Salt Storm: The Salted Series: Episodes #31-35 Galvin, Aaron (classic fiction txt) 📖

follow the others, Henry Boucher had continued his muffled, shouted threats all the while from inside the crematorium, his voice dampened somewhat by the fiery song and its billowing, smoky chorus outside. Turning back, Lenny ventured toward the factory. Cautiously, he dared to slip on inside.

With the massive kiln fires ceased, the cavern’s natural cold had already seeped through the factory walls to steal away the former warmth brought about by the fuel once offered from the Selkie barrows. The conveyor too had stopped, the walrus pairing that had served as its motor and pulley having been already freed of their yokes. In their place, Tom Weaver had offered another to the wheel of burden and the watery, circular ditch it lay within.

Where the walrus bodies had once been mostly submerged by the weighty harness placed about their necks, Henry stood in the neck-deep water, a frosty sheen already threatening to take hold over the surface and freeze it over without the kiln’s heat to keep it melted. The walrus slaves had been freed hours ago with Lenny’s first foray into the crematorium. Their harnesses had been cast nearby, their yokes too wide and large to truly fit over Henry and bind him. The chains they left behind had served to lash the Frenchman to the wheel, however, and Tom Weaver had doubled down on the imprisonment by strapping one manacle over Henry’s left hand. The manacle’s opposite end was staked into the upper floor, outside the ditch, and beyond the point where Henry might hope to pry it free of his own merit.

For all the bindings that held Henry, it was the last of the tortures Tom Weaver had left that raised Lenny’s eyebrows. So that’s what he was yelling about . . . Lenny understood, noting the frayed ends near Henry’s neckline, the place where his Selkie hood once hung. Instead, Lenny found the key to Henry’s Salt transformation newly carved free of his suit. The Leper hood he once wore was now staked just beyond his reach by the same dagger that Henry had used to kill Vasili.

With his one remaining good eye, Henry Boucher glared at Lenny from down in the watery ditch that would serve as both his prison and his death sentence. “Have you come to kill me, little Lenny? A final act of mercy?”

Lenny approached him slow, wary of Henry even despite his former crewmate’s predicament. “No. I’m not gonna kill ya, Henry.”

“To gloat, then?” Henry asked.

“No . . .”

“Then, why come?” Henry asked.

“To see what you was yelling about,” Lenny answered. “And to better understand the other man I gotta ride with all the way back to the capital.”

Henry chuckled, then, his teeth broken and bloody. “To learn what the monster is capable of, yes?” His good eye glinted up at Lenny. “Oui. You came to see what fate awaits you also when Monsieur Weaver passes judgement on you next, hmm? After all, it was you who took his son, Dolan. Your choice to bring Garrett Weaver into the Salt.”

“Think me and Tom have settled that between us,” said Lenny.

“Have you?” Henry challenged him, his grin widening. “Ah, but you are not free of him yet, nipperkin. Perhaps he still has need of you to find his son. And when Tom Weaver is done with you . . .”

Lenny fended off the seed of doubt that Henry sought to plant with his implied threat. “What’re you suggesting, Henry? That maybe I set ya free and you’ll watch over me or something? Protect me? Is that it?”

“No,” said Henry. “For we both know it would be a lie . . . and when have I ever lied to you, little capitaine?”

Lenny tried to think of an example, his memory failing him, despite all that they had been through. “Why warn me, then? If that is what you’re trying to do.”

“Because you came to see me,” said Henry, his chains rattling as he attempted to move and was held back. Frowning, he looked on Lenny again. “And because it seems possible that you are the last face I will ever see, little Lenny . . . the one person I might ask for a final favor.”

Lenny scoffed. “Favor, huh? After I watched ya kill Vasili and then ya tried to do the same for me too? Nah, I don’t think so, pal. Gimme one good reason why you think I’d ever do you a solid, Henry.”

“Because I spoke true to you,” said Henry. “If it were not for me, you would have been killed in Crayfish Cavern when your owner sentenced you to die. I saved you from that end, little capitaine . . . just as you now could save me from this fate in fair repayment.”

Lenny snorted. “You’re crazier than I thought, Henry. Especially if you think I’d ever go about setting you free after all you and me been through together. All the stuff I seen you pull,” Lenny glowered as he thought back on their forced journeys together. “Aye, the pain I seen you put others through.”

“My Chidi, you mean . . .” said Henry softly.

“And Vasili today . . .” Lenny’s chest tightened as he reflected on others he had known and lost along the journey of life. “Racer and his father, Ansel, too. Both of them would still be alive, if not for you. Who knows how many others I never even met too?” He clucked his tongue. “And let’s not pretend like ya wouldn’t have killed me too not even an hour ago if Tommy hadn’t come to stop you from it.”

Henry smiled. “And still you came here to see me off,” he toyed with him. “Why, little Lenny? For all that I have done to others . . . for all that I have done to you . . . why come?”

“I dunno,” said Lenny. “To see another monster meet his end, I guess. How about that?”

“No,” said Henry, his good eye flashing. “You came here