Salt Storm: The Salted Series: Episodes #31-35 Galvin, Aaron (classic fiction txt) 📖

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 of 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