Son of Fortune (31 page)

“This ship will go now!” Jian shouted. “Now or I will kill!” Christopher's blue eyes were wide with surprise, but he was surprisingly steady. Jian pulled Christopher to his feet and, keeping him in front as a shield, backed up against the ship's rail.

“I will do what you want,” Fish said calmly. “Do not hurt this man.”

“Please,” Aiden said to Jian. “Your anger is for me. Let him go. Take me in his place.” It was not a brave or noble offer. Aiden simply knew that he had a much better chance than Christopher. A rich merchant's son like Jian probably had not been in many knife fights. Jian might cut him some, but Aiden would not likely die. Gustav was still standing, though blood was pooling on the deck around his feet. Sven the Baby took off his shirt and pressed it against his cousin's wound.

“I will sail the ship,” Fish said. “But think. How long can you hold that knife? One hour? A few hours? Release him now and I will make Mr. Koster promise to spare your life.”

“No!” Jian said. His hand was trembling. He had to know there was no chance, Aiden thought. But a man with no chance was especially dangerous. What reason was there not to slash Christopher's throat?

“Our captain's word is good,” Aiden said.

“But Koster is false,” Jian said, pressing the knife hard. One of the sails caught the wind and snapped with a crack like a gunshot. Everyone jumped. Tiny droplets of blood bloomed from Christopher's throat.

“Death must be my end today,” Jian said calmly. “But I will choose how we meet.” He stared hard at Aiden. “I choose you will kill me.”

Time stopped. The low sun melted the sky. It was not a plea, Aiden realized, but a command. Aiden looked at Fish, not sure if he understood what Jian was saying.

“Please, Fish,” Aiden said. “We can take him with us. Koster can't stop us! So what if we're banished? We want no future here anyway!”

There were shouts from the water, and the splash of oars close by. Aiden and Fish looked out and saw two skiffs rowing rapidly toward them. Each held two Negro guards armed with rifles. Another boat was just leaving the wharf with more armed men.

“They won't shoot us,” Aiden said.

“I don't know what they will do!” Fish said. He looked up at the sails, which were only half raised, flapping in the feeble breeze. “They have authority to board us, and if we try to resist, they can shoot.”

“They won't!” Aiden insisted.

“I will not risk our men.”

“Captain.” Jonas appeared at Fish's side. Aiden saw that he carried two rifles and a pistol from the
Raven
's weapons locker. They had never expected to need guns on this voyage. Piracy was not a problem for guano ships, and mutiny among a crew of family and friends was not likely. Would Koster's men really fire on a merchant vessel? Koster, a bit mad to begin with, had spent a long time on a maddening island.

Fish took the pistol.

“No!” Jian tensed and pressed the knife blade harder against Christopher's throat. “He must do it!” Jian glared at Aiden. “He will kill me.”

“I am the captain of this ship,” Fish said evenly. “It is my duty.”

Jian slashed at Christopher's ear. Bright red blood gushed out. Two of the guards in the rowboats raised their rifles and pointed them at Jian's back.

“Stop!” Aiden yelled. “Don't shoot! You will kill them both!” A rifle bullet from so close could easily pass through Jian's body into Christopher's. “I will do it,” he said to Jian. “Let him go and—and—I will do it.”

He turned to Fish and held out his hand for the gun. Jian, still holding Christopher by the hair, pushing him in front, walked a few steps away from the railing. He did not intend to give the despised guards a chance to kill him. Christopher's face was white. The blood had soaked the front of his shirt.

“Crew muster on the foredeck,” Fish commanded. The sailors on deck scrambled quickly to obey that order, collecting in the front of the ship, well away from any bullets. Aiden raised the pistol. Jian shoved Christopher forward so he fell to his knees. Aiden's hand shook. Maybe there was still another way to end this. But as if reading his mind, Jian raised the knife again and pressed the point against Christopher's throat.

Aiden blinked and took a deep breath, then let it out steadily. He stepped forward. He raised the gun, aimed and squeezed the trigger.

here were no cheers or rockets as the
Raven
sailed out of the anchorage. Though no one on the other ships knew exactly what had happened, they had all heard the alarm bell and the gunshot, had seen the
Raven
's delay and knew it could not be good. The sailors did not line the rail to wave farewell; they were busy hauling up buckets of water and scrubbing away the blood on the deck. The first sweet taste of clean sea air brought little relief. Fish allowed generous rations of pisco that night, but even that brought no lightness, only a grateful numbness. The slash across Gustav's back, though long, was shallow, requiring no stitches. Christopher's earlobe had been sliced nearly through, but Sven the Baby made neat work of it.

It was a gloomy ship for those first few days. Christopher mostly stayed drunk and Aiden mostly stayed still. It was like a job, being still: to eat nothing, to breathe as little as possible, to move only as needed. He did not read or pace the deck as he had so often on the journey down. He did not talk and he did not think. He put his mind into the sky and the wind and left it there, away from everything.

Though Fish had never set foot on the island itself, the evil touch of the place had affected him, even before that awful final day. But with a ship to run, he had no time for depression. There were no moral questions for sailing a ship—it was just ropes and muscle and judgment. No one questioned why the wind blew the way it did; they just had to work the sails to fit. So the days passed and the sea lengthened behind them. The men came back to life the way men do—and must. The horror of the place was too big to live with, and they had to live, so they wooed forgetfulness in the rhythm of the sea and the working of the ship.

After a few days, Aiden began to climb and reef and haul along with the sailors, for it was good to be doing something useful. Even Christopher began to stand watches, for it was something to do. Fish would not let either of them climb higher than the lowest yards or do any work on deck in rough weather, but he understood that hard work was the best repair for damaged souls. Miles passed and days passed. The sky was blue and the sea was a different blue. Christopher mostly stopped drinking, except for the day the Christmas pig was slaughtered. He saw it hanging over the lee rail, the cut throat gaping, the blood spattering the waves in arcs with the tossing of the ship. Aiden saw him turn pale and begin to shake. They had not talked about that day. What was there to say? Christopher stumbled to the cabin, and he drank and he cried so he choked and lost his breath, and Aiden held him like he would one of the ducklings until, spent, he fell into a deep, ragged sleep. They never spoke of that again either.

The ship slipped hemispheres, and the men pulled out sweaters and flannels against the winter chill. Though they had a fairly steady course and could often see land, Fish still took a sight with the sextant each day at noon. It was like a religious ritual for him. On New Year's Eve, they shot off rockets and toasted the year 1867. Four weeks later, the
Raven
slipped into San Francisco Bay, just another cargo ship in a busy port.

Everything in San Francisco felt strange to Aiden. Of course it would, after almost six months away. There was solid ground, for one thing, and all the colors, especially green. There were dogs. Fresh water flowed from taps—clear and unlimited. His bed alone was nearly as big as the whole cabin he had shared with Christopher aboard the
Raven.

It felt especially strange to be standing here now in Mr. Worthington's office. He gazed down to the garden below, where Christopher and Elizabeth were sitting on a bench eating hothouse cherries. They spat the pits into the bushes, competing for distance. The heavy oak door opened and Mr. Worthington entered, walking soundlessly across the thick carpet. That was another strange thing—how quiet it was here. Of course it wasn't really, but city noise was different—it was not the relentless screech of a million seabirds or the constant noise of the wind and waves. And here in the sheltered world of the Worthington estate, it sometimes was actually silent. In the middle of the night anyway.

“Thank you for making time for me, Mr. Worthington,” Aiden said, swimming out to meet him in the center of the vast room.

“I've been wishing for such time,” Worthington said, taking Aiden's hand and looking at him closely. “You have been rather monkish since your return.” There was a tenderness and concern in his gray eyes that Aiden had never seen before, except with the ducklings. Aiden looked away.

“I'm still adjusting,” he said vaguely.

“Of course.”

Aiden didn't know what Christopher had told his father in their private council, but he suspected the old man knew most of it. In front of the family, Aiden had said almost nothing about their journey, and Christopher had told only the lightest of stories, enthralling the ducklings with descriptions of jumping dolphins and sea lions and the odd giant accordion player who would never stop playing. He told about playing cricket on a field of bird poop. The little girls thought an island full of bird poop hysterically funny to begin with, so it was easy to go from there. All unpleasantness was left out, and they were young enough not to even know there were questions to be asked. The tidal wave was simply excitement and high drama. The scar on his ear? Stupidly trying to shave in rough seas, of course.

“Sit down.” Mr. Worthington led him to the comfortable chairs by the window. “You want to talk about some business.”

“About the
Raven,
” Aiden said nervously. There was no overture with Mr. Worthington. One got straight to the point or was soon dismissed. “I would like to arrange to relinquish my ownership half to Christopher. The guano license as well.”

Mr. Worthington frowned. “Have you spoken to Christopher about this?”

“Yes. He doesn't want me to do it. But I don't want payment. I know you will say that is foolish and bad business, but I have decided. I believe it would just be a matter of drawing up papers.”

“Christopher made it clear from the beginning that he wanted me to have no part of this endeavor,” Mr. Worthington said somberly.

“Yes, but now the endeavor is over.” Aiden did not believe for a minute that the man had not scrutinized every deed and writ that his son had entered into, but he was willing to play along. “I only ask you for the name of a lawyer who can do papers. I don't know any lawyers.”

“Of course,” Worthington said. “I will make an appointment for you.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“So, you will be rid of the devil's ship and the devil's business. What do you intend to do, then, with the devil's profits?”

“Excuse me?”

Mr. Worthington leaned back in his chair.

“I understand the guano business has turned out to be more than either of you expected,” he said. “Now you wish to divest yourself from the poisonous trade. But you have already earned a healthy fortune from this trip. So what do you intend to do with your—blood money?”

The glimpse of fatherly concern had vanished. The question was meant to be biting.

“I—I don't know, sir,” Aiden said quietly.

“Throw it into the sea?”

“No.”

“So you will keep it? Invest it? Live richly? Give it all away to the poor?”

“I don't know.”

Mr. Worthington went over to the little table and poured two glasses of cognac.

“The poor will always be with us—Jesus himself said that. And do you know why he said that? Because Jesus was crap at business.” He handed Aiden a glass and stood by the window, looking down at his son and daughter in the garden. “He could have charged a penny apiece for all those loaves and fishes, and people still would have been happy, still would have known it was a miracle. Then he could have taken all those pennies, picked a dozen men out of the crowd and handed them each enough money to start a business.” Mr. Worthington swirled his glass around and held it up to the light to watch the golden liquid slide down the crystal. “But no—everyone went home with nothing but a free lunch and a blessing of their poverty.”

The smell of the cognac made Aiden feel sick to his stomach.

“You've had two months since you left the island with nothing to do but think.”

“Yes,” Aiden said. “But I have found no answers.”

“Of course you haven't. Because there are none. There never have been and there never will be.” Aiden wondered if the man had already been drinking. As long as he had known him, Mr. Worthington had been an abstemious man, but now he seemed slightly unmoored.

“What about Christopher?” Worthington looked at Aiden with a sharp gaze. “Do you despise him now?”

“No, of course not.”

“But he has no qualms about profiting from this evil. Doesn't that make him despicable?”

“I am loyal to Christopher and will remain so.”

“Why?”

“He is my friend.”

“Yet by your sentiment, if he continues in this trade, he is at least evil, if not a murderer.”

“No. You're—you're twisting things up.” It seemed all the air had gone out of the room. Aiden stood. He wanted to leave, but the carpet was endless as the prairie and he didn't think he could cross it. The colors all swirled together. How were rugs made? Were people slaved to the looms?
What do your nice boots really cost? Or the sugar in your coffee? Do you lie in your comfortable bed on your soft sheets night after night, fretting for the slaves picking cotton and the little children who work in the mills?

“Oh, sit down,” Mr. Worthington said. “You are in no shape to be deciding your future right now. Neither one of you. Christopher is like an old man. I never thought I would long for his mercurial tempers, but…” He could not finish the thought. His hand shook as he lifted his glass. “And you are a wraith,” he went on, his voice returning to mild paternal scolding. “You hardly eat at meals, you wander the house and the garden all night. Christopher says you haven't slept a night since you left that place. I know you've had a harsh lesson—”