Son of Fortune (30 page)

“And where are these pieces that I brought you?” Jian said.

Aiden's heart sank. Alice had taken all the authentic shards with her to Lima, and the others had been lost in the wave. The ship turned and the afternoon sun beamed through the portholes on the upper deck. The light spilled through the open hatch and striped the dusty air with a cruel brightness. Jian's body was coated white with guano dust, but his sweat carved out the lines of his skeleton.

“I can't take you,” Aiden said. “I'm sorry.” Was there actually some place he could hide Jian where he would not be found? Back below the guano in the bilge? The
Raven
was at least twenty minutes from sailing freely—what if they were ordered to stop? Once the alarm bell was sounded, everyone in the anchorage would know that a coolie had escaped. What would the other ships do? The captains all depended on this trade for their livelihoods. Even if a few might be sympathetic, would they risk their own futures? They were already at the lowest levels of the shipping world. Where would they sail if they were banished from the guano trade? A couple of well-rowed launches could easily overtake the lumbering
Raven
under her harbor sails. Assisting in the capture of an escaped coolie would gain a ship favor in loading for the future, favor worth thousands of dollars a year.

“The guards will discover you are missing. They must already be counting. I cannot change the numbers.”

“I have chosen my fate,” Jian replied.

“Well, you can't choose mine!” Aiden felt angry, feeble, tricked, annoyed, desperate and resentful all at once. “If they find you aboard, they will take our cargo and our ship. We will lose everything.”

“I am offering you my fortune.”

“I have a fortune right now in this ship!”

“I saved your life,” Jian said sharply. “In the mine, when the guano came down. And the night of the wave, when the others wanted to kill you.”

“Or maybe you were the one getting everyone riled up against me in the first place!” Aiden said. “How do I know? Maybe it was you who caused the slide yourself and only warned me to make me beholden. You said how you were always planning.”

Aiden heard the creak of sails being raised and felt the ship lurch as the first of them caught the wind. Perhaps Jian would not be missed in time. Perhaps Aiden would not have to decide. Delicate motes of guano dust whirled in the dim light.

“They will put me on the rock,” Jian said softly.

“No.” He remembered the sparkling little fishes darting about in the water, feasting on tattered bits of skin grated off the still-living man. “We can think of something.”

“I made a rope,” Jian said. “Out of scraps of cloth I found on the beach after the wave. I hid the rope beneath the wharf. That is how I climbed down onto your ship. The rope is still there.”

There was no possible explanation now.

“No one will find it,” Aiden said. Of course someone would find it—and know immediately what it was for. “How did you climb aboard, even then?” Aiden asked. “The guards are always watching.”

“Last night I made cuts in the frame that holds the guano chute,” Jian said. “When it broke today and all the men were busy to fix it, I climbed down the rope, then through an open hatch.”

It was a brilliant plan. It had worked perfectly. Almost.

“Aiden?” Christopher's voice came from the deck above. “Aiden, where are you? Are you there? Where have you gone? Fish is asking for you. He wants to be sure you're aboard before we sail.”

“I'm here,” Aiden called. Christopher's face appeared over the hatch, peering down and blinking his eyes against the dust.

“What are you doing down there?”

Aiden hesitated. Christopher would not see Jian unless he actually stuck his head down the hatch, which he was certainly not about to do.

“I'm just checking the cargo,” Aiden said.

“Checking? For what?”

Jian could easily wiggle back down below the pallets of guano, down to the center of the ship, and hide. The ship was moving; no bell had sounded.

“Aiden, is something wrong?” Christopher pressed.

He could help this man escape. But why? Why him and not any of the other two hundred? Bread for the world and a fortune in his own purse. Aiden blinked against the stinging dust.

“Tell Fish”—Aiden looked up at Christopher—“tell the captain—” His voice caught in his throat and he coughed to clear it. “Tell the captain to come here. Tell him come quickly.”

“Is something wrong?”

“Please just go—tell the captain.”

“Yes. All right.”

Aiden heard Christopher's boot soles scrape as he turned. Good leather had a unique sound. Everything about the rich was different. Even when you didn't know what it was exactly that was different, you knew it was something. The smell of a body that ate good food, the sound of their clothing as they moved. You could probably dig up bones from ancient times and know who was rich or not, Aiden thought.

“I'm sorry,” he said to Jian. “I have no choice.”

“Of course you have a choice!” Jian said bitterly. “You choose to kill me.”

What other endings could there be now? Aiden thought. Angels might appear—or elves. Sweat ran down his face, stinging his eyes.

“If you will not help me, then you must kill me,” Jian said. “Do not let them put me on the rock. You must have guns on a ship. But a knife will do—if you cut well and fast. Here”—Jian stretched out his neck and tapped the veins in his throat—“you must cut much deeper than you think.”

“Shut up! Stop talking!” Aiden turned away.

“Kill me quickly,” Jian said. “This much favor I have the right to ask.”

“Aiden?”

Fish came to the hatch.

“I'm here,” Aiden said.

“What are you doing in the hold? What's wrong?”

“A coolie—” Aiden hated himself already. “A coolie has hidden in the hold.”

In the Bible, the end of the world went on for a whole book. But the real end of the world, Aiden knew, would never be more than a paragraph or two. The real end of the world would just be small things piled up.

Fish shouted out some commands in Swedish. Aiden heard two sets of boots leaping immediately down the companionway ladder and running toward them.

“Will he come out peacefully?” Fish asked.

Peacefully? Aiden blinked. What was Jian going to do? For one thing, he was trapped like a rat. For another, the sailors were twice his size, with hands strong enough to snap one of his arms if they wanted to. His nerves already stretched, Aiden had to strangle back laughter.

“He will come out,” he said, his throat so constricted he could barely talk. “But can you—is there something you can do?”

“I will ask for mercy,” Fish said. “Koster knows there is objection to the rock.”

Objection
, Aiden thought. What a polite word. “He speaks English. He says he was kidnapped.…”

“Stop,” Fish said. “It doesn't matter what he says.”

Gustav and Jonas appeared at the hatch. Jian climbed slowly up out of the hold. In the slanting sunlight, his skin sparkled as if coated with diamond dust. It was the guano, though, infinitely more valuable. Each sailor took hold of one of his arms, recoiling at first at the slipperiness of guano and sweat on his skin. They looked to Fish to tell them what to do. They already knew what had to be done and what would happen next, but a captain's command was an order and therefore absolution.

“Bring him.” Fish barely looked at Jian. Gustav and Jonas followed him up onto the deck with Jian between them, each holding one of his wrists. Aiden came last. Most of the sailors were in the rigging and unaware of anything going on, but the few on deck all began to talk excitedly.

“Quiet,” Fish commanded.

“Jesus Christ!” Christopher said. “What is a coolie doing on our ship?”

“Be quiet,” Aiden whispered sharply. “Please say nothing.”

“Is he a stowaway? Where was he?”

“Nothing. I beg you.”

On the island, the alarm bell began to sound. Jian had been discovered missing. So they would have found him anyway. The choice would have been taken from him anyway. Did that make him less a Judas? The
Raven
was only about forty feet from the wharf. The men in the towboats stopped rowing, looking back and forth between ship and wharf, awaiting orders.

“Keep your pace!” Fish called to them. “No slack.” The wind was against them and would push the
Raven
back toward the wharf if they stopped towing. Koster and two Negro guards came out to the end of the wharf.

“Halt the ship!” Koster shouted.

“I cannot, sir,” Fish replied.

Jian stood silently with his head bowed. His body wavered slightly, like one of Daisy's dolls when she tried to make it stand alone.

“Hold him fast, Captain,” Koster shouted to Fish. “Don't let him jump!”

Jump? Where would that get him? Aiden thought. It wasn't like he could swim anywhere. Then he realized what Koster meant. Jian might try to drown himself, and Koster did not want such an easy death for him. Gustav and Jonas were still holding Jian's arms.

“Halt your ship!” Koster shouted. “That is a command! You must return that coolie at once!”

“I cannot stop my ship here,” Fish shouted. “It is dangerous. I will heave to in the harbor. You may send a boat for the coolie, Mr. Koster.”

“Drop your anchor, then!” Koster demanded. “I insist you stop at once!”

Even from this distance, Aiden could see Koster's face was red with fury and his round little body was quivering with rage.

“Pull us on!” Fish called to the towboats. “Pull ahead!”

Even Aiden knew they couldn't drop an anchor this close to the wharf. There wasn't enough room to play out the chain. Besides, dropping an anchor and hauling it up again would take time. Fortunately, the towboats were manned by sailors from other ships who understood the situation. They kept up their rowing, and the
Raven
continued to inch out into the harbor. It was like two worlds were going on at once, Aiden thought. The big world of the ship, with men scampering along the ratlines and tending to the sails, and the little world here on the deck, where one man's life was counting down as surely as the tide.

“What a poor, wretched creature,” Christopher said, stepping closer to examine Jian. He had not seen any of the coolies since the first day they had visited the island, which had been the only day for Christopher. Even then, he had never seen one this close. Jian lifted his head and looked directly at Christopher. Aiden thought he saw recognition, maybe calculation, in Jian's eyes. In another world, they would be equals, maybe friends.

“Please, sir,” Jian said in his most carefully enunciated English, “may I have a drink of water? I am very thirsty. I would be most grateful.”

Christopher and the sailors nearby were all startled to hear him speak English. “Um—yes. Of course,” Christopher said, unnerved. “Someone get him water.”

Sven the Baby was closest to the scuttlebutt. He pulled up the dipper, but then hesitated. He looked at his shipmates. No one spoke. The men looked down at the deck, folded their arms and shifted from foot to foot.

“Well, come on,” Christopher said. “What's wrong?”

Aiden knew what was wrong. There were usually tin cups tied to the barrel, but they had been lost in the wave, so the men had all been drinking from the one dipper. They did not want the coolie to drink from it. It was the same way in the logging camp—the Negroes and Mexicans always had their own dippers. He ought to do something, Aiden thought, but could not think of what. He was tired of thinking. Fish was too busy handling the ship to notice the standoff.

“You're not afraid of him, are you?” Christopher went on, oblivious to the men's real fear. “Here, give me that.” He took the dipper from Sven and carried it back to Jian. “Give him a hand free to drink it.” Christopher looked at Jonas. The sailor let go of Jian's arm.

“Thank you, sir.” Jian took the dipper and raised the water to his cracked lips.

Aiden saw the tiniest twitch ripple through Jian's body and felt the back of his own neck prickle. He had learned to see this motion—sense it, really—in the lumber camp fights. It was a small tightening of neck muscles in his opponent, a subtle shift in posture that showed when he was about to attack even before the attacker knew it himself. It was this sense that gave Aiden an advantage against bigger and stronger fighters. But this time Aiden was not quick enough. Everything happened so fast. Jian swung the dipper at Gustav, smacking him hard in the forehead. The dipper was light but the blow was vicious and startling. It split the skin, and blood ran down into Gustav's eyes. Gustav let go of Jian's arm. Jian spun around and leaped onto the man's back, throwing both arms around him in a bear hug as if trying to wrestle him to the ground. What a stupid thing to do, Aiden thought. Jian was half Gustav's weight. Why not just jump overboard while he had the chance? But Jian Zhang was not intending to drown.

Gustav, like most sailors, wore a knife in a sheath on the middle of his back. Here, it was always handy to grab with either hand, but out of the way when climbing the rigging or hauling ropes. Jian grabbed this knife. He slashed upward, cutting Gustav from the small of his back to his shoulder. An arc of blood spattered on the freshly rinsed deck, and Gustav staggered forward. Jian swung his other arm into Christopher's side and kicked at his knee. As Christopher crumpled to the deck, Jian grabbed hold of his hair with his left hand and thrust the knife up against his throat with his right.

Only seconds had passed. The fallen dipper was still rolling back and forth like an abandoned toy.

“Get back!” Jian shouted at Aiden. “I will kill him!”

“Jian, no!” Aiden raised his hands. “Don't do this.”