you mean nothing to me now. Soon enough, they will hold little weight with the people either.”
Sydney cringed when Darius strode over to take charge of her from Solomon. Grabbing her by the arm, the king wheeled Sydney around to exit the tunnel’s end alongside him.
“Darius!” Nattie called to him. “Darius, please, don’t do this! Do not cast my daughter into the tank!”
The king stopped beyond the tunnel threshold. “Me?” he said, glancing back. “No . . . no, it will not be me to cast her there, my queen. Sydney’s fate depends on you, doesn’t it?”
My fate? Sydney froze, her eyes frantic in search of her mother’s face.
“Aye,” the king went on, all his hate spent on the queen. “Sydney’s guilt or innocence will be left to your decisions, Nattie. Let you think of your daughter in every answer you give today, lest she suffer the consequences for still more of your lies and actions.”
Sydney stared at her mother with tears in her eyes. Don’t let him do this to you, Mom, she thought. Don’t let him use me against you.
The queen’s jaw tightened as she looked on the king. “How, then?” Nattie asked. “How would you have me save her from the tank?”
Darius shrugged. “You need only speak true, my queen,” he said. “Your silence was not unnoticed during the trials yesterday . . . and the people did not come here to see their queen stand in quiet defiance of her crimes. Guilt or innocence, it is your story they wish to hear, Nattie. Let you sing it to the people of New Pearlaya today, my queen, lest the Blackfin and I tire of this game you play and decide to end it.”
The king’s grip instantly tightened on Sydney’s hand then, yanking her away though Nattie continued shouting for him to stop. Darius would not, however, his hold on Sydney unrelenting as he stepped free of the tunnel with her at his side. The moment they were visible, Darius raised his hand and Sydney’s too in triumphant show of their shared arrival.
The crowd roared approval and applause as Darius led on, waving to the crowd all the while.
For every step he dragged her onward, Sydney could not take her eyes off the tank upon the barge. Her pulse raced at the threat of being thrown inside in view of all in attendance, the change into her Nomad form being brought about by drowning as the Blackfin had done to her in the oubliette.
The king deviated from his path nearby the tank, however, taking Sydney into the royal tent instead. Guiding her to sit beside him, Darius did not release Sydney until she did as he bid her do. Then, with a final wave to the applauding crowd, the king took his seat. “Bring out the queen!” He clapped the moment all of the spectators turned silent.
The single command stirred the crowd anew, their applause turning to boos and hate-speech as the queen was led out by Rupert, Solomon, and a host of Painted Guard.
The hairs on the back of Sydney’s neck rose when noticing one of them still missing from the proceedings. Where is the Blackfin? She wondered, watching her mother continue onward with her escort. Sydney could not remember having seen him that morning, or during the guard change in the night either. That the Blackfin was missing when he had presided over her mother’s trial the previous day set Sydney’s mind to further questions of the Orc leader’s whereabouts.
Reaching the central cage, Solomon left the queen in the care of Rupert as he came forth to unlock the cage door. Rupert gently guided the queen to step inside, then left the Orcs to lock her away.
Sydney watched him leave the cage, Rupert taking up a central post among the prisoner cells as if he meant to preside over the queen’s trial in lieu of the Blackfin’s absence. But why, Rupert? Sydney wondered, watching him stand to attention, his steely eyes holding none of the warmth she had often seen in them when they rode their seahorses together.
Sydney squirmed in her chair when the Orcs finished with her mother, leaving the queen little room to maneuver about her cage. Off Rupert’s nod, Solomon ventured to the neighboring prisoners next, freeing the door of a larger pen that housed the Orcinian hostages.
The Blackfin’s burly, second-in-command went in without accompaniment, already working his keys to release another prisoner. A moment later, Solomon led the former pod mother out of the shared cage.
Sydney’s brow furrowed. Makeda? She thought. I thought this was a trial about Mom . . .
Makeda kept her head held high as Solomon escorted her to the main platform, standing her at the center of all, then binding her to a pair of pillars located there.
Sydney’s gaze tracked with Rupert as he rounded on the former leader of the Painted Guard. “Makeda,” he cried. “Disgraced pod mother, formerly of the Painted Guard—”
“Not formerly,” Makeda interrupted.
“What?” Rupert asked.
“Not formerly,” Makeda reiterated. “Name me disgraced. Remove my title. Do, or say, as you will. I will never renounce my allegiance to the true Painted Guard.” She glared at Rupert. “‘An Orc without her pod is nothing.’”
“Be that as it may,” Rupert continued. “You are no longer in command of any Orc, Makeda. Why is that?”
“Let you ask my traitorous brother,” she said. “It was his orders that led his Violovar spies to betray our people and land me in chains.”
“Spies?” Rupert scoffed to quiet the murmur among the crowds. “No, Makeda. I have it on good authority that the Blackfin was not even in the city at such time as you were taken into custody. It was your own soldiers who turned on you for what they deemed to be a lack of leadership.”
“They were never true soldiers of mine, then,” said Makeda. “And where is my brother anyway? Or is your claim of ‘good authority’ what we call Violovar scum now?”
Rupert’s face darkened. “The Blackfin is not—”
“Where is my brother?” she demanded of him. “Where is the turn-fin who stole my father’s armor and abandons his duty, his city, aye, and all its people too, whenever it suits him?”
Rupert shrugged. “The Blackfin’s absence is noted and expected. He was pardoned from today’s trial by the king himself for a mission of royal importance. Still . . . the Blackfin’s allegiance and his honor is not in question.”
“No more than mine should be,” she fired back. “Tell me of the crime for which I am accused, Bowrider, or set me free.”
“I would have thought it obvious,” said Rupert. “You are here as both witness to the queen’s guilt or innocence. You also stand accused for the same crimes of high treason.”
Makeda laughed. “Treason? And when does my brother pretend that I betrayed my vows to the king and people of New Pearlaya?”
“Arguably the moment you fled your rightful post here in the capital,” said Rupert. “Abandoning your king’s safety to lesser leadership that you might instead—”
“That I might what?” Makeda cut in. “Swim out at the king’s order to find and rescue both the queen and the princess?”
“More like to rescue your bastard son, rather,” said Rupert.
Sydney’s brow wrinkled at the accusation. She was not alone in her surprise.
Makeda’s head cocked to the side as whispers were taken up among the crowd. “I don’t have a son,” she proclaimed loud enough to quiet some of the spectator murmurs.
Rupert shrugged. “And yet there are many among your own Painted Guard to claim you do. Tell me, Makeda, who is the hunted traitor and former Painted Guard recruit, Garrett Weaver?”
Along with the thousands in the stands, Sydney leaned forward in her chair. What is Rupert talking about? She glanced at the king, as if his face might reveal the answer to her question. What does Garrett have to do with any of this?
Darius seemed not to notice Sydney’s interest in him. All the king
’s focus remained on the trials playing out before him. Turning back, Sydney found Makeda glaring at her inquisitor.
“Garrett Weaver,” said Makeda, “was once a recruit, hoping to join the Painted Guard.”
“Was?” said Rupert. “But no longer?”
“No.”
“Why not?” Rupert asked. “Was he not fit enough to join your illustrious ranks?”
“He was,” said Makeda. “Or would have been. But, as I recall, the boy opted to consign himself with banishment instead. Of his own free will, he blew the horn of shame and were banished for it.”
Even from afar, Sydney could see Owens shaking his head inside the Orcinian prisoner cages, his mouth gagged to keep him from speaking out of turn during the trials again. Rupert is lying . . . Sydney understood from Owens’s reaction. But why? Where is Rupert going with this?
At the trial’s center stage, Rupert scratched his cheek and continued his questioning of Makeda. “Do you often find new recruits willing to consign themselves with banishment?”
“Many.” Makeda bristled with a wary look toward the Orc soldiers standing guard around the platform. “We in the Painted Guard are made of a hardier grit. Yet to become a soldier of the Painted Guard is of the highest orders to which many even among our own kind cannot meet the standard.”
The crowd booed at that.
Unfazed, Makeda cast her scorn upon Rupert and all in the watching crowd. “Judge us all you will for our ancient ways, but your opinions come with the blessing of our protection to afford you such judgements. This city and the lot of you would not have survived our enemies this long, were it not for the constant watch and safeguarding of the Painted Guard. You live and breathe under the umbrella of strength that our united pods provide to this city and its citizens, great and small.”
“None here would argue against you there,” said Rupert. “However, I find your claims of this traitor and former recruit, Garret Weaver, most curious indeed.” He continued in such a way that belied he believed the matter curious at all. “If Recruit Weaver were strong enough to meet your high and ancient standards, Makeda, why then would he wish to opt out of further training and be banished for it? Why not take his place of illustrious honor among the pod?”
“Let you ask Garrett Weaver that question, not me,” said Makeda.
“I would,” said Rupert. “But, unfortunately, we’ve been unable to locate him.”
Sydney sagged in her chair. Garrett is gone? She wondered. Like, really gone? She looked to Owens again in his cage for confirmation of her question. When her former classmate hung his head, she knew that it was true. But why? She fought against the welling in her eyes. Why would he leave us behind, Owens? Where would Garrett even go? She wondered, remembering their scattered talks on the swim to New Pearlaya after the attack on Crayfish Cavern and all that Garrett had encountered there at the hands of Selkie slavers. How different he had seemed. No longer the carefree, jokester she had known ashore, but a moodier and lonely shade of himself. Sydney rubbed her arms to warm them at the thought of Garrett swimming away from the city she had been so eager to see. He’d be alone all over again . . .
At the trial’s center, Rupert was rounding on Makeda. “We would, of course, love to speak more with this Recruit Weaver, and to determine the truth or no of this situation. Any idea where he might be now, pod mother?”
“No . . .”
“You will not hazard a simple guess?” Rupert asked. “No idea at all?”
“No.” Makeda growled. “I watched Recruit Weaver blow the horn, and two others in his pod after him. Then, a traitorous instructor and my brother’s spy, Sergeant Luther, led all three former recruits out with a pair of other Violovar scum in his charge. I’ve not seen any of them since.”
“Indeed,” said Rupert. “That is because Sergeant Luther and all those who ventured forth with him are dead. All of them murdered in a most gruesome fashion outside the gates of this city.”
Sydney gasped with the crowd, her chest tightening for every moment that Rupert allowed the whispers and outcries to continue. Garrett is dead? She choked, tears warming her cheeks as they fell. Th-they killed him?
Rupert raised his hand to quiet the crowd. “All dead . . . all murdered and accounted for,” he said quietly as he could for the others to still hear him speak. “All but Garrett Weaver.”
He’s alive! Sydney wept at the admission.
Her momentary joy was stolen when noticing Owens in his cage. Where life had returned to her at the announcement, all the fight in her other high school friend was vanquished. Where Sydney had been elated by the news of Garrett’s survival, she recognized those upon Owens’s cheeks for the type she had cried not moments ago. Who did you lose, Owens? She wondered then, her own grief giving rise to the realization why a moment a later, her thoughts turning to Yvla once more. Which other friend of yours did the Orcs take away from you?
Again, Sydney wished that she could reach out and speak to her former classmate. The gap lingered between them, Sydney knowing she could not provide Owens any sort of comfort as Rupert continued his questioning of Makeda.
“Aye, all our brave Orcinians and their shamed recruits accounted for. All, with the exception of Garrett Weaver,” Rupert was saying to the former pod mother and the crowd. “And, when Sergeant Luther and his other soldiers did not return from their escort of the banished recruits, a second patrol of Painted Guard was dispatched to learn the reason why . . . but this second group did not return either.” Again, Rupert allowed the crowd their momentary reaction before he quieted them once more. “Finally, a third and larger party of the Painted Guard was sent out to learn what befell the others,” he grimaced. “And what they discovered was a grislier sight than any common murder, or act of warfare.”
Common murder? Is that such a thing? Sydney scoffed at the notion and the fact that she had ever considered Rupert a friend. The idea she had spent so much time with him drew ire in her now, watching him enjoy the sport of dragging out his questioning, his playing with the crowd’s reactions as if he had no inclination of what they might do or think with the answers he led Makeda to give him.
“What they found,” Rupert went on. “Was a sight to make even the strongest stomach wrench. Butchery, my people,” he turned once more to play to the crowd. “Two patrols of good Orcs, loyal and true to the crown, and all of them slain. Aye, all of them butchered first . . . and then their remains feasted upon, I shudder to say, by the very same savage Nomads that slew them.”
Sydney’s eyebrows raised. Feasted? She thought, her face paling as she looked to the king beside her and found him steely-eyed and grim as a new outcry came from the people of New Pearlaya. Does he mean eaten? Like cannibals?
Rupert attempted to quell the crowd once more, but it took him several attempts before he was able to proceed again. “All of those fine soldiers from your pod butchered and defiled by savages, Makeda,” he said. “And all but the former recruit Garrett Weaver accounted for? Why?”
“How should I know?” Makeda asked. “You have admitted already that I was in chains at that moment. Aye, and put there by the very souls you claim to mourn over now. Do not come to me seeking pity for the lives of traitors. Let you weep instead for the brave recruits who made their stand against the injustice they saw being served out and then proved willing enough to endure the consequences.” She motioned toward the Orc cage holding Owens, his father, and still more former Painted Guard as well. “Aye, and let you weep for that which these true soldiers suffer even now in defiance of true tyranny and continued lies.”
Again, Rupert allowed the crowd their momentary boos and curses before waving them to silence once more. “But I do mourn, Pod Mother,” he said, low enough to showcase a small sign of empathy, yet loud enough to beg the crowd to listen once more. “Who among us in this great city would not mourn the loss of any noble soldier? Aye, let alone so many taken from us and slain by our shared enemies? But, tell me true, Makeda, do you not think it
odd that a ranging group of Nomads were so close and timely as to be near the place of banishment?” Rupert posited. “Or that their numbers were enough to decimate not one, but two patrols of Painted Guard?”
“I think to be a Nomad is to be a ranger,” said Makeda. “Just as I think it odd that a foreigner with a family reputation for finning Nomads of all ages and genders now questions me on the habits of those his father has long named as our enemies.”
Sydney snorted at seeing Rupert silenced for the moment, even as a shadow crossed his face before he banished it away. She remembered Yvla claiming the same of Rupert and his family too. That Rupert had denied the accusation, citing it was his father who committed such acts and not him. Still, watching Rupert with Makeda now, doubt gnawed away at Sydney’s insides. Did you do it, Rupert? She wondered as the young, seahorse-lord raised his chin, seemingly readying himself for another verbal bout with Makeda. Did you kill innocent Nomads and take their fins?
Rupert took his time in answering Makeda’s claims. “It is true that Nomads are known for ranging in my home waters. Near all of them coming to attack our people too. In my experience and dealings with the savages, I have found their patterns difficult to time and understand, let alone to track. Which is yet another reason I found it so peculiar that a band of heathens knew the precise location and time to arrive that they might rescue this lowly, former Orc recruit you seemed to have been so fond of, pod mother.”
“Fond of?” Makeda frowned. “I treated Recruit Weaver no differently than any other.”
“No?” Rupert asked. “And yet I have it from a number of sources that you met with Recruit Weaver in private on several occasions. Why would you do such a thing if you did not favor him?”
“‘An Orc without her pod is nothing’,” said Makeda. “As pod mother, it’s my privilege and my duty to both encourage and discipline all who seek entry in joining my pod and serving all those who swim the five oceans. As for favoring Recruit Weaver in such instances of private meetings, I seem to remember disciplining him from the start. If you would have the truth of that,” she pointed to the Orcinian prisoner cages, “let you go and ask Recruit Owens of the time when I ordered he and Recruit Weaver to make the Coral Crawl with several others from their training pod.”
Salt Storm: The Salted Series: Episodes #31-35 Page 32