Order of Swans (The Blue Swan Duology #1)

Chapter 17

17

Tanek and Mekos had been searching for Nessa for days. At first, they’d asked in Doyen, but no one had seen him—and the townspeople would have been glad to give him up. With no success there, they went into the countryside, but no one had seen a dragon.

Tanek had contacted Jobi and told him about a drunken Mekos spilling the truth to Kaley, then how she’d run away, wanting to see none of them. Tanek said that he and Mekos had immediately set out for the town, hoping to find the prince. He added that Arit said Sojee had found Kaley, and Sojee made sure she had food, water and warmth. Jobi’s only response was to nod, then rush away to see the king.

On the third day of searching, Tanek and Mekos left the countryside to go back to town. Tanek left his son at an inn on the outskirts of Doyen. Since neither of them had slept much in the past days, Mekos fell onto the bed in a stupor. Tanek looked at the bed with envy but he didn’t use it. He grabbed food, then headed into town to continue his search. Maybe Nessa had returned while they were away.

To Tanek’s shock, the town was a site of chaos. People were yelling and wailing in grief. Armed guards, wearing uniforms he didn’t recognize, were forcing their way into houses. The men pulled young girls—who no one knew were hidden there—into the open and dragged them away. The girls were crying and their families were begging, pleading for the girls to be released.

When Tanek reached the center plaza, it was filled with people shouting. There was blood on the stones. They were looking up at a tall wooden platform with steps that were soaked in blood. At the top were six guardsmen standing by and impassively watching what two young women were doing. They were cutting themselves, slicing off parts of their left feet, then trying to jam their blood-dripping feet into what looked to be a shoe made out of glass. Why? he wondered. Was this another vicious Selkan game? It so sickened him that he turned away.

As he went through the crowd, Tanek asked some men what was going on and the answers he got were so ridiculous that he couldn’t believe them. But the grief on their faces was so horrible that it was hard to remember why he was there and what he needed to do. He stepped behind a wall and brought up the screen that showed Jobi’s face. The older man was in his room in the king’s house, a large breakfast set before him.

Tanek didn’t bother with niceties. “We can’t find Nessa.” He had to shout over the noise around him. “But we must get Kaley back to Eren so she can go home to her own planet. She’s hiding on top of the mountain and she’s crying! You caused all of this.”

“Yes, I did!” Jobi said. “Everything bad you can say about me is true, but I know that the only way to save our country is through her.”

“And how does she do that? By leading an army? Who will follow her? Selkan men? After what I’ve seen here today? No! The women on Pithan can’t—”

“I don’t know!” Jobi yelled, then lowered his voice. “I can’t see the answer, but I’ve dedicated my life to preparing her for the future that I can see.”

“One that she knows nothing about and wants nothing to do with? Why did you have to trick her?”

“Earthlings refuse to believe we exist. If I’d even hinted at the truth, she would have run from me and said I was insane.”

“Right now, she’s running from all of us. I don’t blame her for wanting to leave here. Why should she help us? For honor? We have none. You’ve made us as corrupt as the Peacekeepers. We—” An abrupt sound of people screaming filled the air and he waited until the sound went to a low moan of grief. “We—”

“What’s going on there?” Jobi yelled.

“It’s horrible. I’ve never seen anything like it. There are women here and they’re coming out of hiding, but only so they can cut off their own toes and heels. It’s a bloodfest. I want Mekos and Kaley off of this island!”

“Heels? Toes?” Jobi asked.

“I want our credits restored so I can take Kaley and my son back to Eren. If I have enough I can bribe the ferrymen. I can—”

“You’ll have it but only if you tell me what’s happening there.”

“It’s some prince. He’s related to Aramus. He fell in love with a girl and she ran away, but she left behind—”

“A glass slipper?”

“Yes,” Tanek said. “The idiot prince is having women try the shoe on, and to make it fit, they’re cutting off—”

“I know!” Jobi’s voice was rising. “Don’t you see? The winning woman will get to live in the king’s gated compound in the south. They can have families to visit. They’d no longer have to hide. But now that they’ve exposed themselves, the losers will be sent to Pithan with the other women. They may never see their fathers and brothers again. So yes, they’re desperate to fit into that shoe. You must get Kaley down from that mountain. Tell her a prince is searching for a woman to fit in the glass slipper.”

“Not on your life!” Tanek said. “I’m not going to expose her to this horror. She might think she should wear the evil thing!”

Jobi was trying to stay calm. “Kaley won’t fit the shoe because she’s not the right girl. There is no danger to her. You have to understand that telling Kaley what’s going on will get her to leave the mountain.” He saw Tanek’s hesitation. “I’ll get the king to postpone trying on the shoe until you return, then you can stay with Kaley to make sure she’s safe. That won’t stop it as those girls are desperate, but it’ll give you time.” His voice rose. “You have to trust me! Kaley can end the violence that’s going on there. I don’t know how, but she will. You must do this!” His voice broke. “Please. For all of us. And for those poor girls.”

Tanek had no reply to what he was being asked to do. He touched the disk in his arm and broke off the connection. He didn’t like what Jobi had said, but he knew what he had to do.

When Tanek stepped out from behind the wall, he saw a man in a uniform pull a pretty young woman from her family’s home. She had short hair and wore men’s clothes. She was crying, as were her parents and a little boy. The girl’s foot was bleeding.

Tanek’s instinct was to grab the girl, to save her. If Sojee was with him, he would have tried, but alone, he’d end up in prison, where he’d be no help to anyone. He glanced up at the sun. It was early. His pace quickened. Mekos had had about three hours’ sleep. That wasn’t enough but it would have to do. Tanek pressed the right side of the disk in his arm, then blinked in surprise. Credits had been abundantly restored to his account. A guard came running and spoke to the man holding the girl, and he released her. She went running back to her mother’s arms, and the screams were replaced with cheers. It looked like Jobi had persuaded the king to intervene. But how long would it last?

There was a stable behind the inn and he quickened his pace. The horses he and Mekos had rented earlier were old and worn out, but it was all he could afford. Now it took only minutes to hire the two best horses, with saddles. He took the stairs up to the room two at a time. Mekos was sprawled across the bed, boneless in that way only young people could be. He started to wake him, but then didn’t bother. He put his sleeping son over his shoulder and carried him down the stairs.

As promised, the horses were saddled and waiting. Tanek wasn’t going to risk Mekos sitting alone on a horse, so he put his son in front of him and tied the second horse to his. He mounted the horse behind his son, not waking him, and quickly left the town. With a good pace, he could be at the homestead in a couple of hours.

Arit appeared out of nowhere and Tanek had to calm the horses. They felt her more than saw her and were unsettled by the strange little creature. She landed on Mekos’s sleeping shoulder. “Kaley doesn’t want to leave that mountain.”

“How do you know that?”

“I have ways,” she said cryptically. “And I think she hates Jobi.”

“She is one of many.” He was urging the horse to go faster. “Do you have any real news or not?”

“She wishes you were a frog.”

Tanek looked from the road to her. “Your mind-reading talents need work. That was a misunderstanding. Her humor is not easy to grasp.”

“I understood her perfectly!” Arit said, offended.

The second horse could see the bright light that surrounded Arit and didn’t like it. The animal misstepped and Tanek called out to calm him. “I think you’d better go.”

Arit flew up so she was in front of Tanek’s face. “She wants you to be a frog so she can kiss you.” She flew backward, smiling. “And oh yes, she has befriended three big white swans. They gave her a feather.”

Tanek was so shocked that he almost lost his grip on his son.

With a smug little smile, Arit vanished.

Tanek halted at the homestead and untied the second horse from his saddle. Sojee reached up, took the still-sleeping Mekos and held him like a baby.

“We found no sign of that useless prince,” Tanek said. “No one has seen him or his oversize lizard.” He nodded toward the mountain. “She still up there?”

“Yes, and she won’t come down easily. She—”

Tanek cut him off. “Maybe I can persuade her. If not, I’ll...” He waved his hand as though to say he’d do what had to be done.

Before Sojee could reply, Tanek kicked the horse and raced up the mountain path. Behind him, Sojee grimaced. When he saw the little light that he knew was Arit, he glared at her. “It seems that you left out that she’s guarded by a tabor.”

Arit didn’t answer, just made the light around her blink a few times, then she disappeared.

Sojee looked down at Mekos, his body limp in his arms, carried him to where they’d made makeshift beds and put the boy down. For a moment, Sojee looked at his young face, smoothed his hair back and smiled. “Maybe one of my daughters will suit you for a wife.” Still smiling, he left the room. He had weapons to sharpen. He needed to be ready to deal with whatever had so agitated Tanek.

Kaley was lying on her back by the water, with her hands behind her head. The sky was a pale purple with a few pinkish clouds, with streaks of green. She’d told the swans that the clouds weren’t nearly as silky as they were. It hadn’t taken long to find out that they loved compliments. Tibby was beside her, curled into a ball and pressed against her waist. She told him that the curves of both of them were made to fit together.

It was the first day since she’d left the men that she wasn’t feeling as though she was trapped and had no choices in life. “Acceptance,” she said aloud. Maybe she’d reached that stage of her grief. She must accept where she was and make the best of it—which meant she had to get out of there as fast as she could. She’d lost six years of her life but that was better than spending the rest of it where she didn’t belong.

She heard footsteps behind her. They were too light to be Sojee and too heavy for Mekos. Beside her, Tibby made his little snuffle sound of warning, then he vanished. He had a remarkable ability to crouch so low that he couldn’t be seen even in short grass.

She looked at the swans. They had come to the edge of the water, and she could feel their excitement. If they could speak, they’d be saying, “He’s here! He’s here!”

Kaley didn’t move. Not only did she know who was behind her, she also knew what he was going to say. She needed to return to them. For her own good. For the good of Bellis. Something like that. There’d be no mention of her family or what her life was going to be, or—

“I was told you want me to be a frog,” Tanek said.

She didn’t look up at him. “Only if you wear a gold crown.” The swans were filled with nervous anticipation. Tanek was moving about but she didn’t know what he was doing. Getting feed for them? “It’s all right. You can trust him,” she said to the swans, pretending that they didn’t know who or what he was. Tanek gave a little laugh at the absurdity of that statement. “Oh yes. I forgot that you’re related to them. But then, Arit ran from them.”

“That’s because Indienne tried to eat her. She thought Arit was an insect.”

“Did you say, ‘No, no. Don’t eat the love of Daddy’s life?’”

“Arit would like that title.”

“You mean Daddy ?”

He was laughing and she heard his steps. As he walked past her, he didn’t look down.

He was naked. Not wearing his loincloth, but stark naked. Kaley came up on her elbows and watched him walk into the water. Heavens above, but he had a beautiful body!

The swans, who had been Kaley’s friends for days, gave all their attention to Tanek. They wrapped themselves around him, rubbed their sleek feathers against his body, their heads nuzzling his neck and arms.

“Don’t blame you,” Kaley murmured.

When Tanek was waist deep in the water, he turned to her. “Can you swim?”

She sat up in a way that she hoped seemed casual. “Rather well. Jobi the mercenary made sure of that.”

“That word doesn’t translate.” Tanek lifted his chin while the swans caressed his neck with their heads.

“It means that he did it all for his own purpose. There was no actual friendship between us.”

“Mmm,” was all Tanek said, but then he was in some sort of ritual with the birds so he couldn’t talk much. He turned and stretched out in the water, his bare behind exposed to the sun—and to Kaley. The swans went over and under him, their movements sensual. He went to his back, his arms outstretched, his body just under the water. He barely moved but he was afloat.

Of course he can swim as well as the birds, she thought.

“Did he tell you that I’ve been to your Earth? It’s where I first saw white swans.”

Her curiosity was overriding her depression. “How? Why?”

He was gliding easily in the water. “I was born on a ship. My father was very young and he knew about machines so he was hired to go on a trip to Earth. He did something with the engines.” Tanek’s tone expressed that he couldn’t understand why anyone would want to do that. “One night a pretty officer knocked on his door and...” Tanek broke off with a smile. “I didn’t see Bellis until I was ten years old.”

She sat up straighter. “What did you think of my planet?”

“I only remember the swans. Papá said the long sleep of the return erased my memory of the early part of my life. Whatever the cause, all that is a blur.”

They were quiet for a few moments, then he said, “Our credits have been restored. We can return to Eren, but I don’t know how long it’ll be before you can go back to your family.” He paddled a bit, twirled in the water, then lowered his voice. “Would you like to join us?”

She’d never heard him use that tone. It was sultry, enticing and inviting her to something she couldn’t refuse. It made her remember the king saying, “Can it be that there exists a woman who doesn’t want you above all other men?” Right now she couldn’t remember why she’d thought Tanek was celibate, that he stayed away from women. This man knew his way around women quite well. And, unfortunately, his enticement was working on her.

Kaley stood up. “A swim might be nice.” She wasn’t going to remove all her clothes, but taking off the top layer would be all right.

He was treading water, with the swans close by watching the two of them with interest.

“You are better,” he said in that inviting way. “I told Jobi you wouldn’t need some silly glass slipper. I said you were stronger than that and—”

She halted with her pants at her knees. “What glass slipper?”

He frowned, but quickly recovered his expression of seduction. “It’s for a contest. Ridiculous, really. The woman who fits the shoe has to marry a prince, but she does get to stay on Selkan near her family.”

Kaley pulled up her pants. “We have to go. Now.”

His face of seduction disappeared and he frowned. “There’s blood! I don’t want you to see—”

The anger she thought she’d suppressed came forward. “So help me, if you try to stop me from going, I’ll...I’ll disappear into the next fairy tale and you’ll never find me again!” With her hands on her hips, she glared at him in challenge.

The swans backed up on the water, looking from one to the other.

Tanek got out of the water. He seemed oblivious to his nudity—or, Kaley thought, maybe he was using his gleaming body to distract her. Either way, she didn’t relent.

He pulled on his gray pants, no underwear, and looked at her. “You don’t understand. It’s a bloody mess down there. The girls are—”

“I know! They’re cutting off parts of their feet to fit into the shoe. Don’t you see? We have to find the real Cinderella, and I think I may be the only one on this planet who can do it.”

As he put his shirt on, she saw the pain on his face. She reminded herself that he didn’t know what she did. Her voice softened. “I promise that I won’t cut any of my body parts, but I think I can help the girls who are doing that.”

“Jobi said he would halt the search until you got there. He said you’re the only one who can stop the bloodshed.”

“For once that traitor is right about something. Are you ready to go?”

“More so than you.” He nodded toward her shirt that was unbuttoned to her waist.

She looked at him while she fastened it. “Was all this...this seduction meant to make me do what you wanted?”

His half smile was her answer.

“Something else in my life that wasn’t real.” She was frowning. “Do you have a horse?”

“Have you ever ridden one?”

Considering that she had so easily fallen into his trap of seduction, she wasn’t feeling good about him. “Yes. Can you drive a pickup with four on the floor?”

He had a blank look, then he gave a low whistle and the horse came from behind the stone pavilion.

As Tanek checked the saddle cinch, Kaley saw Tibby’s eyes peeping through the grass. “I’m going to town to save Cinderella,” she whispered, then hurried to the horse.

She mounted first, then Tanek got on behind her. His arms were around her, her back to his chest. He took the reins and they headed down a wide, steep path that was the opposite direction from the homestead.

When she looked back at the water, with the swans watching them in curiosity, she thought of how he’d enticed her into going with him. His nude body, his caressing of the swans, all done before he casually mentioned the carnage going on in the town. His actions were meant to get her to do what he wanted her to. She held on to her anger for only about a minute. She reminded herself that men the world over, no matter where that world was, tried to seduce women into giving them what they wanted. Whether a woman fell for it made the difference. “Where is Mekos?”

“With Sojee. Sleeping.”

“Are you sure?”

She watched as he held out his left arm, then touched the scar and pressed. To her amazement, a small screen appeared. It showed Mekos in Haver’s bedroom, sleeping soundly. “Steve Jobs would be jealous,” she said. “But then, I guess people who travel through space can do that. Where are the ships that go to Earth?”

“On Empyrea.”

“Ah yes. The forbidden island that no one has seen.”

“My father’s been there. He says I was, too, but I was a child and they put me to sleep.”

“To keep you from remembering?”

“Probably.”

She was quiet for a moment as they rode. It was nice being snuggled against him. “I assume you and Mekos were looking for Nessa but you didn’t find him.”

“Mekos tried to summon him and we asked, but no one had seen him. They very much want to get rid of him since his dragon set fire to some crops.”

“No doubt under Nessa’s orders. Did you offer any bribes?”

Tanek urged the horse to go faster. “I barely had enough credits to pay for the inn!”

It sounded like he’d been as angry at Jobi as she was. In the distance they could see a farmer. He had no tractor but a wooden plow pulled by a huge black bull. “How does your planet have spaceships but no cars?”

“You have asked the fundamental question. We all want to know the answer to that. Can one of your folktales explain it to us?”

The bitterness in his voice made her remember his secret meetings on the island. Are they why he’d agreed to escort her? “You’re a revolutionary, aren’t you?” She lifted her hand to her Truth Necklace and waited for his reply.

“I want to help change things, yes.”

The necklace stayed cold. “Does Sojee know what you’re doing?”

“I believe he’s starting to guess.”

“What about Mekos?”

“His only concern is if girls like him.”

“They do.”

“Too farken much! Last year he—Never mind.”

“Did he impregnate a girl when he was sixteen?” she asked innocently.

“Only I have that honor,” he said, then urged the horse forward and they stopped talking.

As they rode, she felt him relax against her. They fit together comfortably. Like Tibby and me , she thought. Or like him and his swans. It crossed her mind that it was too bad she was going to leave soon, but she quickly wiped that thought away.

When she tipped her head back to rest against his chest, she felt his body slacken. He seemed to be relaxing to the point of sleep, but the instant she tried to take the reins, he became alert. She knew that falling asleep in a saddle could lead to accidents. When the horse slowed, she began talking again. “Tell me a secret about your planet.”

“How do I know what’s different from my world and yours? Tell me of your world.”

“We have cars. They’re—”

“I do remember them.”

She wanted to ask questions about his time there, but she was more curious about his planet. She thought of the ridges on his back. “Do you have some genetic memory of your wings?”

“I dream about them. There’s a legend that I have relatives who still have wings.” His voice was growing heavier.

“When did you last sleep?”

He gave a half shrug as his nonanswer.

“Give me the reins and you can sleep against me.”

That made him chuckle. “You couldn’t hold me up and I’m sure I’d bash my head if I fell off. We’ll be there in an hour, then you can...” He had nothing to say about what she was to do because he didn’t know.

Kaley would have answered him, but she didn’t know, either.