True North Read online

  Turner is too sick to leave his bed, so we’ve come to him. His longish brown hair, streaked with gray, fans comfortably over his pillows on the oversize cabin bed, making his long, thick nose seem more prominent. He’s sweating and gray, a faint sheen of whiskers settling over his hollowed cheeks. But with a pair of thick, impressive eyebrows framing eyes shining with intelligence, even sick Turner has the look of a scholar.

  “Sit,” he tells me, eyeing the two men behind me. “We meet again. Only this time I’m awake.” He calls casually to the brutishly large merc with the piercing blue eyes who’d let us in. “Marcus, can you fetch everyone a drink?”

  Something of my surprise must show, because Turner just laughs. “Marcus is more than just a merc to me. He’s my right hand.” He winks, and a flash of bright white teeth appears in the man’s mouth.

  He’s still the man in white, though. This afternoon he’s dressed in a white T-shirt with off-white lounge pants. His arms are covered in liver spots, though he’s too young for those. Those arms seem oddly naked without long sleeves, too vulnerable. But it’s his eyes I can’t bear.

  Even when he smiles, as he does now, Turner’s dark-navy eyes look out at me with an odd hope that makes me itch.

  I smile my most polite, most distant smile. “Your mer— Marcus,” I correct myself swiftly, “mentioned you wanted to see us.” Just then Marcus appears with a tray of lemonades in thick, frosty glasses fleshed out with green. He eyes the man in bed, one eyebrow arching up as if to say, Are you behaving yourself? Marcus doesn’t say anything as he hands out the glasses to Ali, Jared, and me.

  Not just your average Upper Circler, then. Christopher E.J. Turner is the real deal. Lemons and fresh herbs are worth their weight in gold. And onboard a ship? From some sort of personal stock? I can’t imagine the astronomical fortune behind this man.

  I take one of those glasses and breathe in the delicate scents of lemons, sugar, mint. Taste the cold on my tongue, the bittersweet burn in my mouth. I don’t realize I’ve closed my eyes until I open them again to see Christopher Turner watching me closely.

  “Just a small thank-you,” he tells me earnestly. “For your part in my rescue.”

  “It wasn’t anything. All I did was pick up the phone. Anyone would have done the same.”

  “Not so. Not at all.”

  I clear my throat. Usually it’s Margot who receives the inappropriate passes, and surely not in front of witnesses. What kind of man would do that?

  “You like it,” Turner says to me quietly, as though we’re the only two in the room. It’s a statement, not a question. But then, why ask? I follow Turner’s eyes from my glass to the others. Alastair leans against a wall covered in delicate striped wallpaper edged with gold and stares around the room.

  He whistles and fishes his lucky pebble from his pocket, jiggling it in his hand like a lucky di. “You must have some strings to pull,” he says.

  Turner’s lean face takes on a fierce intensity. He leans forward, his arms crossed as comfortably as his legs. “Son, I am the strings,” he says simply as a warning bell goes off in my mind.

  There are giants in our world. Our father is one of them, though he prefers to keep the bulk of his affairs shrouded in secrecy. They call Lukas Fox a diplomat, though I reckon that’s too simplistic to describe his dealings. “I put people into power,” he liked to tell us, pulling on his signature black leather gloves, soft as butter. With a sweep of a black-clad hand, he’d say, “And I take power away.”

  But if our father is a power broker, the man before me is our world’s emperor. Someone so far above the echelons my sister and I are used to circling in that they have a different name for it.

  They say only a handful of people belong to the Gilt. They say that the Gilt is so rich, so powerful, they have their own kingdoms operating in secret behind our own.

  But then, where are Turner’s minions? Why is he on this floating death ship among what must seem like rabble to his elevated eyes? Something of my confusion must show, because Turner, watching me carefully, laughs.

  “You think I should travel in greater style?” He winks.

  I stare down at my hands, trying to find words that won’t offend. “I think a man of your position may travel any way he chooses,” I say carefully, noting Alastair’s blank-faced confusion. “Still, I confess I am wondering, sir, why a man in your position would choose to travel this way.”

  His position is as precarious as it gets, of course. There are no powerful men in death.

  The great man nods as though I’ve asked something wise. He sighs and beckons with a finger for his man, who leans down while Turner whispers something in his ear. Marcus stands, nods crisply. “Very good, sir.”

  “Of course,” Turner says to me nonchalantly, “it’s not very polite to ask a man about his health.”

  “I didn’t m-mean,” I bluster, blushing red.

  “What I like about you, Lucinda Fox,” he says, rolling my full name over his tongue. A full name I never supplied him with. I shift uncomfortably, aware of Jared’s hackles rising beside me, Alastair coming to attention on the other side. “The thing I like best about you so far is your charming way of being both incredibly discreet and diplomatic while at the same time diving straight into the heart of things.”

  He laughs again, with genuine mirth this time, before breaking into a small coughing fit. When he recovers, he sips some water that Marcus produces from somewhere. And those eyes, intelligent and filled with something I’d describe as self-knowledge, rest heavy on me. “It’s an unexpected pleasure to find such treasure at sea. Maybe that’s why I’m on board, Lucinda. I’m a pirate hunting for treasure.”

  At that, Christopher E.J. Turner raises his water glass in salute and drinks to a new friendship I reckon I can’t afford.

  “You’re not serious about going.” Jared clenches his teeth at me.

  Not surprisingly, he doesn’t like it, the mysterious billionaire’s interest in us. In me, specifically.

  “He’s a recent Splicer. What harm can he do me?”

  “He looks at you like you’re breakfast, lunch, and dinner,” Jared mutters under his breath.

  I look out the porthole at the waves cresting endlessly over the deep blue to hide my smile. I’m exhausted from two sleepless nights with the ship tossing me into Jared’s solid brick wall of a back.

  Still, I’ll go to this party. If only to spite him.

  “The party is in an hour.” I roll my eyes at my so-called bodyguard. “It could be fun. And I might learn something interesting. You don’t have to go. Alastair will join me. Won’t you, Ali?”

  Ali throws his rock like a kid. Up and down. Up and down. He grins at me, humor tugging the lines around his eyes. He likes it when Jared and I “catfight,” as he calls it. “Sure,” he calls back.

  Jared glowers some more. “You have a hearing problem, Princess?”

  “No,” I toss back, sweet as pie, meeting his eyes in the vanity table mirror as I clip a flower behind my ear. “I just don’t care what you think.”

  Alastair chokes on a guffaw. “Know what? I was just thinking of going out to watch the storm for a while,” he says with mock excitement. The door closes with a snick behind him. Jared and I are all alone.

  He cocks his head slightly, lips parting as he continues to stare. “Why do you do that?”

  “Do what?” I shrug. My hands are caught in my curls, trying to finish the pinning.

  His fingers are suddenly there, tangling with mine. I drop my hands and let him do it. Jared’s face becomes a study in concentration as he brushes one of my unruly curls away and slowly, methodically, tickles the pin in. When he’s satisfied, he primps the curls at the back of my neck.

  “Vex me,” he says unexpectedly. “Ignore me when I’m trying to help you.”

  I have no answer for his questions. I know he’d lay down his life for me. The question I keep getting stuck at is, would he do it for me? Or because Storm pays him to?

/>   “Do you know what this ship runs on?” I ask, turning to face him. It’s a mistake. Up close I can’t avoid his feral heat and musk, his blazing sensuality that appears in the blink of two absurdly beautiful, unearthly eyes.

  “What?”

  “The ship. Turner and Marcus took us on a tour this afternoon while you were”—I wave my hands at his chest—“doing whatever those other things are that you do. We went to the furnace room.”

  Where the air was hot and thick, a choking nightmare. The Laster crew was an army of workers in dirty blue and white striped sailor shirts. The bottoms of their navy pants were blackened as they shoveled coal and wood into the giant ovens that turn the giant pistons over and over. There were no dead when we toured, but they said the supervisors come down often, and the men rotate often. They said those who work the ovens last the shortest. One supervisor, a man named Mike who wore his cap down over one eye, told us sheepishly that the men received almost all their compensation for the voyage ahead of time.

  “S’like an insurance policy, see.” He’d nodded to the men. “They know the odds.”

  “But what is it?” I caught myself asking out loud. “What triggers it?”

  But Mike only nodded again, this time toward the giant machines that carried the ship over an ocean. “Reckon it’s the coal dust. Creeps into their lungs, Miss. We bring a’most four dozen extras just in case.”

  I coughed, something small and discreet. But it was enough to send terror into our guide, who hurried us topside so the brisk ocean wind could cleanse our lungs. Marcus took Turner to go lie down while I’d been left with Alastair and the black hole of my own thoughts.

  “It’s barbaric,” I’d told Ali. His thin form had hunched over the rail of the ship so it looked like a sail. He leaned over, touching his face to his hands thoughtfully.

  “The rich ones travel across the oceans searching for their cures while the Lasters toil in darkness, just waiting to be struck down,” he’d said, unusually sober. “It does strike one as unjust. Not all the richies are going to be good little Splicers,” he drawled, motioning to Christopher. Even from here it was obvious he was struggling, leaning on Marcus as he ambled slowly down the hall. “Death takes us all.”

  The tour, and the conversation, was enough to jog my tired brain into thinking in straight lines. I manage not to look away from the overwhelming intensity in Jared’s face.

  “What’s he doing here? Where’s he going?” I whisper the words quiet-quiet, as though maybe I’m afraid to say them out loud.

  “Who?”

  “Turner. Where does a dead man walk?”

  “He’s not dead yet.”

  I shake my head. “Not yet. Soon. The Splice won’t take. So where’s he going? What’s a man with that much money and power and no heir going to do?”

  “I don’t know. Enjoy a last holiday,” Jared grumbled, but I could see his mind begin to whirl.

  “Jared, you don’t understand. Turner is the Gilt.” I shove my hand over his mouth when he looks set to protest. “He’s got more money than all of Dominion put together. What would you do if you had that much and faced a death sentence?” A flicker of blue glides over the green in Jared’s eyes, but he doesn’t pull away from me. “That’s right,” I continue as if he’s spoken. “You buy your health. And wherever his cure is, it’s not on board this ship. So where is Turner going? Where are all his friends headed to?”

  Why is Turner on a public cruise?

  I can tell the moment the final piece slides into place for him. He curls my fingers away from his lips. “You think you’ll find Margot.”

  “I don’t know. But he knows who I am, Jared. He knows my father.”

  “Could have been—” he starts. I cut him off again.

  “No. You know that’s not it. He knows my father and he wants to know me. It can’t just be because I’m young and cute.”

  “Yes it can.” Jared mock-bites the side of my hand, sending delicious tremors up my spine. “You look way too good to send you into that old goat’s den.”

  I bark out a short laugh. “Did you just compliment me?”

  “I’d rather just lock you up in here and bite anyone who gets too close.”

  “Bad kitty.” I step closer to him, smelling the musky, sweet smell I’d know anywhere. I reach up to straighten Jared’s collar. “A smart merc once told me that the best weapon a person had at hand was their brain.”

  Jared scowls. “And you believed that idiot?”

  “Jared,” I say. “If he knows something…”

  Jared nods, though he’s clearly not happy about it. “If he touches you, though, I’ll kill him,” he murmurs. I’m not even sure he knows he’s said it out loud until I pinch him and he squirms.

  “Ow.”

  “You can’t follow the trail of a dead man,” I observe.

  It’s a world as dark and mysterious as the preachers and their ilk. Darker still when you think they’ve existed with us, side by side, for years, and I’ve never even heard the whisper of their names.

  This is not the Upper Circle, however much it looks like wealth. The Gilt don’t play by the same rules. They’re above rules, as Turner tells me moments before he introduces me to a pair of his Gilt friends, Matilda and Simon Mulholland.

  It was so casual we almost missed the entrée to their world, as Turner greeted the couple and waved them over to where we enjoyed high tea on a private, sunny deck. They oozed charm, sophistication, genuine warmth. Immeasurable wealth.

  As I stand at the door of the Mulhollands’ suite later that evening, Alastair already mixing with the crowd and Jared’s hand pressed warm against my back, I suddenly realize that the differences between the two worlds are more than skin deep.

  “There you are.” Matilda sweeps over in a simple black shift, her neck and arms free of adornments. A glossy mane of black hair trails over one bare shoulder. Like as not, Matilda is in her late thirties but could easily pass for someone younger. Smiling broadly, she holds out two champagne flutes and hands one to each of us. “We were wondering whether you were still coming.”

  “Sorry we’re late,” I apologize. Jared escorts me into a room brimming with some of the richest people in the world.

  “Really my fault,” he says urbanely. “We got caught up talking and the time just flew.” He winks at me owlishly.

  I blanch, but Matilda just laughs. “Ri-i-ight.”

  She moves aside, still laughing, and suddenly we’re floating in a world of understated opulence. It’s instinct, I reckon, that has me taking Jared’s hand as we wade into the fray. Within moments I’m so overwhelmed I want to cry. Freshly cut flowers adorn every spare surface. Flowers I’ve never seen before, with wide, dark red petals and mysterious yellow pistils. Drinks made from the husks of pineapples—what black market sells those?—and crystal stemware overflowing with bubbly served by men and women in severe white uniforms.

  And the people: no glittering dresses here. But the relaxed, casual dress of people who have it all. I catch sight of Turner in his signature white pants and shirt, open at the neck. He waves, looking happy and well. I wave back, choking down tears.

  What is the Gilt? A year ago I might have answered: It’s a group of people richer than all of Dominion’s Upper Circle put together. I reckon I know differently now.

  The Gilt can remake the world to a time before the Plague.

  Jared grabs me and presses me into a white-walled corner. “What’s wrong?” he blazes, looking anxiously over his shoulder.

  “It’s nothing,” I lie. The tears fall fast and hard down my cheeks and I brush them bitterly away.

  “What is it, Lu?” he pleads.

  “Can’t you see?” I say, as though it explains everything. “Can’t you feel it?” I grab weakly at his shirt. It’s a departure for him: an orange Hawaiian with a sunset print riding in large bands all around it.

  “Lucy,” he whispers, soft and sad and on the verge of wild. And my heart breaks a little more
. I shut my eyes and take a deep, shuddering breath. And try not to imagine that this is what life might have been like if there was no such thing as the Plague.

  “Sometimes I just wish,” I tell him under my breath, knowing he can hear me anyway. “And sometimes there’s this wonderful illusion, like it isn’t even happening. And then I just—” I choke on the words. Begin again. “How can I feel so sad for a world I’ve never known?”

  Jared presses in close to me. His heat traps and surrounds me, blasting the sadness away. He runs his hands down over my hair, smoothing the glossy waves over the soft petals of the flower tucked behind my ear. His fingers trail gently down my face. The ship rocks under our feet like a lullaby.

  “But if there had never been the Plague, I might never have been. Or I’d have died. And then I wouldn’t have met you. And that would be…” He looks up at the ceiling, flummoxed. “Completely unacceptable,” he finally concludes. “Unbearable.”

  His lips come down on mine, the gentlest of brushes. I barely kiss him back, but my body ignites. He kisses my eyebrows, my chin, my wet cheeks. And when I finally look up at him again, I don’t have the words to describe it. He stares at me a long, long moment, as though coming to a hard decision. Then he laces his fingers through mine and leads me over to our new friends.

  I say good night to Alastair, who grins and waves from his place at a table filled with card players. He rolls his pet rock between his fingers, a poker chip between the others. I don’t even know if he has any money to gamble with. But I’m sure as anything he doesn’t have the kind of funds these other men have. A wave of heat touches my side. I look up and Jared is there, a deep, dark promise blooming in his luminous eyes.