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

You have the truth. Sydney thought as Darius gave orders for the Orcs to remove the hostages from the dungeon. You just don’t like it.

Her body and spirit numb, Sydney collapsed as the Orcs threw hoods over the four hostages. How many of us? She wondered then. If they have Amelia and Owens, then how many of my other friends and their families do they have down here?

Beside her, the makeshift bone wand that the Blackfin had cast aside lay within her reach. She did not hesitate to reach for it, her grip tightening on the bone wand with her guards distracted by the hostages. As her fingers closed upon the bone, she almost believed it was a whip handle like Yvla’s had been. Sydney imagined striking the king. To stand against all the enemies as her former guardian had done and to try and free her friends.

When she looked down at the bone and bit of tattered rag tied to it, Sydney knew she could mount no such defense against the Blackfin and his Orcs. Much as she craved Yvla’s teachings in that moment, it was another memory that spoke to her instead.

Anything can be a weapon, girl . . . she remembered the steady voice of Yvla’s brother, Quill, saying to her inside his home. If you open your eyes to see.

Sydney’s lip curled as the Orcs laid hands on her friends and took them away once more, just as she had witnessed them do for her mother too. You want truth? She thought, turning her gaze on the king, her fingers releasing the bone to find the swirled bit of the tattered rag instead as the Orcs guards pulled her up to stand again. I’ll give you some.

The moment the king turned around, Sydney jerked her wand arm free of the Orc holding her. Imagining the whip flying out before her as she had done over and again inside the oubliette, Sydney flicked her wrist, holding onto the rag’s end, sending the bone flying out before her, its aim directed at the king. Reaching the end of its tattered binding, the bone swung around as the wet cloth snapped taut.

Darius turned nearly too late to avoid the object flying at his face. He ducked at the last, the bone meant to strike him in the head instead slapping off the crown he wore and sending it skittering across the floor.

Wide-eyed and scarcely believing she had connected with her target, Sydney quickly tried to pull the bone back toward her at the end of its binding.

The Blackfin stomped on the bone, snapping it half before she could call it home.

The king too was rising again. “Blackfin!” he snarled. “Cast this savage back into the oubliette. It would seem she requires more time to think on her life and loyalties before the trials begin.”

“I already know the answers to both,” said Sydney, drawing on the courage she had witnessed from her mother and her friends. “It’s like you said before, Your Grace. You’re the one who wants the lie.”

The king’s face darkened as one of the Orcs gave him back his crown. Darius placed the newly dirtied, gold circlet encrusted with sapphires beyond counting upon his head before venturing over to Sydney. For a moment, she thought he meant to strike her, just as she had seen him do for the queen.

But Darius made no such move. “Perhaps you’re right, Sydney,” he said quietly. “Perhaps I do welcome the lies rather than truth . . . but believe me when I say to you, child, that before these traitor trials are done, I’m going to teach you and your whore mother just how much lies can hurt.”

5

LENNY

The Sailfish train’s whistle screamed over and again as it fled through the tunnel, barreling away from the Ancient City of Song, the ugly memories there, and all those who had sought to keep the Selkies prisoners trapped inside its frozen ruins.

His Ringed Seal hood drawn, Lenny Dolan emerged from the caboose train car to escape the other newly freed Selkies who remained within. He closed the door behind him, silencing the others’ voices and their ongoing, celebratory chatter. Lenny sat upon the rickety, frost-covered wood flooring, even as it rumbled and rattled beneath him.

The caboose swayed with constant movement, the train speeding onward through the black tunnel. The exhaust steam from its engine swept past Lenny, trailing the train in a thick, chalky smoke that lingered on like a phantom trail for anyone left behind to follow.

Lenny Dolan knew that no one would.

He and the former Selkie prisoners had left the Ancient City of Song to its legends and its ghosts. Both the older spirits who had already lingered there, and those newly given over to the forgotten, ruined palace trapped among and beneath the ice.

Lenny hugged his knees to his chest. His Selkie suit staved off the physical cold of the Antarctic tunnel from seeping through, but no amount of mysticism or magical coat could thwart the other, frozen feel knifing him at every thought of the dead he left behind in Røyrkval.

None inside the train cars had noticed the little man maneuvering through their midst, seeking asylum from their noise and their company. Where most of the other Selkies sought sustenance and the kinship from those who had endured their shared experiences, the hollowness in Lenny Dolan could not be filled with food or drink. As for kinship . . .

Lenny repeated his father’s words, whispering them aloud, if only to hear and remember them as if his idol sat beside him. “‘Always have two ways out . . .’”

Even as he spoke his father’s words, Lenny knew his voice did not carry half the authority or wisdom that Declan Dolan’s had done.

Blinking away the sting in his eyes, Lenny rested the back of his head against the train car wall, losing himself to the clack of the railway beneath him.

The constant motion of the rocking