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

they be willing to die for? Atsidi replied. A true assassin need not live to see his task accomplished. His purpose served.

Garrett dwelt on the Hammer chieftain’s words as they continued in their descent. His ears popped with the depth and darkening water, the world turned dull in his mind as he followed his companions’ lead.

What would I be willing to die for? Garrett pondered Atsidi’s question. He shuddered at the thought of dying, even as his memory reminded that he had faced the prospect of meeting his death several times over already.

Garrett cheered somewhat at that, the knowledge that he had both fought and survived to save some of his friends at least. Lenny. He thought of rescuing his Selkie friends after the Blackfin’s attack on Crayfish Cavern. Edmund and Ellie too. He frowned at the memory and recollection of their seal faces. More at not knowing what fate held in store for them after the cavern attack had ended. What occurred after he had passed along Lenny Dolan’s warning of the Painted Guard recruits’ intent to defile Ellie. Garrett trembled then, realizing he had not seen his Selkie friends again after that night, despite his attempts to be reunited with them during their shared journey to New Pearlaya. Maybe Syd’s mom helped them get out, he told himself.

Or Makeda did . . . his conscience argued. She would have been the one to save them. Not Nattie.

Garrett pushed such thoughts aside, holding instead to the memory of Makeda rising in the sand of the Orc training grounds. He would never forget the hostage Pod Mother fending off all her attackers that she might reach Cristina Weaver and deliver a killing blow. Though Makeda had failed in the attempt, Garrett could not unsee the actions Makeda had taken against the one he named as his true mother.

But why? Garrett asked himself, gritting his teeth at the picture in his mind that remained as clear as the moment he witnessed it occur. Of Makeda wrestled back to the ground by the Painted Guard traitors, all while he howled as his adoptive, Silkie mother, Cristina, lay fallen and still upon the sand. Why did Makeda do it?

For all of Cursion White Shadow’s affectionate speech for Makeda in the Devil’s Triangle, Garrett could scarcely believe such stories. The Makeda he remembered had been harsh and biting at every turn. A true Pod Mother in every respect, but nothing like the loving, adopted Selkie mother he had known all his life.

Garrett grimaced, instinctually scouting the surrounding water as if he expected a pod of traitorous Painted Guard to spring from the shadowed depths and take him unawares as they had done in New Pearlaya.

Of Orcs, he saw none in the surrounding water. Of Nomads, he found several.

They swam together at the uttermost edge of a rocky shelf, devoid of any coral or life. All that existed beyond was further darkness and deep, the Salt plunging downward into the abyssal depths and the Nomads poised upon the brink of the shadowy beyond.

Garrett did not recognize most of the Nomad council – one a female with intricate and off-setting white and turquoise tattoos to give her body and face the impression of stripes and skeletal bones. Her tail was likewise striped, and Garrett gathered then that she hailed from among the Tiger Shark clans. She kept a harpoon slung over her back and twin daggers hanging off either hip, her tail lazing about to hold her position in the water.

Another from Garrett’s party swam off to join her - the Night-Stalker leader, Short-Shore, with his Oceanic Whitetip tail.

Garrett had not recalled seeing the Night-Stalker leader joining them in descent, but he watched as Short-Shore touched his hand to his forehead in respectful show before joining near a dozen others among the council. Reaching the rocks, Short-Shore settled in beside the She-Tiger chieftain, the pair of them conversing in a whispered, foreign language that neither Garrett nor either of his primal Salt minds could recognize.

A Mako Shark like Watawa shot past the grouping also, speeding around the gathering circle as if he could not manage to wait idly by.

Garrett marveled at a shark-man with blue-tinted skin too. The warrior’s tail and markings nearly allowed him to blend entirely with the surrounding water, he being the chieftain of the Blue Shark tribes. In addition to the intricate, tribal adornments stained upon his skin, the Blue Shark chieftain wore a collection of shells around his neck, all of them rattling together as he swam toward the center of the rock shelf bearing a lantern. Within blazed a greenish, bioluminescent light that helped to cast all of their movements against the rock face like silhouetted shadow-puppets.

For all the strangers gathered there, Garrett focused on the two leaders he did recognize, the pair who swam on opposing sides of the council, their gazes ever wary and cautious of the other. When both took notice of Garrett’s group coming to join them, there was unabashed joy in the face of his blood father, Cursion White Shadow, the leader of the Great Whites and high chieftain of all Nomads.

Where Cursion White Shadow held no hesitation at allowing others to see his unbridled happiness, Garrett knew only mockery from the Nomad swimming opposite him.

What’s this, high chieftain? Ishmael called out when Cursion swam to meet with Garrett. Are we welcoming the enemy even into our councils now? Aye, trusting an Orc to hear all the secret plans whispered here?

Garrett flushed at the jeer, but he said nothing of the slight.

Cursion slid his arm around Garrett’s shoulders, pulling his son in a warm embrace despite the surrounding cold. This one is no more enemy than you are, Red Water, he said, turning back Ishmael’s taunts with one of his own. And the people have even less reason to doubt him.

It is not the greater people’s thoughts to concern me, said Ishmael. It is my own tribes’ worries that I voice to the council now.

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