Salt Storm: The Salted Series: Episodes #31-35 by Galvin, Aaron (read 50 shades of grey .TXT) 📕

Sopping wet, dirty and disheveled, and with her head shorn, Nattie Gao looked nothing like the mother Sydney remembered. The queen still wore the same gown from the night Darius ordered her taken into custody, yet now the dress of Nattie Gao was mildewy and stained as if she were a true commoner plucked and dragged out of the Beam Ends. The disgraced queen’s body was pale and withered too. For all the seeming weakness of her physical form and dress, Sydney recognized a defiance in her mother’s eyes the like of which Sydney had never seen too. Despite her circumstance, the jeers and boos from the crowd, Nattie Gao stood resolute within her cage. She did not waver from it even as Malik Blackfin approached her.

“Look you to this fallen queen!” He barked to the crowd. “She stands accused of high treason for acts of adultery, sedition . . . and plotting to kill our beloved king.”

Kill him? Sydney’s immediate question and disavowing of such crimes were lost to the crowd’s deafening response.

The Blackfin allowed the masses their reaction, not continuing until the majority had quieted once more. “Still . . .” he silenced the last of them with a word. “His royal highness is ever just and fair, even unto his enemies.”

Bile rose in Sydney’s throat as she looked on the king’s stony face beside her.

Malik Blackfin went on. “In his infinite wisdom, the king has decreed his wife be given an honest trial. The chance to refute her supposed crimes and bring evidence to the contrary,” Malik turned to Nattie in her cage. “What say you to these charges, my queen? Are you guilty or no?”

Nattie met his question and the awaiting crowd with silence. In her steely eyes, the queen gave answer aplenty to Malik Blackfin and the Merrow king.

Why won’t you say anything, Mom? Sydney wondered, her heart breaking as the crowd booed and shouted further threat and dares for the queen to speak out against her captors and charges laid against her. Or do you keep quiet because all the charges are true? She shuddered. Because both me and Jun don’t belong to Darius . . . and you know what it will mean, if you admit it?

Malik Blackfin’s grin broadened at Nattie’s continued silence. “Very well, my queen,” he said. “We’ll look to those closest to you for the truth of your supposed crimes or no.” Malik turned his head. “Bring out the witnesses!”

Sydney’s eyes rounded when Malik’s second-in-command, Solomon, led the other Orc soldiers to remove the curtain from the other cages upon the barge. For every cage revealed, Sydney’s eyes stung with the sight of still more familiar faces.

Owens, her high school friend and traveling companion, stood tall inside one cage with a grouping of near twenty other Orcs and his father too. Each of them was as dirty and disheveled as the queen, each burdened by chains and fetters, each of them standing without room for any to sit.

Makeda, the former pod mother of the Painted Guard, stood beside Mr. Owens and at the head of the other caged Orcinians also. Stripped of her armor, Makeda too looked smaller now than Sydney remembered her being when surrounded by Painted Guard soldiers and with a sword at her side. Like with the queen, however, there was no denying the look in Makeda’s unbroken and condemning stare as she glared at her brother beyond the bars.

Other cages housed more friends and people known to Sydney also. Her chest tightened when finding Merrows from the Indianapolis zoo – the aerialist performer, Amelia, chained alongside her father, Jack Mayfield, the zoo’s longtime seal and sea lion trainer.

Sydney estimated roughly thirty yards between her vantage point and theirs, but she could tell that her friend was crying too. She watched helplessly as Amelia leaned into her father’s embrace to shield her from the taunting crowd. I’m sorry. Sydney wished that she could say. That her friend might truly understand how much Sydney wished that she could take every decision back. Every choice starting with the one that had led to she and Amelia convincing Owens to leave with them in the night. All with the hope of finding Garrett Weaver and the Selkies who had taken him.

Other prisoners were gathered inside the cages too. Sydney could not name them all, but she recognized more than not. Her heart sank for the knowledge of that favored place she had come to know and meet so many of those inside the cage in her life before coming into the Salt.

Home. Sydney choked. They’re almost all from home . . . the Indy Zoo . . .

Fear took her fully then, Sydney’s gaze sweeping over the prisoner faces in search of her brother, Jun, among them. She thought of her mother’s friend, Barb, and Wilda too, the eldest of them all and Amelia’s grandmother. For all the familiar faces gathered inside the cages, Sydney did not see any of those three.

She did recognize the last of them coming to the front of the cages though, a tiny and elderly woman she had seen nearly every day of school for the past six years. Ms. Morgan? Sydney’s brow furrowed at the sight of her school’s crotchety vice principal.

The old spinster’s glasses were gone and much of her face and body covered in bruises, but her one good eye was sharp in constant watch of the Blackfin and his Orcs beyond. Ms. Morgan gripped the iron bars of her cage to steady herself, she alone holding her ground as the Orcs came to unlock the gate.

How did you all get here? Sydney wondered of her friends and the other prisoners. Why are you all here?

As the gate was swung open, Solomon entered in and made his choice of which prisoner to bring out first.

Amelia’s face turned ashen as Solomon chose her from the lot, taking her roughly by the arm.

Jack Mayfield screamed obscenities and threats