SWAB (A Young Adult Dystopian Novel) (23 page)

“I will not,” I said clearly. Queen Emerald’s mouth twitched, and she dropped her hand. The guard’s fingers tightened around the knife.

“Stop!” I screamed at him. “You won’t harm him!” The stomp of my boot rang against the stone. Amazingly, the guard didn’t slit my brother’s throat. He dropped the blade and straightened. He still held onto Nathan but faced me.

There was a moment of shock on all sides, but then Emerald was in a rage. “What are you doing?” she shouted to the guard. “Kill him!”

The guard didn’t budge but continued to face me solidly.
He didn’t kill Nathan!
My heart rejoiced, but I was still stunned at what was going on.
The guard listened to
me.

The guard turned to Emerald. “I no longer serve you,” he said. He faced me once more.

Swab.
The strange word repeated in my mind. No one moved for a long moment, a perplexing stalemate.

“Do it, now!” the queen shrieked, stomping her foot.

“Don’t,” I said over her, my voice clanging with challenge.

The guard didn’t budge. Emerald gaped at the guard, then she spun to me.

“Who are you to challenge me?” Her voice dripped with venom. She was the most powerful scarb in the entire colony and possibly the entire country. My hands trembled slightly at my sides, but I refused to pay them any mind. Emerald grimaced at me. She clenched her fingers tightly, like she would like to wrap them around my throat.

“Seize her!” she commanded Iva and the rest of her guard. Several hooded guards came toward me, but Iva and the one who refused to kill Nathan stayed where they were.

“Stand down!” I ordered, facing the soldiers head on. “You will not touch me or anyone else.”A few stopped; the others stalled as if they didn’t know what to do. Iva smiled.

Emerald’s skin turned reddish. “Kill them!” she screamed at Iva. When Iva didn’t move, the queen turned to her guard. “Kill them all!” The guard rushed at me.

“Not while I’m here,” Iva said crisply. Her body flew into motion. Her pale green hands hit the chest of the closest guard with razor force, causing him to fly back and knock down several others.

The dungeon erupted into chaos. Guard fought against guard. “Stop her!” Emerald shouted. “You serve me! Filthy mongrels! You belong to me!”

But more than half listened to me now, and they kept the others back. Bram, Iva’s lover, was among those that had joined me. Derrick came to my side. “Get your brother,” he told me, smashing his elbow into a soldier’s nose. Frantically, I looked through the dim light and crashing bodies to find Nathan, but. I couldn’t see him.

“Bring Nathan to me!” I shouted, hoping the guard who held him would respond. But only the grunts of fighting and the sounds of ripping flesh answered me. Then the queen’s voice rang out, “I have Nathan, Cat! I have your brother!”

Terror split my chest in half. “Stop!” I shouted. The scarb around me stilled, panting but no longer fighting. Derrick wiped at blood from a cut his forehead.

“Move.” I motioned the guards in front of me. They did, and I could see the queen, her arms wrapped around my brother and her knife pressed against his Adam’s apple.

“Kill him, and you’re dead,” Iva said lowly. She had her own knife aimed to launch at the queen’s heart.

The queen glared at her mutinous scarb, then she turned to me. “I see that we have come to an impasse. Your rebellion will not go unchecked. You will pay for this in blood.”Using Nathan as a shield, Emerald side-stepped along the back wall of the dungeon. The guards still loyal to her inched along beside her until they fled into the darkness of the stairs. The queen was gone, but so was my brother.

Chapter Twenty-One

Not Purely Stupid

Nathan’s gone
.
She took him
.
Emerald had fled out of the dungeon with her guard. And she had taken my brother with her.

Around me, Derrick and the others tended to their wounds. The guards that had turned against Queen Emerald stood at attention, watching me from the corners of their eyes. A few of them looked a little bewildered, like they didn’t really understand what had just happened. Neither did I.

“You’re a swab,” Iva said, stepping around me from the left. She sheathed her knife onto the silver belt around her waist.

“Swab
,” I repeated, as if that word somehow explained everything. But before I could ask her what that meant, she bowed herself lowly to me so I could see the crown of her head.

“I serve you now, my queen.”

Queen?
I was about to stop her, but then all the scarb went to their knees. Jorge, Travis, Gray, and even Derrick all bowed.

They still knelt. Clearly, they weren’t going to get back up until I told them to. “Please, get up,” I said softly, my voice thick with embarrassment. Especially because of Derrick and my friends. They didn’t need to treat me like this.

When they stood, though, their faces gleamed with a mixture of joy and resolution. But I couldn’t smile back. I had infuriated a dangerous queen, and my brother had been captured because of it.

Iva stepped forward, standing strong. She spoke to the other scarb clearly. “For five years, no one has dared to defy Emerald and
survived. We have a new queen now. One that is young and strong, capable of greater power than Emerald ever was.”

“With you, we can seize the colony!” one of the guards cried out, clapping the tentacles on his hands together.

“We can take down Emerald!” Bram called out deeply.

“Conquer the Americas!” a third cried.

I put my hands up. “Wait. Wait, please. I don’t know why you think I’m capable of doing all that, and even if I were, all I want to do is get my brother back.” I paused. “And find Ray.”

“Emerald will retaliate,” a soldier with yellow horns said. “We need to prepare.”

Gray agreed. “We will have to fight if we’re going to get Nate back.”

Jorge stepped forward. “We need to increase our numbers.”He motioned to the guards around us. “If you got these guys to join you, we can go get more.”

Iva shook her head, “It doesn’t work like that. Loyalty can only be established in the heat of battle. It’s just us until we face Emerald’s armies again.”

This was too much. I put my hand to my head, my fingers finding the barbs there. “I need a moment. Please.”

I couldn’t face all those eyes staring at me, expecting some kind of miracle, so I went to the only place that seemed to offer any sanctuary: my cell. I didn’t close the bars, but I slipped into the shadow of the corner and felt myself relax a bit more in the protection of the darkness.

A queen. They think I’m a queen.
I didn’t want to submit to Emerald’s plans, but that didn’t mean I wanted to take her place. Being a queen was messy business, always fighting one another, struggling to keep order in the colony, and trying to be more powerful than the next.

How did these scarb get to thinking I was queen anyway?

“May I answer that question, my queen?” Iva’s clear voice came into my mind. She was standing at the doorway of my cell, but her usual fighter stance was relaxed into one of graceful calm. I could tell she meant no harm. She only wanted to help ease my confusion. I knew the real intent of her thoughts when she gave them to me as clearly as I knew my own. I should have wanted to kill her. For days, I’d thought of nothing else. She took Ray from me. But ever since she had begged me to save her lover, something had changed between us.

“Sure,” I answered. Iva gave a small flap of her wings and came to sit across from me in the cell. She smelled of spearmint. It was odd to be sitting now next to the one who had taken Ray, who I had wanted vengeance.
But she’s not my real enemy, not any more. Emerald is.
All of this had ultimately been her doing. I needed Iva. I didn’t like it, but I would be a fool to let my old grudge rule me now.

“I understand your questions,” she said. Somehow, even in the low light, her skin still glowed softly, like pale green stardust.

“Yes,” I exhaled, reluctantly grateful that someone seemed to understand that, even if it was her. “Why did you call me a ‘swab’?”

“You don’t know what a swab is?” she asked with a cock of her head, like she was surprised I didn’t already know.

“I’ve never heard that word until an hour ago.”

She smiled. “I’m surprised. You acted exactly like one minutes after I told you.”

I thought back to the scene with Emerald. She ordered the cells to be opened. Iva told me to bow to no one. The guard put the knife to Nathan’s throat. I told him to stop, and he listened. I then commanded the other scarb to not fight us. Many of them heeded me and fought the queen instead.

I tried to piece it together. “So, because I started commanding like a queen, that makes me a swab?”

Iva gave a gentle smile. “Not exactly. I knew you were a swab when I saw you at the Rand. You commanded the lights. It wasn’t until the battle at the waterfall during your attempted escape that you won my loyalty. You saved my lover. You kept my secret. It was then that I knew you would be a far worthier queen than Emerald could ever be.”

This surprised me. I knew how bad it had felt to lose Ray. I didn’t want anyone else to suffer that. Now, her loyalty had probably saved my life and the lives of my friends. I could never have known how far the consequences of that one choice would go.

“But what is a swab?” I asked.

Iva touched my shoulder softly.
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“It’s the Origin word for ‘queen.’ It’s not something you can become, only something that you
are
.
When the scientists discovered you were a Bearer, they also feared you were something more. Your eyes also gave it away.”

“My eyes?”

“Yes,” she pointed at them. “You have only two irises. Emerald and you are the only two I’ve ever seen to have that. And your thoughts,” she tapped my temples, “were another sign.”

“What about my thoughts?”

“Have you ever wondered why you can’t hide them from others?”

“All the time. It’s so annoying.”

Iva laughed. “It’s actually not such a curse. Swabs have a greater effect upon the connection. They must if they are to rule over other scarb.
It’s how you can command armies and address all of your subjects at once. You emit a stronger frequency than any other scarb.”

“Well, wouldn’t that be bad, too? Couldn’t other queens hear my thoughts?”

She shook her head. “No. That’s one of the greatest strengths of being a swab. Only your loyal subjects will be able to hear your thoughts openly. You will have to focus your thoughts at another queen if you want to speak with her specifically. That’s what Emerald had to do with you.” She motioned to the place outside my cell where the scene had played out.

I shifted my legs under me. “I still don’t see why it’s so great for everyone to be able to hear what I’m thinking.”

“I understand it can seem like an invasion of your privacy, but it’s actually a great gift to your loyal scarb. It keeps complete candidness between you and them. There is no secret you can keep from them. They will know your every thought, every desire of your heart. This is how scarb can choose to give their allegiance to a queen. Swab might be able to deceive each other, but they can never deceive their subjects. It’s kind of like a system of checks and balances to even out the power between swab and other scarb.”

It was making better sense to me now. At least I understood why I couldn’t keep my thoughts from others. I was still a freak, but not purely stupid.

This made me think of something else. “But Saki and Jack could hear my thoughts, and they’re not here now. They’re not loyal to me.”

“All scarb will be able to hear both yours and Emerald’s thoughts while you reside in the same colony. That’s how they will choose to pledge fealty to you or her.”

I still didn’t like the idea of everyone hearing my thoughts, but I understood why this would benefit the scarb. How much better would politicians be able to lead if everyone heard their real thoughts, the real intent behind their words? People would be able to choose those with similar motives and desires to theirs. Trust would be absolute. I just hoped that when the time came, more would choose me than Emerald.
I couldn’t do this alone. I needed their help. But Emerald had a lot more experience with this, and that worried me.

Iva waited until I had finished thinking it through, then continued. “Emerald may be one of the oldest queens, but she doesn’t have the heart you do. That’s all that will matter.”Her words were full of confidence. “Emerald didn’t want you to know you were a swab. She wanted to force you to be subservient to harness your reproductive powers for her colony, as you are the only swab known to be able to reproduce. But she underestimated you. You proved not to be a weak queen like she had hoped. Now you’ve challenged Emerald as only another queen can. A division has already begun. Only time will prove who the more powerful of you two is.”

I thought about this. “So I have to kill her?”

Iva nodded once. “Yes. A colony can only be loyal to one queen.”

“Do I have to fight her? Can’t I just run away?”

“Not if you want to get your brother back.”

I could see that she was right. Running away wouldn’t get rescue Nathan. “What do we do now?”

Iva dipped her head. “You’re the queen it’s your decision.”

“What would you do, if you were the swab?”

Her face was hard. “I would strike her fast and first, before she has time to gather her forces. She’s expecting a large addition to her army from her sister’s colony in two days. We want to act before they arrive. You’ll find the scarb easier to sway in smaller numbers and in situations where Emerald seems weak. If you can come off the stronger challenger, you’ll win.”