One of the things Lomones hated the most about humans was how squashed they were together. It wasn’t the closeness that bothered him. It was the two-dimensionalness of it all. As Swans, they could fly, swim, walk, and the Black Swans, with their cruel, sharp feathers, could burrow and hide away. They could move freely. But the humans were always restricted. Even their towering buildings couldn’t free them. To get to the top, they had to ascend all the other layers before it was even a possibility. There was never any rush of freedom.
He especially hated walking between these towering buildings. When he looked up, he could see sky, and he longed for it. But all around him were broken buildings that looked like they might collapse at any moment.
He was going to one of those buildings now. He squinted at the signs. Most of them were apartments for people to live in—Lin had probably moved her family to one of these places. However, sometimes he could see signs that indicated other purposes. He passed by a blacksmith, which had a hammer smashing into an anvil as its sign and a baker, with a loaf of bread for its sign. Finally, he stopped at a sign with a woman on a bed. He glanced at the sun and then stepped forward to knock.
For a moment, everything was quiet. And then somebody stumbled to the door. A woman opened it, her hair ratty and clothes disheveled. She had a knife in her hands.
“What do you want?” she said.
Lomones bit his lip and raised his hands. “I would like to see Selenia, your mistress.”
“She’s busy.”
“I know,” Lomones said. “If it weren’t important, I wouldn’t have come. I need to see her.”
“Go away.”
The woman started to close the door, but Lomones grabbed the hand with the knife in it and twisted it. The woman cried out and tried to break free, but he dislocated her arm and then grabbed the other arm and dislocated it as well. Then he grabbed her hair. “Give up yet?” he asked.
The woman gasped. “Help! Help! A man’s trying to kill me!” she cried.
Immediately, more women came down, each of the carrying knives with their hair even rattier and their clothes even more disheveled. Some of them were entirely undressed. Lomones grabbed the woman and backed to the wall, holding her as a shield. “I need to see your mistress. That is all. I come in peace, otherwise. I can heal her in a minute, if you would just put down your knives and lead me to your mistress.”
“Lomones?”
Lomones turned his head and saw Selenia, staring at him from the top of the stairs as if he were a dream, her lacy robe undone and her head just as messy. He grinned. “Missed me any?”
Selenia rolled her eyes and was about to speak when the women, seeing that Lomones was distracted, sprung towards him, their knives gleaming. “Stop!” Selenia cried. “Don’t bleed him. He’s my father.” Selenia rushed down and went to Lomones.
First, she embraced the woman and healed her arms. “You should go to your room and rest,” she said, kissing her in the cheek and stroking the woman’s hair. Then she turned to Lomones with a glare. “You should have worn your White Swan robes. They would have let you in without question. Or have you forgotten basic human decency?”
“Why aren’t you wearing yours?” Lomones said. “You’re a White Swan too. Or have you forgotten how to be anything but a whore?”
Selenia swore and tightened her robe. “Damn it! Have you come over just to restart this old argument? If you have, I’ll throw you out myself. And you won’t be able to hurt me. Not without Mother.”
“No, I’ve come here for a different reason.”
“What?”
“Have you heard of Solea?”
Her eyes grew worried. “Don’t tell me that you’ve gotten in that mess too.”
“I have.” He took the diary from his pocket and showed it to Selenia. “Solea wrote in this diary. It hints that she is not a Conqueror.”
“Diamea! You have gotten into this.” She snatched away the book and flipped through the contents. “Who gave you this?”
“Alzan.”
“Then how do you know that you can even trust this diary?” When Lomones hesitated, she glared at him and put her hands on her hips. “Daddy! If Uclepidies can’t be trusted, then why should we believe Alzan has any credibility? As far as I can remember, the Conquerors can possess all the twelve original Black Swans, Alzan included.”
“He’s not possessed yet.”
“How do you know?” Lomones opened his mouth to speak but she shook her head and interrupted him. “Never mind. We’ll talk about this in my room. But if you have any commentary about the way I live my life, I swear, I’ll kick you out. I’m sick of hearing judgments from the White Swans. ‘Oh, you shouldn’t spend time with the humans. You’ll forget what it’s like to be a White Swan.’ As if being a White Swan is any better.”
“There’s less eating involved,” Lomones said fairly.
“Hmph!” She walked up the stairs and went into a room.
“Should I follow you?”
“Be my guest.”
The room was gaudy. It had cheap little trinkets everywhere to try and make it look cozy, but it ended up making the room look more like a pawnshop than anything. The main attraction was the bed, and inside this bed was a man, fast asleep, who was as naked as a baby.
“Who’s he?” Lomones asked.
“A customer, of course.” She shook his shoulder. “Wake up, Junas.” He smiled in his sleep.
“You should grab his penis,” Lomones suggested. “He’ll wake up very fast then.”
Selenia glared at him. “So you can see your little daughter be a whore?”
“You know it makes a daddy proud.” Selenia’s face grew purple and Lomones raised his hands. “No commentary! I promised. I’m just telling the truth!”
She shook his shoulder again, harder. “Wake up!”
Junas’s smile just grew larger.
“He had a busy night, I take it.”
“No commentary!”
“No commentary,” Lomones agreed. “Just an observation.”
Selenia gave him a mean look. “Much of the proceeds that we get go to help women who have children out of wedlock. If it weren’t for us, we would have mothers whoring themselves out of the streets for their children.”
“Do they get put in with widows with children, perchance?”
“Yes.” Then she squinted at him. “How do you know?”
“Lucky guess.” He walked over to the bed and grabbed Junas’s penis. “Wake up, honey.”
Junas woke up, smiling wide. And then he saw Lomones. His face turned green.
Lomones grinned at him. “I’m next, sweetheart.”
Junas made a strangled scream and fell out of the bed. He thought about grabbing his clothes, saw Lomones, thought better of it, and raced out of the room wrapped in a sheet. Lomones laughed; Selenia looked at him furiously.
“He was a good customer!”
“Was.” Lomones took out the diary and wiggled it. “Here is the source of controversy that I would like to bring up.”
She crossed her arms. “Apologize first.”
“For what?”
“For ruining my reputation!”
“What reputation?”
Her eyes grew wide. “Out.”
“No. We have things to talk about.”
“If you want to insult me and waste my time, then you need to go out.”
“Time doing what, may I ask?” his voice growing louder. “I trained you to be a White Swan, and this is the profession that you would rather have? You would lower yourself as a whore rather than accept the duty that Diamea destined you for?”
“It’s my life!”
“And you don’t care about anything else, do you? It’s all about you, you, you. You would rather be a whore than a savior of souls.”
“At least I would stop killing people!” She tore her hand through her hair. “Of course that would be the role they would give me,” she said sarcastically. “I’m only the mind seer. Yes, why not have her kill people? That would be great. Let’s let her relive the last moments of people’s lives over and over and over and over again. Never mind that she’s already had to do that once, as a human. At least as a whore, there’s just sex.”
“Oh.” He shifted uncomfortably. “Is that why you’re hiding?”
“Yes. That’s why I am hiding.” She sighed. “And you’re the first person who even bothered asking.” She flopped down on her bed, deflated. Then she grimaced and grabbed the pillow underneath her. “Of course he’s a drooler. Why wouldn’t he be?”
Lomones smiled. “Humans are strange.”
“They are. But they are nice, when the want to be.” She flipped the pillow over. “There! The dry side.”
“May I join you?”
“Sure. The bed’s big. Just don’t get inside the covers. Junas was rather messy, if you know what I mean.”
He sat down next to her and ran his fingers through her hair.
She closed her eyes and sighed. “I miss you. You’re always so busy all the time.”
“Hopefully I’ll be less busy now.”
“How’s Mother?”
He hesitated. “She’s fine.”
She looked at him, worried. “You’re not having more issues with her, are you?”
“She’s doing something else now. She needs a vacation after everything.”
“But without you?”
“It would be better that way, yes.” He shrugged. “I know where she is. She was very specific on that. And she’s doing easy work as a human, nothing bad. She enjoys what she does and she does it well, and that’s all that matter. I come and visit every once in a while to see her and then she continues on.”
“Does she want to see me?”
“Don’t be offended. I don’t think she wants to see anyone, really. I think she only told me where she was because she would feel guilty otherwise.”
“Does she know what you’re doing now?”
He smiled. “No. She would not approve, I am certain.”
Selenia took the diary from his hands. “And this is Solea’s diary?”
“Yes.”
She flipped through it, frowning. “She sure writes a lot for a girl of her age. When I was a little girl, before you knew me, I had a diary and I only wrote a couple of sentences every month or so.”
“I never knew you wrote.”
She smiled. “Well, once you took me in, writing became a chore, so I stopped. Besides, Elise would have snooped into my diary and I would have hated that.” She closed the book. “So who gave you this?”
“Alzan.”
“Oh. Him.” She sighed. “Well, if Solea is a Conqueror, and there is ample evidence to suggest this, then we shouldn’t trust Alzan very much, if at all. After all, if Uclepidies is possessed, then Alzan has the possibility of being possessed as well. Besides, where would he have found this diary anyway?”
“Iluve gave it to him.”
“Iluve? That’s the little bastard girl, right?” She frowned. “She tried to come here for work, but we didn’t let her in. She stuttered far too much. It would have been awkward for any of her customers. Besides, she wouldn’t be able to say no. She was perfect rape material.”
“She supplicated herself to Alzan and gave him the diary.”
“Good. I’m glad that she’s safe. Lin was very worried about her.” Selenia closed her eyes. “Do you want me to give you a comb, or will you continue with the hair stroking thing? I quite liked it.”
Lomones smiled and twirled her hair in his fingers. “The diary raises interesting ideas. For example, Eurodities and Archondid are the godparents for Solea. Why would they agree to be the godparents if they thought Solea was a Conqueror? They hate Conquerors.”
“Because they didn’t know. Because she was just a little baby that nobody wanted. Because Lars himself admits that at the time he was desperately asking anyone to sponsor his daughter and Archondid and Eurodities just happened to visit that particular village at that particular time, and they agreed.”
Lomones frowned. “So they just agreed, like that? That’s rather hard to believe.”
“Only if you don’t understand them. Their religion, their dedication toward Diamea is their entire life, and if they are barred from practicing their religion, they would rather die than live. Solea needed to have godparents because otherwise she would be barred from the religion entirely. Archondid and Eurodities knew this. Lars had asked everyone else that he could think of that might help, and they all refused. When Archondid and Eurodities came by, he supplicated himself to them and begged them to accept his daughter as a godchild. Eurodities didn’t want her, but because they understood the direness of the situation, they accepted anyway. It was pity that drove them to accept, not anything else.”
“Who told you this?”
“Lars, when I interviewed him.” She winced. “I got caught in this mess too. It was either me or Icit, and I figured that I would be kinder than Icit. They wanted me to see his mind, but I couldn’t. It was blocked. Almost like a Conqueror blocked it.”
“A Conqueror?”
“Yes, a Conqueror. Have you not been listening? This whole investigation was done because they were worried that Solea was a Conqueror. And she is. She’ll be executed soon, once they figure out how to pacify Uclepidies. I think they were looking at certain drugs that would paralyze him temporarily. Just put that in the same cell and get both of them out. Job done!”
Lomones bit his lip. “What if they’re wrong? What if she isn’t a Conqueror?”
Selenia looked up at him. “Do you have any other ideas?”
“I had thought that maybe the child could be Eurodities’s child. But Eurodities wouldn’t want her child, so she would give it to Lars instead.”
Selenia grimaced. “Why would Eurodities do something horrible like that?”
“Because Lars doesn’t seem to be a bad father.”
“Bad father?” Selenia repeated, in disbelief. “Are you mad? His only son is convicted of raping and killing a young girl whom he seduced. His only daughter is convicted of mass torturing half her village through the possession of a Black Swan. And you want to argue that he is a good father?”
Lomones’s face grew red. He shifted uncomfortably. “Just because a child does something wrong doesn’t mean the parents are bad.”
It was Selenia’s turn to blush. She stroked her father’s arm. “I didn’t mean it in that way,” she said gently. “For instance, you are the best father in the world. Elise just turned out the wrong way. But Lars? Before Solea was born, Lars was charged with multiple counts of child endangerment by his wife—all nicely acquitted, of course. But, she accused him of tying her up in her bed and leaving her there for days at a time when Granid was small. Lars would leave her in the day to run his shop and then come back and rape her.”
“What?”
“It’s all in the research,” Selenia said, waving her hand. “We looked up all the records we could about this family. Anyway, as you can expect, Lars denied everything at the time, of course. He claimed that the rope burns on her wrists and ankles and the bruises all across her body were there because she liked that sort of thing. Plus, since Granid was a Potential, the entire town thought it wise to let their relationship pass by unnoticed, in the hopes that they would produce more children. So he was not declared guilty by anyone and later his wife completely dropped the charges.”
“Maybe she lied,” Lomones said.
“That’s what we thought too. So I asked Lars when I interviewed him. I asked him whether these charges were true, false, or a mixture of the two. And he told me that the charges were true, but it was much worse than even the charges revealed. He was afraid that he was dying and that Diamea would reject him from paradise if he continued to have this burden, so he told me this and asked me to pray to Diamea for him.”
“Was he dying?”
“No. Uclepidies had hurt him badly though, so he thought he was dying. But he wasn’t dying, not really.”
Lomones frowned. “Solea’s diary made him seem like a good man.”
Selenia shrugged. “He’s not altogether bad. He seemed to genuinely care for Lin and Solea. Asked about them both, though we didn’t tell him anything. But I would not call him a good man. He’s hurt too many people for that. Nor do I think that Eurodities would ever ask him to be the father of her child.”
Lomones pursed his lips. “Did he think that Solea was a Conqueror?”
She shrugged again. “We didn’t ask him. But from our questioning, we determined that Solea was the Conqueror anyway.”
“If Solea is indeed a Conqueror’s child, then how? The Conqueror wouldn’t mate with a married woman. He couldn’t.”
Selenia grimaced. “She may have been married, but if the Conqueror had seen Lars rape her, the Conqueror may have thought that the marriage was null. He would have been right, as well. Being raped is not a mating, and if that was the extent of their relationship, the Conqueror would have no problem mating with her.”
“So then you can argue that Uclepidies was not really married since he didn’t mean to mate with Princess Isella,” Lomones said sarcastically. “Maybe Solea is his child. Maybe he saw Lars’s poor wife and fell in love with her.”
“Don’t be stupid,” Selenia snapped. “Uclepidies loved Isella. Maybe not at first, especially after she tricked him, but he loved her afterwards. That’s why the Conquerors forced him to torture her. He was too distracted because of her since he didn’t want to leave her.”
“It was just a joke.”
“Don’t joke about those sorts of things.” She curled up her knees to her chest. “I met Isella, did you know? When I sneaked out to see Elise, I didn’t find her at once, but Uclepidies saw me and gestured me to come over. Isella was having another miscarriage, and she was very upset and frightened. Elise had cursed her so that none of the children that they came produced would live. Uclepidies had long forgiven her for tricking him into marrying him, and only wanted to enjoy their time together, since he knew it was going to be limited, but the Conqueror didn’t care. Once she was angry, she wouldn’t let things go, even if it meant everyone would suffer.”
“I’m sorry that you had to see this,” Lomones said, stroking her hair again.
She flipped through the diary again and smiled. “She talks about her daddy a lot. No wonder you would be confused and think he was the best father ever. Every other word of hers is ‘daddy.’ If Lars knew how much he was being worshipped, I am sure he would be very much ashamed.”
“Probably.”
Selenia looked up. “Does she talk about the Mother at all?”
“No, not at all. She makes no references to anyone outside her close family and friends.”
“And that’s why you suspect that she may not be a Conqueror?”
Lomones nodded. “It seems strange that she wouldn’t slip up, even for just once. The only thing condemning about this diary is the writing style. It’s clearly more advanced than seven or eight year old could write.”
“That it is.” She closed the book. “Where did you get the diary?”
“From Iluve.”
“Her step-sister?”
“Yes.”
Selenia smiled sadly. “How certain do you think Solea’s diary is actually hers then?”
Lomones frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Maybe Iluve wrote it up for her.” When Lomones looked confused, Selenia shrugged. “Iluve is a very smart, little girl. In fact, we thought she might be the Conqueror at first and not Solea, simply because she is so very smart. Her blood’s not right for a Conqueror, however, she has an extremely vivid imagination and it is very possible that she could have written everything by herself, basing it loosely after stories that Solea might have told her.”
“But that doesn’t explain certain parts,” Lomones argued. “For instance, the bastard princess story! Solea transcribed it, based on the story that her daddy told her, and it seems too advanced for a thirteen-year-old girl to write.”
“Except Iluve is a very smart thirteen-year-old girl,” Selenia said. “It’s very possible that she just made it up. After all, she actually is a bastard. This story would be very important to her. Why would it have been as important to Solea?”
“You don’t understand,” Lomones said impatiently. “In this diary, there is a highly advanced version of this story that talks about Laurella and Isella. It’s remarkably different from any other version that is currently available, but what makes it more remarkable is its authenticity. For instance, Laurella’s mother has white hair, not black, while Isella’s mother has black hair, not white. Laurella is also said to love horses. All these versions correspond with the original version of the story, not the current versions.”
“Lin has light blonde hair while the matron has black hair,” Selenia said. “Maybe that’s where the discrepancy comes from. Also, Iluve loves all animals. When I first met her, I caught her trying to befriend a mouse. Maybe she loves horses as well.”
“This doesn’t make sense.”
“No, it makes perfect sense,” Selenia said. “Iluve thought Solea was her only way out from a life she hated. She is a bastard. For all her life, she has learnt that she is a worthless piece of flesh who has been hated by Diamea for all her life. She retreated into her books and imagination, just to be somewhat loved. Then, Solea comes and treats her like a sister, even though they have no blood ties, and Solea loves her, even though she is a bastard. At first, Iluve is resistant because she thinks there must be a catch, but there isn’t, and when Iluve realizes that Solea will love her, despite everything, she starts to love Solea back. She doesn’t believe in what people have to say about Solea. Even if what they say is true, she doesn’t care because Solea loves her when nobody else will. So, she starts on a mission to save her sister. She knows that they think Solea is a Conqueror, so she decides to present something contrary to the evidence. When she is unceremoniously dumped into the streets, she writes this diary down, a work of fiction, so that people may learn to love Solea too and so that they may save Solea.”
“That’s a lot of maybes,” Lomones muttered.
“Let me finish!” Selenia cried, turning to Lomones. “You were the father of Elise. That must have been terrible enough. But I was the little girl you adopted, the Potential that lost her entire family to the cruelty of the Black Swans. I felt like I should have died with my family. When you reached out to me and asked me to be your Fledgling and to be a part of your family, I accepted, partly because otherwise I would have killed myself and I thought that my family would not have approved. Still, I always felt like I owed something to you, because I had nothing but you gave me everything.”
“You never owed us anything,” Lomones started. “We loved you. That’s why we wanted you to be part of our family.”
“I know, I know,” Selenia said, tears in her eyes. “You told me that then and I know you haven’t changed your mind. But Elise! I never felt like I owed anything to her. At first I did, because she loved me as a sister, even though I wasn’t connected with her through blood. But she made me feel comfortable. I looked up to you and Mother, but I could look at her as a friend and confidant. When I was feeling down, she was always there to cheer me up. Sometimes, she was as irritating as anything else, but even then I loved her. When I heard the rumors of what she was doing, I didn’t believe it at first. I thought they were just lies. I couldn’t believe that my dear sister could ever play a part into some of these things. Taking over a kingdom with Black Swans that she had possessed into serving her nefarious will? It sounded ridiculous to me. It was even more absurd when I heard that she was forcing the Black Swans to torture people till they committed suicide. When I heard that she killed our aunt, I was dumbfounded. And when I heard that she killed Diamea, all I could do was cry. But even then I wouldn’t believe it. When Eurodities went to kill her, I hated Eurodities so much. I snuck out from you and Mother because I wanted to stop Eurodities, since I was so afraid for Elise. And when I found out that everything that I thought was a lie was true, I was devastated.”
“You saw what had happened then?”
“I saw everything,” she said, her voice shaking. “Isella was only the start. And, afterwards, I found where Eurodities was and helped her kill my sister. Because justice had to be served.”
Lomones looked away. He had to because he knew that if he were to do anything, he would start crying.
“I know what she’s going through,” Selenia said softly. “I know how much it hurts. I know that she is trying to do whatever she can to save Solea. And she’s not trying to hurt anyone, but she is just so desperate for love that will do anything it takes. If that means writing up a fake journal, she’ll do it. But, that doesn’t mean that Solea is good and that doesn’t mean that justice shouldn’t happen. And I know it’s hard, but if Solea has caused this much pain already, then how much more will we have to face later? Should one girl live so the rest of us can die?”
“We don’t know if Solea is innocent or not,” Lomones insisted. “This theory of yours is only a theory. Maybe Iluve did write this for Solea. But we don’t know until we ask.”
It was quiet for a long time. Selenia leaned on Lomones’s shoulder and used his shirt as a tissue and Lomones held her there for a very long time. Finally, Selenia sat up straight, wiping away her tears with her hands. “So what are you going to do next?”
Lomones shrugged. “I promised Alzan that I would visit Lars and Lin and ask them some questions. Do you know where Lars is?”
Selenia nodded. “He’s in an insane asylum in isolation. He’s kept on drugs to keep quiet, except when we want to question him. But he’s very hard to read. Someone very strong has blocked his thoughts so that I can’t read them. Also, there are some questions that he absolutely cannot answer and if you try to force him to answer it, he starts going into shock. So you have to be very careful when you question him.”
“I’ll be very careful then.”
“What sorts of things will you ask him?” Selenia asked.
“Things from the diary. I want to see how much of it is true, or whether Solea actually kept a diary. If Lars recognizes the diary, then maybe Solea did write it.”
Selenia nodded. “That sounds reasonable. And Lin? What do you want to ask her?”
“Things about Lars. He seems to be a little more complicated than I am comfortable with.”
“Good. Maybe you’ll find something interesting out.”
“That’s the hope,” Lomones said brightly.
Selenia smiled. “Is that all you want to do?”
“No. Afterwards, I am going to go to Solea and determine firsthand whether she is a Conqueror or not.”
Selenia pursed her lips. “And if she is?”
“Then I’ll get Uclepidies out and give Solea to the humans.”
Selenia nodded. “You’ll need a fighter. I can help you.” She looked upstairs and frowned. “I have things to do here. However, when you are ready to meet with Solea, tell me and I will go with you as back up. Uclepidies will not be able to defeat me.”
“Are you in practice?”
“I am good enough for him.” She fished out a piece of paper and wrote down an address. “This is where Lars is.”
“Thank you.” He kissed Selenia. “Be good.”
“And you be careful.” She flung her arms around him and squeezed. “Next time when you come, I’ll make sure the girls don’t try to knife you.”
Lomones laughed. “That’s very much appreciated, Fledgling.”
“I love you, Daddy.”
“I love you too.”
He kissed her one more time before leaving.
