Page 101 of Sway's Peace
Why hadn’t he come back? Why hadn’t he answered his comms?
Where was Grace? Sway needed to find her.
Survival instincts that had taken him this far kicked in and made him turn, fully intending on going back and finding his female. It wouldn’t be long until the captain and the others returned. He could hide out with her somewhere until then. Or even just lock themselves in a room and not emerge until he was certain that they were safe.
But when he turned, he came up short.
There were a line of domini following after him. Males and females, all dressed in camocloth that would normally blend them into the crowd, if they weren’t all facing him with hard looks, deliberately standing out from the crowd. Each of them carrying one of the very weapons he had helped bring here.
A trap, then…
Sway looked them all in the eyes and saw only hard determination. Hatred. Perhaps a hint of disgust. And, somehow, that was not only familiar, it was comfortable. Calming. He knew this. He could handle this.
Turning his back on them again, he kept walking forward. Clearly, it was what they wanted him to do. He pushed through the crowd that was starting to grow silent. They didn’t need to hide what they were doing. He had already walked into it. They knew he couldn’t get out.
At the end of the courtyard, standing on the cold, empty dais where a band had once been playing beautiful songs in front of a merry bonfire, stood Veesway.
His father, crest pressed tight to his scalp, wearing something golden and flowing, draped in jewels, with a hard scowl slashed across his face.
The look he gave Sway as he approached was not one of a father to his son. Not even that of a stranger to a stranger.
There was disgust there. A viscerally disturbed displeasure. Like he was looking at a particularly vile pit of waste.
Sway came to a halt at the base of the dais. He heard but didn’t bother looking back to see the domini guards flanking him from behind. Forming a half circle. Cutting off his escape in case he tried to get away from this.
Sway smiled kindly. Friendly. “A bit dramatic, don’t you think?”
Hot, furious rage swept over Veesway’s face as his hands tightened into fists, his crest shooting right up into the air as if he had been challenged.
“You dare make a mockery ofthis!?” Veesway’s melodic whistles, for all that they were shrieked, were still hauntingly musical.
Sway held out his hands like he was innocent, responding in dull, plain Standard. “I don’t even know what this is.”
Where was Grace? Vweet had seemed so happy, so unbothered when he took her away. If he had been suspicious at all, Sway wouldn’t have let her go. But that might have just been an act. Why separate them at all though? What was he planning?
Veesway turned his head, jaw and eyes tight, like he was holding back a riot of emotions. “For so many years… Forso many years!I thought you were dead. I had given up looking for you!”
Sway didn’t say anything in response to the pained confession. He couldn’t condemn him for eventually giving up since Sway had done the same. But what did it matter?
“When you arrived,” Veesway continued, his whistles carrying easily over the disturbingly silent crowd. “I thought it must be some sort of miracle. I have never been a religious male, but seeing you again, welcoming you home, I could have gone to my knees then and prayed. I thought, surely, there must be a higher power if, at long last, you were returned to me. I didn’t question it. Didn’t even think to wonder how…”
His voice trailed off. The courtyard was silent. Listening to him with rapt attention. Sway said nothing as he watched Veesway breaking down.
His chest… it hurt…
He continued to smile.
Veesway took in a deep breath and dropped his head. Staring at Sway again. “Eefwan, lost one, you are accused of murder, torture, maiming, and illegal sapient experimentation.”
Sway, again, said nothing. That wasn’t a surprise to him. Just because he had been on Rik-Vane, a station lost to the legalities of the world, didn’t mean he wasn’t still tracked. Everything he had done that had been caught on the surveillance that the peacekeepers maintained was a charge pressed against his name. He had already been on Rik-Vane though, so what else was there to do about it?
That was also why he couldn’t use the name Eefwan anymore. Why he’d shed the name his parents gave him and adopted his new one instead.
But that didn’t mean Eefwan ceased existing. And if someone tried to look up Eefwan…
They would find Eefwan the Pacifist, murderer, assistant to the Master, a mad scientist who conducted illegal genetic, sapient, and subspace experimentation.
“Have you nothing to say?” Veesway whistled. Disgusted. Horrified.
