“A tragic story, I grant you,” said Malik dryly. “And I do not doubt you mourned your fellows Orcs, sister.”
“But . . .” Makeda insisted, as if knowing her brother held some deeper intent.
Sydney thought that Malik proved the pod mother’s intuitions a moment later.
“But,” Malik smirked. “I think the likelier, truer story, sister, is that you were impregnated by a savage lover, and then you carried his bastard in your belly all the way back to the heart of our beloved city . . .”
Garrett . . . Sydney took Malik’s meaning to bear, along with all others in the crowd. The whispers were rampant now, even as Makeda voiced her disagreement, sticking with the defense of her shame at being a lone survivor.
Malik’s ever-widening grin signaled to Sydney that he recognized the tide of rumors and doubt, at least, had shifted toward him also. He turned toward the queen next. “My sister’s return from the hostiles was near enough to the time that you opted to swear your vows and go ashore also, was it not, my queen?”
Nattie gave him no answer.
“Most curious,” said Malik. “I believe you once said that your daughter, the princess, and Recruit Garrett Weaver were friends in your life ashore too, no? And that your daughter’s return to the Salt was to rescue him from Selkie slavers?”
“It was,” said Nattie quietly.
Malik shrugged. “And yet you then abandoned your only son. You left our sweet prince ashore to go out and search for your daughter instead. Tell us, my queen, why did you choose the safety of the Princess Sydney over safeguarding your son?”
“I did not abandon the prince,” Nattie argued. “I left him with others I trust to look after his protection.”
“And yet all those you claim to trust are here, yes?” Malik nodded toward those in the prisoner cells.
“Many are,” said Nattie. “Not all.”
“Who then to guard your son, my queen?” Malik asked. “My seawolves looked above and beneath the Salt for Prince Jun. We questioned all those we brought here too, yet none could say where the prince and his guardian might have gone. Care to tell us?”
“I don’t know where they might have gone,” said Nattie. “Only that if they left our home ashore, it was for a good reason.”
Malik smiled. “So, there were indeed guardians left behind with the prince, yes?”
Wilda, Sydney thought then, her chest tightening at the evident glee in the Blackfin’s voice, her gaze drawn to the covered litter his Orcs had placed before the queen. Oh, God . . . Sydney thought, her eyes already welling. Please, no. Please, God, not Wilda too.
Malik prodded further when the queen did not answer, her own gazed homed on the covered litter. “My queen,” he said. “Your people and your king are waiting . . . were there guardians to look after the prince?”
Again, Nattie would not answer.
Malik nodded at her continued silence, then wheeled toward the king’s pavilion.
Before Sydney understood what was happening, the soldiers behind her in the king’s pavilion approached her chair. What’s going on? She briefly wondered, looking up into the visors that shielded their identities. Her gaze flitted to the king next, finding Darius watched her also.
Sighing, the king motioned to the soldiers beside him and Sydney. “Take her, then.”
What?
The soldiers on either side of her clamped down on Sydney’s biceps, then, both lifting her free of the royal chair she had previously sat. “Wh-What are you doing?” she choked as the anonymous Orc soldiers carried her down the pavilion steps. “L-Let go of me!”
Her eyes widened when the Orcs would not. Sydney wrenched her neck around to look back at the king. Darius had not moved from his position, his gaze no longer focused on her, but looking out to the direction her captors carried her off toward.
No. Sydney thought, then, the whispers among the crowd catching as the Orcs carried her onto the main platform and delivered her to their leader at the center. Her knees turned weak when the Orcs forced her to stand in front of her mother and the first of the covered litters.
“Sydney,” the queen’s voice was frantic. “Sydney, look at me.”
The Blackfin prevented Sydney from doing so, stepping between her and the queen. “Princess Sydney,” he roared for all in attendance to hear, his white teeth and cruel smile a loathsome taunt to hang over her. “There can be no doubt amongst any here today that you are your mother’s favored child. Thankfully, it is not many a parent forced to choose between their children . . . yet our queen was put to the choice and made her decision.” Malik reached out and ran his fingers through Sydney’s hair before speaking again, a mocking laughter dancing in his eyes. “Would you care to enlighten us as to why to you are the queen’s favored one, child? Why would the queen choose to safeguard you over our sweet prince and holding to her sacred vows to never return beneath the waves?”
Sydney’s body quaked at the question, her knees knocking against one another in knowing she must respond or else be thrown into the tank and have the truth exposed. “I-I don’t know,” she muttered.
“No,” said Malik, playing to the crowd once more. “And why should our princess understand such things? Why would any child innocent to our world and the Salt’s cruelties have any inclination as to why the queen mother would favor her only daughter over the son and heir of a king?”
She didn’t favor me over Jun, Sydney willed herself to speak, but could not find her voice. Mom treated us both the same.
Again, Malik continued his playing for the crowd, luring them in with the slow rise and fall of his voice. “We know why, don’t we, my people? We who live within this greatest of Salt kingdoms are no strangers to the pervading rumors of a princess brought to our glorious city against her will. We remember that it was not so long ago that our shamed queen once came to this city as a blushing, Merrow princess herself. To believe most who would tell of her arrival, the Princess Natsuki did not come willingly either. A Merrow from the far, eastern waters, her marriage to our beloved king came with the hope that their uniting and their children to come would bind the two great Merrow nations as one for the whole of time. And yet . . .” Malik raised his hand in the direction of Darius. “When learning of our queen’s continued displeasure, our goodly king opted to show the queen both his mercy and his love.”
Mercy? Sydney blinked.
“Aye,” Malik went on, bellowing for all in the crowd to hear. “King Darius allowed his lady wife and love to abandon him and all his people. With a great war looming over us, he offered this ungrateful queen a chance to take their child and flee toward the ashore! To create a haven for all others too afraid to face the prospect of another long war to come. Some of those cowards have returned to stand before our judgement today.” He nodded toward Owens and his father, along with all the others from the zoo and Sydney’s town. “Others, however . . .” Malik looked down at the covered litter at his feet. “Others continued to try and escape the punishment for breaking their vows.”
At his nod, one of the Orc soldiers knelt beside the litter and removed the black covering.
Sydney’s eyes rounded as the covering was slowly pulled away, revealing a glass-walled rectangular tank - a similar, if smaller, water-filled version of the same, enclosed cell that Sydney had been held captive in.
As the covering pulled free of the litter’s base, the first thing that Sydney noticed was a cloud-like blur of red to stain the otherwise clear water. Then, she saw the stilled remains of a dolphin tail. Dead. Sydney knew in an instant when there was no movement at all from within. Whoever it is, they’re dead. She fought against the bile rising in her throat as the covering continued to pull away. Sydney lost her battle of control a moment when seeing the victim’s face.
Barb . . . Sydney collapsed in the grip of her captors as she retched upon the black armor of her captors. Even as she clenched her eyes shut, the face of her mother’s friend and former zoo employee swam to the forefront o
f Sydney’s mind. The Orcs had mercifully wrapped bits of cloth around the mortal wounds given to Barb, but they had not shut her eyes. Almost as if the Blackfin and his soldiers wished for the queen and Sydney to look at the milky stillness in Barb’s once brilliant blue eyes.
Malik cleared his throat. “I was going to ask if you recognized this Merrow, Princess,” he said to Sydney. “I’ll take your current state of response as a yes to my question.”
“N-No,” Sydney forced herself to open her eyes and speak, all the while knowing it was a lie. She refused to look at Barb’s body, however, trading her grief for anger as she glared on the Blackfin. “I-I don’t know her.”
That too Malik grinned at. “No?” he asked. “You don’t recognize this servant of the queen’s that also served at your beloved zoo for many a year? If not, then what caused such a reaction from you just now?”
“I don’t know her,” Sydney lied again. “I’m just not used to looking at dead bodies.”
Malik feigned a sad expression. “My sincerest apologies for the display, Princess,” he said, bowing in reverent show. “But we Orcs and lower born folk understand that we all must sometimes look upon the horrors of this world to better learn how to stop them from occurring again.”
No. Sydney thought. You did this on purpose. You killed Barb. She clenched a fist and planted her feet to stand on her own. We both know you did.
Malik chuckled at her rising toward him. “It would sadden me to think that my seawolves and I had made an error in identifying this traitor who attempted to flee the king’s justice. Still . . . you’re certain that you do not recognize this servant of your mother’s, then, Princess?”
“No,” Sydney insisted, loud enough for all in attendance to hear. “I don’t.”
“Pity,” Malik loomed over her, before turning his head toward the central tank and the other soldiers he had stationed there. “Perhaps you’ll recognize the one she was traveling with instead.”
Sydney froze at his mirthful tone. Time seemed to slow then, her body turned rigid, her gaze holding upon the tank as the only ability left to her. She was vaguely aware that her mother was shouting her name, Nattie begging Sydney to look away from the larger holding tank and look into the queen’s eyes instead.
Sydney could not bring herself to do so when the Orc soldiers ripped away the black covering of the other litter. Unlike with Barb, left to still and rot inside her tank with all her wounds covered, the Orcs had fixed cruel hooks into the tail fin of their other victim and tied off the opposite end of chains to a bar hung over the tank’s middle. As one, the Orcs dumped the body into the tank, the chain growing taut as the corpse splashed into the water, then swung free upside down like a prized trophy fish for all to witness. Though the corpse had been bled out, they left the wounds open and unbound in evident show of one who had not been taken easily.
A mixed uproar from the crowd surrounded Sydney on all sides, then. Most that she heard was shouting and hate-speech. Others were screaming at the horror swinging slowly back and forth in the tank like a pendulum . . . just like all the tails of Merrow enemies did in life.
As reality beckoned to Sydney, her senses returning to her in a blaze, she recognized her own voice for another among all those that were screaming. Sydney continued screaming too, long after she had been returned to her own cell, long after the trial had ended with a sentencing for the queen; she and all her treasonous followers to be executed on the following morning for crimes against the crown and Merrow people.
As the tank water swirled with bubbles around the body, Sydney had no doubts as to whose corpse it was swinging upside down by the end of his shark tail. Half of his face and head had been cleaved. The remaining half was marred with wounds, the corpses’ lone remaining swelled shut with black and purple bruises.
Though a part of her urged Sydney to hold some hope that the water and wounds blurred the corpse’s true identity, she could not withstand the tide of grief to come. All else she needed to see was the dead guardian, Barb, at her feet to realize who else the Blackfin and his Orcs had killed as evidence of the queen’s treason.
Jun . . . Sydney howled as strength and the will to live abandoned her, all while knowing it had been her choices to lead her brother and his guardian to their shared end.
22
LENNY
Lenny stood by as the line of recently freed Selkie slaves marched slowly forward to board the ice-covered Sailfish train. There were shouted orders from those helping to load the people in, while desperate others attempted to encourage their less eager companions to board also. Always the slow-moving line crept forward to pack the recently freed prisoners inside what few empty train cars remained.
So many . . . Lenny thought to himself. How are there still so many slaves here with all those Selkie skins we saw stacked up by the crematorium?
Lenny knelt to lift another bag of grain meal taken from the Orc soldier encampments. Heaving the bag atop his shoulder, Lenny bore the feed bag away to load for their journey to New Pearlaya. He hesitated when spotting a Selkie of similar size to him sprinting across the frozen field of ice and stone.
Lenny’s brow furrowed as Vasili nearly collapsed at the feet of Tom Weaver beside the train platform. What’s got him all bothered? Lenny wondered, quickening his pace toward his Selkie companions when Tom whistled for Brutus, Jemmy T, and several larger brutes to follow him. Something’s up. Lenny gathered when the other Selkies ventured away together and Vasili leaving with them. But what?
Dropping his bag of meal, Lenny angled across the cavern to reach the others as they approached the vacant slave cages. “What’s going on?” he asked, falling in beside them.
Tom Weaver frowned. “Vasili says we got a problem.”
“What is it?”
“More like who,” said Tom, his face reddening from the long strides he took and the pace he led with. “And I’ll give you one guess as to who it is.”
Lenny’s jaw clenched at Tom’s insinuating tone. Henry . . . he guessed. But what’s he up to now? Though he had seen some of the Leper gang near the train as they loaded the Selkie survivors on board, Lenny had not seen his former crew member since their earlier debate on what to do with the Orc prisoners.
The hairs on the back of Lenny’s neck raised. His skin tingled when he and the others turned a corner within view of the Bouvetøya crematorium and the icy killing fields beyond. With the remaining Selkies freed and the Orcs taskmasters inside either taken hostage, or left for dead, the chimney no longer spouted the combined mixture of smoke and human ash.
Outside the frozen factory, Henry Boucher stood among the stacks of Selkie skins. The alpha among his Leper gang, Henry directed those in human form to lash the stacked pallet-sleds to their animal counterparts. The lashings allowed the Leopard Seals to then pull the sleds across the cavern’s ice-spotted floor, the work slow, but steadier than having each man carry a bundle of stacks to the train and return for more.
Others among Henry’s gang attempted a similar sort of sled; each man had sacrificed a Selkie skin from the lot by cutting the suit down the middle, then laying the split pieces open to serve as another makeshift sled. Of those, the Lepers in human form were piling more stacks to their makeshift sleds.
All came to a stop, however, when the Lepers noticed another Selkie crew coming to stand between them and their path to reaching the train.
As the opposing groups halted within twenty yards of one another, Lenny slipped toward the front that he might stand alongside Jemmy T, Brutus, and Vasili. All stood in silent watch as Tom Weaver moved out in front of them.
“What’re you and your boys doing here, Henry?” Tom asked.
Henry shrugged. “Your people gave orders to load the train with supplies, no?” He asked, giving a lazy nod to his gang and the Selkie suits they claimed. “We Lepers are happy to obey.”
Sure you are, Lenny thought, his pulse quickening at the scarred up, former convicts gathering around Henry.
/> Tom Weaver scoffed at Henry’s claim. “Aye, we need supplies,” he said. “Food. Water. Weapons. Armor. Things like that.”
“A Selkie suit is not a weapon?” Henry asked. “And what of warmth, hmm?”
“Pretty sure us being Selkies is the reason we were all sent down in the first place,” said Tom. “We got warmth already, Henry. So, why don’t you tell your boys here to do something useful instead. Come back to help us load up what we do need.”
Henry did not budge from his position. “And what of our efforts here?” he asked. “You would leave these suits behind?”
Tom nodded. “Those people boarding the trains don’t need any more reminders of what they been through down here. No more than us that were sent down to the City of Song.”
Henry stroked his cheeks. “And what will they do when they reach the City of Pearls?” he asked. “How do you plan to help your new Selkie friends to survive there, hmm?” He reached out to the nearest stack, running his fingers over the ash-covered pattern of a Sea Lion suit. “Once we reach the capital, these suits could help them to pay for any number of things, no? Food . . . shelter . . . freedom for their families still trapped in chains?”
Lenny snorted. “Since when are you the sharing type, Henry? Or the kind to think about anyone but yourself for that matter?”
Henry’s cold gaze locked on Lenny. “You would not be here if I was selfish, nipperkin. Or do you forget what I did for you in Crayfish Cavern? Hmm? When you were locked away, condemned to die?” His lip curled. “You would be dead already if not for me, little man.”
Lenny bristled at the truth. “You’re doing this for you, pal,” he argued instead. “You don’t got none of us fooled here.”
Salt Storm: The Salted Series: Episodes #31-35 Page 34