Salt Storm: The Salted Series: Episodes #31-35 by Galvin, Aaron (top 5 books to read TXT) 📗

moment, he considered voicing his argument too. The look in Tom Weaver’s eyes warned against it. “Just get me topside into the city, then,” said Lenny, continuing even as Tom gave him a disgruntled look. “You’re going up either way, Tommy. At least help me get back to one of Jemmy T’s safehouses and see what his friends can do to find a place for as many of these down here as we can before the Blackfin and his Orcs catch on. Might be Jemmy’s friends can tell you the best way to get outta the city right now too.”

Tom Weaver’s cheeks pinched in consideration of the offer. “All right, then,” he said finally. “But only to get us to a safe-house. Then, I’m gone and you’re all on your own again.”

“Fair enough,” said Lenny, remembering how he had once voiced something similar to Edmund when he was first brought into the city.

“Well, it’s fair enough for me, lads,” said Brutus. “Just what’re the rest of us to do whilst you lot run around the city searching for answers? Wait here on the slaughter to come to us, is it?”

Lenny shook his head. “If any Orcs come down here to check on slaves, it’ll be more like them coming into your slaughterhouse, Brutus . . . and who better to handle them, huh?”

Brutus grinned at that. “Fair enough, then,” he said, waving a beefy finger in Lenny’s direction. “Just see as you boys don’t be taking too long and forget about us down here, Dolan. ‘Cause if them Orcs up there are tracking for some half-breed assassins, then it means they’re not out on the lookout for our sort.” His eyes flashed. “And all that means ol’ Brutus the Brave and his lads can go hunting for those what put us in chains in the first place.”

“All right, then,” said Lenny, looking to Jemmy T and Tom Weaver too. “You guys ready or what?”

Tom Weaver nodded. “Ready when you are, Dolan.”

“Aye, let’s be going, little brudda,” said Jemmy T, casting his crossbow aside and starting for the rickety wooden platforms leading away from the train and then up and out of the cavern. “The city be calling, mon. Aye, She be missing and singing Jemmy T home to be back with Her again, yeah!”

Lenny shared a look with Tom Weaver, then both headed out in following the former tavern owner beyond the train station misery. With Tom walking between them in a seeming show of a Painted Guard escorting Selkie prisoners, the trio climbed the rickety, slick wooden platforms. For every step taken, Lenny’s ears rang with the increasing noise of shouted orders, screams, and sounding trumpets. When they reached the streets of New Pearlaya, Lenny started to second-guess his plan. Scanning the smokestack trails burning throughout the city, the echoed march of armored footfalls, the defiant screams of those being questioned and whose homes were searched, all that lay before Lenny Dolan was chaos and confusion.

All the while, he remembered the lessons that Edmund and Henry Boucher had both taught him when chaos reigned in Crayfish Cavern during the Blackfin’s initial attack. Moreso, what the confusion and chaos had allowed him to do and who it helped him save. Where there’s chaos, there’s opportunity too. Lenny thought as he emerged out the hole leading toward Selkie doom.

No sooner than they were up and out of the tunnel, Jemmy T quickly parted from their company to venture on alone, vanishing down an ensuing darkened alley.

Lenny too stepped free of the train tunnel’s enveloping shadow and with Tom Weaver at his side.

Tom’s grip tightened on Lenny’s arm, but remained loose enough to allow Lenny guide him. “All right, Dolan,” the elder Weaver’s voice was broken through the visor that masked his identity and Selkie nature. “Where do we go from here?”

“Follow me, Tommy,” said Lenny, leading in the opposition direction of Jemmy T, bound for Anchor Alley and the Merrow section of the city. “I’ll show ya the way.”

34

SYDNEY

Sydney followed Quill through the meandering maze of Nautilus tunnels. The pace he led her on had Sydney clutching at her sides, the feel of it like a dagger in her ribs. “St-Stop,” she said, her head swooning as she stumbled with exhaustion and lack of nourishment. “I have to stop.”

“We cannot, child,” he said, kneeling beside her. “Despite the Blackfin’s words, his seawolves will soon follow and hunt for us. We must be long gone from this city before they scent us out.”

Sydney nodded, his words reminding her of when his sister had once warned her of the same. Tears brimmed in her eyes at the memory of all that came after. “Yvla . . .” she wept. “She’s dead.”

Quill’s jaw clenched. After a deep sigh, he nodded. “She and your mother both would be glad to know you survived. That you have been strong and brave all this time in the face of your enemies.”

“I haven’t been,” said Sydney. “I’ve just been afraid . . . I’ve been so afraid.”

“Because you are learning to see and know,” he replied. “True strength and bravery cannot exist without first one knows what it is to be vulnerable, Sydney. Any who claim elsewise reveal their ignorance and having lived without knowing true pain and loss. For while all creatures come to know and live in the shadows of fear and doubt, child, it is precious few who would embrace the shadow within. Aye, and then turn back to face the rest with the hope they’ve discovered residing inside themselves all along.”

Sydney nodded, then quoted the words he had spoken to her in what felt a lifetime ago. “‘To see light and no boundaries when others know only walls and darkness . . .’”

Quill smiled in such a way as to banish all the fear within her. “Aye, child. Just so.”

“Not child,” said Sydney then, tears streaming down her cheeks. “Your child.” Her voice broke at the admission. “Your daughter?”

Quill’s expression softened then,