Seeker

The ship hung fifty stories above London, floating on quiet engines between the tall buildings of the financial district. Its shape was a cross between a zeppelin and an oceangoing vessel. It was huge, and especially at midday its lustrous metal hide made it occasionally blinding to those outside. It was called Traveler.

On board Traveler, John walked through one of the upper corridors and knocked at his grandfather’s office door. He had returned to the ship the night before and was now steeling himself for his meeting with Gavin Hart. John never knew what to expect from his grandfather after he’d been away for a while.

Gavin opened the door himself and pulled John inside the room, glancing both ways down the corridor, as if to make sure no one had seen them.

“John, it’s so good to see you.”

He shut the door, but he looked over his shoulder again quickly, as though someone might be lurking in the room just behind him. Then he put a hand on each of John’s shoulders and squeezed, which was the old man’s version of an embrace. The effort seemed to overwhelm him. He started to cough, a scratchy, throat-clearing sound.

“Good to see you too, Grandfather. Are you upset with me?”

“Sit, sit,” the older man said softly, straining to stop the coughing.

He helped John into a chair in front of his antique desk, then slid into his own on the other side. Behind Gavin’s head were enormous windows, through which John could see London’s skyscrapers sliding by. The tallest of the buildings were like stalks of metallic wheat, swaying gently with the currents of air.

We will let him think Traveler is his, John, but it was built for you. His mother had told him that when he was a small boy. She had set him up on a high stool so their matching blue eyes were level. Seekers cannot use their athames to board Traveler. I have given you a home that is exactly what you need to keep you safe. And I’ve given you a family with stature, which is another kind of protection.

Gavin was eighty-four years old, with white hair cut short. As always, he wore a finely tailored suit and tie, but today the knot of his tie was uneven and his suit was rumpled, as though he’d been sleeping in it. He was acting anxious, fiddling with his lapels as he coughed again. John noticed that the old man’s hands were dirty, something he’d never seen before.

“I’m not upset with you, John. Of course not. But things are disturbing now.”

“You told Briac to send me back?”

Gavin looked surprised. He had an expensive pen in his hands now, and he was loosening and tightening the cap in a nervous gesture. “I— No. Of course, I always want you back. It’s the two of us—we’re the ones who look out for each other, aren’t we? But no, Briac Kincaid made it clear that you must come back. Now, now, now. Forever, forever, forever.” This was followed by a little laugh that turned into another bout of coughing.

Gavin’s speech patterns were erratic, and he was coughing a lot. He’d always been prone to twitches and strange physical mannerisms, and John understood the source of these. But today he seemed much worse than he ordinarily was, and John experienced a stab of panic—was there something new wrong with the man’s health?

“And they know,” his grandfather said, leaning across to John and almost whispering the words, as though he were afraid someone else would hear.Belonging © NôvelDram/a.Org.

“What do you mean, ‘they’?” John asked.

“My nephew Edward, and his son,” he explained. He coughed again, the sound deep in his throat and very unpleasant. “They know you were sent home, unsuccessful.”

“How can they have any idea what I was doing on the estate?” John asked, his voice rising before he could stop it. “You don’t even know, Grandfather.”

“Well, I—I don’t know, it’s true. You and your mother never told me much. But I know you’re following in her footsteps, and I—I’ve had to explain things to Edward.” Gavin’s face was turning red now, and John realized he was holding his breath in an effort not to cough. He was also looking over his shoulder again, as though someone might have snuck into the room in the last couple of minutes without his noticing.

“Explain things to Edward?” John asked, wondering if this conversation was about something real or was simply part of Gavin’s paranoia, which had been strong in past years but which now seemed to be reaching new heights. “Why do you have to tell your nephew anything?”

“He’s challenging the family charter, John. Haven’t I explained this to you? Because, you know, your mother and father were never married.”

Gavin had made John his heir at the time of his birth. Back then, Gavin had had an old and prestigious family name with a long history in England, but not much money, and no one had cared if he chose an illegitimate grandson as an heir. But as John’s mother, Catherine, had helped Gavin amass great wealth, as the two of them had built Traveler, which dominated the London skyline, things had changed. Other members of Gavin’s family began to challenge his decisions, and especially his choice of heir.

Gavin had, in fact, mentioned these challenges to John a number of times, but John had been immersed in his training on the estate, confident that he would succeed in becoming a Seeker, and he’d chosen to ignore the details.

“But—you’re fighting him in the courts, aren’t you?” John asked, trying to be patient with a topic he found tiresome. “Didn’t you say that a few years ago?”

“Yes, yes, yes. I’m fighting. Fighting and fighting. But I’m afraid I may—finally—be—losing—John.” He was having trouble getting the words out, as a violent fit of hacking overtook him. John jumped up, moved around the desk to slap him on the back, and pushed the call button for a servant.

Now that he was standing closer, he noticed that the pupils of his grandfather’s eyes were larger than they should be. John lost his train of thought in a rush of alarm. What if things were truly not going properly?

A servant was already entering with a tea tray. It was Maggie, who had looked seventy years old for all of John’s life, but who must be closer to ninety now. She had cared for John since he was a toddler, maybe earlier, maybe since birth. Watching her pour Gavin’s tea with her graceful, old-world motions, John calmed himself. His grandfather couldn’t be dying, or John would have heard about it from her.

Gavin took the tea gratefully and sipped it for a while, standing and walking to the window. He was still coughing, but the spasms were dying out as he swallowed the warm drink and his eyes followed the buildings outside.

Maggie was fiddling with the teapot just behind John as he stood by his grandfather’s chair. He shot her a look and mouthed: What’s happening to him?

She leaned close to his ear, and her words reached him so softly that John could barely make them out. But they had been communicating this way for years, and he was highly attuned to her murmurs.

“The dosage has become much less effective again,” she said in her practiced undertone. “I’m increasing it steadily. I believe he will be all right—eventually—but his thoughts are erratic for now. He can be a bit mad. Be careful what you say.”

John nodded, his eyes fixed on his grandfather.

Maggie left the room as Gavin turned around. Slowly he made his way back to his desk and lowered himself into his seat, still drinking the tea, and John returned to the seat across from him.

“Are you all right now, Grandfather?”

Gavin nodded, then very gently cleared his throat. After a moment, he looked over his shoulder again, before bringing his gaze back to his grandson.

“If our holdings are in danger, my nephew has some rights in regard to the decisions that are made,” he said in a low voice, as though the two of them were part of a conspiracy. “That’s the way the law governs a family like ours. And I’m afraid our holdings are in danger. I’ve told Edward I have every, every, every faith in you as the best heir our family could produce. That you’ll put things back on course. You will. Right back on course. And I’ve said you’ve been receiving private tutoring. In Scotland.”

“That sounds reasonable. How can he complain about that?”

“It’s just that—we’ve experienced some setbacks in the last year. Fairly large financial setbacks. Setting us quite far back. A setback, setting us back.” He smiled absently, as though this were a remarkable play on words.

“You’re a terrible businessman, Grandfather.” John didn’t say it cruelly. It was simply a fact. He and his mother had known it years ago. Gavin wasn’t a good businessman, but he loved John, and Catherine had considered that his most important attribute. She had believed that she, and the athame, which gave her access to anyone, almost anywhere, could make up for his other failings. Maybe she would have, if she’d lived.

“I’m a terrible businessman?” his grandfather asked, looking wounded. “Is ‘terrible’ really fair, John? Perhaps I’m not so good as everyone assumed. Your father was supposed to take care of the business side of things. With your mother’s help.”

That had been the grand plan, as John understood it. Marry his father’s name and family prestige to his mother’s skills and create an unstoppable alliance—power and wealth. John had never understood why the wealth and position mattered so much, but his mother had insisted that they were important, that they helped protect him, just as Traveler helped protect him.

Gavin was looking thoughtful and sad, as he always did when mentioning John’s dead parents. John had never known his father, Archie, who’d died before he was born, but Gavin told him frequently how much he resembled his father. And Gavin seemed to miss Catherine too, as though he’d considered her a real daughter.

“I have to show some sort of success, John. I kept waiting for you to be finished … at the estate. So you could help me, like your mother used to do. I hoped we could make a plan. Restore our fortunes.”

Gavin had never wanted John to train with Briac. He’d tried to keep him away from the estate and safe on Traveler. But when their fortunes had begun to wane, he’d reluctantly agreed that John should go, that he should follow in Catherine’s footsteps.

Gavin had paused to pull at the knot in his tie, as if it were choking him, but now he continued. “John,” he said, “when Briac called me two weeks ago, to tell me you’d have to leave—”

“Two weeks ago? Grandfather, Briac told me only two nights ago that I’d failed. Don’t you see? He never had any intention of fulfilling his obligation to me—to us. He was never going to let me succeed. He had my failure planned ahead of time.”

“Please let me finish, John.” Gavin drummed the fingers of one hand on the desktop and pursed his lips, apparently trying to choose the best words from a list of equally dreadful choices. “If I can’t increase our fortunes—quickly—you won’t be my heir and I won’t stay in control. They’ll take Traveler from me, take everything from me. So I—I did something I know you won’t like—something I said I’d never—” He paused, then rushed forward. “We have a French competitor, a large group of companies, and I—”

The door to the office opened with a soft knock. A young man walked in, crossed the room, and began to speak quietly into Gavin’s ear. With a start, John realized he’d seen this man before. A few days earlier, in fact. He’d come to the estate in an aircar and spoken to Briac privately.

John thought immediately of Quin, sitting in the barn loft, watching that news story on the television, about the French businessman and his family who had disappeared, or more likely been killed. At once, he understood what his grandfather had done. He felt anger rolling up from his gut, gripping him fiercely. It was all he could do to stay silent until the man left the room.

When he did, John stood from his chair and leaned across the desk, staring down at Gavin. He could feel his face turning red, burning. Gavin looked ashamed and shrank into his chair, his eyes darting away from John’s.

“Grandfather—you—you had Briac go after that French family? When Briac called about me, you hired him? You gave him money to do what he does? To get rid of them?”

“I was desperate, John. I didn’t have you or your mother to do it for me. We’re in a corner! Now those companies are an easy target for us to acquire. Our fortunes—”

“I don’t care about the money!” John yelled, pounding both fists on the table. “I don’t care about business! Catherine warned you never to use someone else. Especially not Briac. He’s— Don’t you see? This is more reason never to train me, never to let me succeed. Why should he, when you come to him? You’re letting him take control of our lives again—”

“I do care about the money, John,” Gavin retorted, standing up across from him. He was keeping his voice low so he wouldn’t begin coughing again, but it carried the intensity of a yell. John realized that his grandfather looked strong for the first time in their conversation, but he also looked insane. When Gavin took another sip of tea, he was holding the handle so tightly, the cup shook. “I do care about the money. It was what I was promised when I chose your mother for my son. I thought I could keep things going when she died. I can’t. I couldn’t. I’m sorry!”

He took another sip of tea, but he coughed as he did so, and the liquid splattered all over his desk. He looked at John with wild eyes, wiping the desk frantically with his sleeve. “They will not push me out! The ship, this wealth, this is my legacy, John. Mine, and yours. But if you fight me, if you scold me, I can’t be responsible for what I do!”

His expression was completely mad now, eyes wide, tea dribbling down his chin.

John couldn’t look at him. He let his eyes drop away, and when they did, his gaze came to rest on the cabinet behind his grandfather’s desk. The doors were ajar, and inside he could see several open boxes and messy piles of clothing and mechanical items. These were all completely out of character for Gavin’s office, which was always businesslike and perfectly clean.

Curious now, John looked over all of the items visible through the open cabinet doors. There was a dirty tool kit on the bottom shelf, the kind a mechanic might have for fixing old cars, with oil-stained wrenches and a small blowtorch for welding. And there were actual car parts as well—a vintage gearshift, a grimy contraption from inside a gasoline engine. Next to these were jumbled piles of T-shirts and jackets, which looked like they belonged to a male teenager.

John understood at once. These were Archie’s things. They had belonged to his father, to Gavin’s son. Archie had liked cars. It was one of the few things Gavin had told John about him. He’d mentioned this hobby proudly, years ago, and John had been happy to know something about Archie, but in truth, fixing old cars was so far removed from the focus of his own life that it had made him feel sad, as though he and his father would have been strangers.

Gavin had boxed and stored his son’s possessions years earlier, saying it was the only way he could continue to live his life after the devastation of Archie’s death. But here he was, wallowing in the memory of his long-dead boy.

Now that he was looking, John spotted streaks of grease on Gavin’s suit and traces of it under the old man’s fingernails and on his palms. He’d been handling Archie’s things, maybe sitting alone in here for hours with these items, lost in the past. This was so unlike Gavin Hart that John wondered, How far gone is he?

John didn’t care about the family wealth. But, in truth, he needed his grandfather’s resources and men. He needed them right now, in order to get the athame. Even though Gavin was clearly in no state to have a rational conversation, or to be responsible for any sort of business, he was still in control at the moment.

After I get the athame back, I can walk away from all of this, can’t I? John asked himself. And yet … Seekers cannot use their athames to board Traveler, his mother had said. There was value in the ship. Traveler might still protect him. And it had been built on his mother’s hard work. The idea of others taking control made him angry.

He reached across the table and carefully wiped the dripping tea off Gavin’s chin. The old man was still on his feet, but his eyes were now turned down to the desk. One of his hands swiped across it as though he didn’t understand how the surface could be wet. John felt a surge of pity. Maybe, as Maggie had said, Gavin would eventually be all right, but even if he weren’t, even if he were going crazy permanently, John didn’t see how he could abandon him, when his madness was Catherine’s fault.

John sat down again, feeling drained.

“You want to restore our wealth?” he said at last. “Give me a few weeks. I’ll get back what was stolen from my mother. And I’ll try to help you.”

Gavin seemed to return to himself. He lowered his body into his chair, and his eyes focused on his grandson. Finally he spoke. “A few weeks?”

“A few weeks, Grandfather. I have to make a plan and gather the right men. You’ll have to give me men.”

“John, they’re watching everything I do, waiting to pounce on me. To show I’m—I’m—I’m incompetent. I don’t know if I can give you—”

“Grandfather! You have to pull yourself together. You’re still in charge. If I get what I’m looking for, you can forget about the rest of the family. They won’t matter. We can do whatever we want.”

“Yes, yes, all right. I’ll figure it out,” he said, looking around the room once more for lurking spies. The old man noticed then that the cabinet doors were open behind him, revealing all of Archie’s things. With a guilty glance at John, he pushed the doors closed and turned away from the cabinet. He muttered, “Don’t yell, John. Please. It sends my mind spinning.”

Seeing Gavin sitting at the desk, his shoulders slumped forward, John softened. Gently, he said, “You’ll be all right, Grandfather. I’ll make things right.”

From Gavin’s office, John walked through corridors toward Traveler’s bow, then moved upstairs. On the top floor of the ship, his apartment met him with a breathtaking view of London. Though he had been quite young, he still remembered when Traveler was built, back when Catherine, and the athame that was rightly hers, had made it possible for Gavin to accumulate their family holdings.

John walked through the suite. Though he had come home from the estate for yearly holiday visits with his grandfather, his rooms had sat mostly empty while he was training in Scotland. Everything was as he’d left it.

From his kitchen, at Traveler’s current heading, he had a view across the Thames. In the distance, he could just make out the tip of the building where he’d last seen his mother. He stood there awhile, thinking about that secret apartment, the one he had discovered and to which he’d snuck out one night, unaware of the ultimate consequences of that simple act of disobedience. He watched the building as Traveler glided on its way, until the ship made its turn at the bottom of its figure-eight pattern and began heading back the way it had come.

John pulled himself away from the view and moved through the suite to the last room, his bedroom. Sliding aside a section of the wood-paneled wall, he revealed his closet, at the back of which was a large safe set into the steel hull of the ship. Surely servants, workers, possibly even Gavin himself, had stared at this safe at one time or another, wondering what John might have inside. His grandfather claimed to have no curiosity about Catherine’s methods, no desire to know her secrets, yet John bet the old man had hired expensive locksmiths to try to get this safe open so he could see what was hidden within—hoping to find some magic talisman that could restore things to the way they were when Catherine was alive. But his mother had designed the safe along with Traveler’s architect, and you would have to take apart the ship itself to force it open.

John entered a combination and presented his eyes to be scanned. The thick metal door hissed open. There was only one object inside, the last thing he owned from his mother. Lying in the center of the safe’s padded interior was a disruptor.

John felt a deep revulsion at the sight of the weapon, but he took hold of it anyway and hauled it out. It was as heavy as it looked, its iridescent metal solid almost all the way through, with its harness of thick leather adding to its weight. He carried it to the bed and sat with it on his lap. Touching the disruptor made him nervous and slightly sick to his stomach, but despite this, he forced himself to examine every side of it. Life or death, sanity or insanity—he was holding these things in his hands.

Do what has to be done, his mother had told him. Briac had always been against him, Quin wouldn’t help him now, and Gavin was barely sane. It was up to John to fulfill his promise. He would likely have to do unpleasant things, but he would do what had to be done, in the best way he could.

What would Quin think if she could see him? Quin. He imagined her sitting beside him, pictured himself leaning down to kiss her. There will be many things that try to pull you from the path. Hatred is one, and love is another.

He forced himself to focus. The disruptor had been created to instill terror. If it did its job, he would not need to fire it. And Quin—she had already told him she would be far away.