第3章 第9節 嵐が来る
The Storm Comes
The came off the water the way bad news comes, all at once.
Wind tore at the station roof, and the old lights flickered and died.
"The road out floods first," Gabriel said, lighting a stub of .
"By midnight, Saltmere will be an island, and we will be alone on it."
Nora looked through the streaming window toward the dark harbour.
Shapes were moving there, unhurried, carrying lamps that did not .
"Edwin's men," Gabriel said. "A is a gift to men like him."
"If the power stays down, no one sees what happens tonight."
He crossed the room and pressed a small iron key into her .
"If I do not come back," he said, "you will need this more than I will."
"What does it open?" she asked, closing her fingers around the cold metal.
"Not a door," he said. "A promise. The master is where the sea can't reach."
"Above the , above the town, in a place your mother chose herself."
"The key will make sense," he added, "when you have lost everything else."
Nora did not like the shape of those words in his mouth.
"Then we both come back," she said. "You don't get to say goodbye like this."
Gabriel almost smiled, gathering the nearest reels into a bag.
"If they take me, they will not stop to look at an old man's hands."
"You are quicker than I am, and you have farther left to run."
walked across the roof, and the bent but did not go out.
"If they come in," he said, "you go out through the reels and do not look back."
"Whatever you hear behind you, Nora, you keep the key and you keep moving."
She wanted to , but the lamps outside had reached the station steps.
Gabriel blew out the , and the darkness closed over them like water.