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

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 bottom 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