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

does all the things she does, but there’s a lot of other things in this world I don’t rightly understand either. Don’t mean they ain’t true.”

“What are you afraid of, then?” Chidi dared to ask him.

“Not what I’m afraid of, partner,” Bryant replied, unflinching. “It’s what I know.”

“Which is?”

“She judged me right,” Bryant drawled. “‘Cause I don’t much care for what she ain’t telling us either. Marisa leads me to Henry Boucher and gives me a chance to put that bastard in the ground for what he did to my wife and baby? What he’s done to you too?” Bryant shook his head. “Whatever Marisa Bourgeois wants to charge me for that, why, I reckon that’d be worth it.”

“Why do you sound so worried, then?” Chidi asked.

The former marshal chuckled. “Wouldn’t call myself an old man yet, but my last partner, Edmund? He always said I ain’t far off it. Said if not in body, I’m near enough an old man. To his mind, at least.” Bryant squinted in Chidi’s direction. “But you there, girl? You been through a whole lot of muddy mess so far in your life. I like to think you got the rest of forever to make up for all the things Henry and the Salt have done to you. Now, I’m happy to pay what’s owed, long as it’s me that’s paying up, see? Make no mistake though, partner - I wouldn’t see the hope of better days ahead stolen from you. Not for nothing.”

Chidi blushed, not knowing how to respond.

Bryant went on anyway. “I mean that, Chidi,” he said quietly. “Way I look at it, ain’t no point in promising a person the world and all else they dream on and chase after. Not if they ain’t around to see and enjoy it in the end. You get me?”

Chidi forced a smile. “If what Marisa showed me is true, if what she said about us being able to help stop all the bad from happening and give me the chance of seeing my family again too? Even if I only see my parents for a moment, Bryant, just a second to tell them I love them and have been fighting all this time to get back to them . . . then, all of that will be worth whatever Marisa asks of me too.”

Bryant sighed. “Well, I guess that solves that then, huh? We’re really doing this. Following this crazy runner to whatever it is she’s got planned for us?”

“I guess so,” said Chidi.

“All right, then,” he said. “But just so we’re clear, partner . . . if all this comes down to who pays up on whatever tab she’s running us? It’s her that pays it.” Bryant nodded in Marisa’s direction. “All these plans of her go south on us, she can front the cost for all this fate nonsense and leading us on to wherever her own damn self. ‘Cause me and you? We’re riding off into the sunset at the end, partner. Leaving this whole Salt mess behind for nothing but pastures and woods, peace and quiet, far as you can see . . . and all of it far from the Salt. Agreed?”

Chidi chuckled. “Agreed,” she said, then looked away from the Selkie marshal.

Ahead, Marisa Bourgeois had turned back, watching and waiting for them upon the dock that led to Girard’s boat. Her gaze bore into Chidi’s, the aura of solemnity that the elusive, mystic runner carried about her jolting Chidi even from afar.

Chidi turned back to find Bryant’s eagerness suddenly tempered too.

“C’mon, partner,” he said, starting forward again. “We best catch up before she boards that there boat and freaks the kid out too.”

Chidi followed.

2

KELLEN

To judge the continued pained cries echoing throughout the now wholly underwater cavern, Kellen surmised the last of the slaughtering in Orphan Knoll continued without him. He ignored the ongoing wails of the dying and those holding to the futile hope of escaping their Sancul hunters. For all the clamor and reigned chaos throughout the Knoll, Kellen found his focus on the remains of another killed by his hand.

He stared upon the crushed and rended corpse of Orphan Knoll’s former favor bookie, Roland. The same Nomad slaver who had once lorded over and defiled Kellen when he had been but a Selkie slave, fighting for his life.

Kellen grimaced. You got what you deserved, Roland.

The sight of the dead Nomad brought him some little comfort. His experiences in the Knoll reminded him that there would be more owners to fall beneath him in the future, if Kellen had anything to say about it. You didn’t like being on the other end, did you, Roland? Kellen thought, his cheek twitching at the remembrance of how easily it had been for him to crack the Nomad’s limbs with his claw-tipped tentacles, and then to rend his victim apart with barely an ounce of his true strength.

Because you and all other Salt Children are weak. All lording over Selkies like you were the ones to create them. Kellen told himself, opening his eyes to the underwater world and the present once more. But the Sancul are the true masters down here . . . and I am one of them now.

While the other Sancul had swam off in search of new victims to sate their hunger and their sport, Kellen had yet to leave the gladiatorial fighting pit circle he had fought within as a Selkie slave. Hovering over the arena sands, his tentacles lazed up and down to tread water and hold his position steady. Moving, he used one tentacle to reach for the arena floor, its end curling around like a funnel as it delved into the sand, then raised the grouping up for Kellen to inspect.

So much blood used to soak this sand . . . he thought, allowing the sand to fall, watching it blow like dust in the wind, the particles caught in the underwater current of his own making. And