Salt Storm: The Salted Series: Episodes #31-35 by Galvin, Aaron (read 50 shades of grey .TXT) 📕

all those who had come to suffer for her earlier decisions. He’s just going to mess with me for whatever answer I give him, Sydney knew, Malik watching her all the while. The fire within her swelled at the notion of being his plaything to torment. You want to play games? She thought to herself, wondering what answer to give.

Malik stirred outside her tank. “I’m not a patient Orc, girl. If you would scorn my offer—”

“Let my brother live,” Sydney interrupted. “And free my mother.”

“Two favors, then?” Malik smirked. “The first is easily done. The second . . .”

“Too hard for you to accomplish, Blackfin?”

“There are games and then there are games, child,” he replied. “Which do you really wish to play with me?”

“Whichever one frees the most people that I really care about,” said Sydney. “And if you want me to trust you . . . you can make them all happen, no?”

“I could,” he admitted. “But why give you two gifts when I only offered one?”

“Because if you want me to believe you,” Sydney fed him the lie. “If you really want me to believe that everything you’ve told me is true, then you’ll let my brother live and save my mother too. Her and all the others who came back to the Salt with her too.” She hesitated. “Because if you can do all of that . . . if you can free them all to safely go back home . . . then, I’ll believe anything you say and do whatever you ask of me.”

Malik grinned. “I don’t need you to believe me, savage, but it’s nice to know your price.”

Then, he turned away, taking up his torch once more, and left Sydney without another word.

26

LENNY

After searching near the whole train for the crimson-haired giant, Lenny found Tom Weaver in the same place that both had retreated to when they sought escape from the cheering cries of those who had survived in Røyrkval. Seated alone at the furthest reach of the Sailfish train, no small part of Lenny wondered if he should leave the giant Selkie to his thoughts and grieving for his murdered friend, Vasili. Hesitant in the door’s threshold, Lenny was already turning back into the train car when Tom Weaver spoke up.

“It’s all right, Dolan,” he said softly, barely loud enough to be heard over the train wheel’s constant clacks moving over the railways beneath them. “You can come on out.”

“You sure?” Lenny asked, even as he obeyed. “I can leave you be . . .”

Tom shook his head and waved Lenny to sit with him.

Lenny did. They sat without speaking a long while, the pair of them seemingly content to let the silence between them stand in favor of the train’s hurtling on toward the Salt capital. As his thoughts often did since Declan’s demise, Lenny reminisced on his father; back to earlier days, when the Dolan father and son would sit together in Crayfish Cavern, all without a word between them. Lenny remembered hating such moments then, and with Declan often frustrated that his son could not tolerate the quiet.

Lenny found the silence oddly comforting now, no longer needing to fill the air with meaningless words. Instead, he allowed his mind to roam with thoughts of those olden days, back before Declan and all of Lenny’s other loved ones too were stolen away. Where do I go from here, Pop? He wondered now, as he had done countless times since losing Declan. The caboose gently rocked back and forth, near lulling him to sleep, the light from its lantern casting long, moving shadows along the cavern tunnel walls as the train sped by. What am I supposed to do next?

The tunnel darkness and its moving shadows held no answers for him.

And so Lenny Dolan allowed such questions and worries to pass through him, comforting himself instead with one of his father’s favorite standbys. Patience, son. He imagined Declan would say in such a moment as Lenny found himself in now. No point in worrying. Just be patient. It’ll all work itself out.

Experience led Lenny to doubt the latter bit, even as his conscience warned that he was alive and well, despite the losses he and others had suffered. That his family honor remained intact, so long as he stood to honor Declan’s legacy.

Lenny could not say how long he sat alongside Tom Weaver. Curiosity led him to wonder what thoughts plagued the bigger man also, or if he was plagued at all. If, perhaps, Tom Weaver held such keys of confidence and peace as only time and life and harsh lessons could teach.

When the elder man shifted from his seated position, Lenny imagined Tom Weaver meant to stand and leave him to his own grief and wonderings. But the Selkie leader did not stand, nor abandon him. Instead, Tom reached inside his suit’s middle pocket and took out the leather-thonged necklace that he had removed from Vasili before placing his friend upon the funeral pyre and set him to burn.

Tom offered the necklace to Lenny. “Take it, Dolan. It’s yours.”

“Mine?” Lenny asked, accepting the necklace and studying it – a simple string of leather with what looked to be a porous, broken shard of a white shell that had been crudely carved as a pendant. Smooth on some parts, jagged on the others, Lenny shuddered as he ran his fingers over the sides and noted a bit of near invisible markings adorning the pendant. “What kind of shell is this?”

“It’s not a shell,” said Tom. “It’s bone.”

“Bone?”

Tom Weaver nodded. “A tooth, rather,” he said. “Or at least I think it was before someone whittled it down and made some kind of etchings on it.”

Lenny’s eyebrows raised at the size and shape of it. “What kind of animal would have a tooth as big as—” He stopped short, the answer coming to him of a sudden. “A whale?”

“I tend to think so,” said Tom. “Short of a dinosaur, I reckon