Into the Bright Unknown (The Gold Seer Trilogy #3)(52)

“Well, I’ll be,” Jefferson breathes. “You saw that, right? It . . . floated.”

“Yep.” I blink to clear vision that’s gone a little fuzzy. “I’ve done that before. It’s easy compared to moving a mess of gold in my bag.”

Jefferson’s eyes dance. “This is going to be useful.”

His excitement is catching. “I don’t know how yet, but we’ll think of something. Maybe you could help me practice?”

“Sure,” he says. “What do you need me to do?”

“I’d like to test my range. Can you take the saddlebag to one of the other decks and leave it in an open space?”

“Which deck?” He stands, tossing the bag over his shoulder.

“Don’t tell me. That’s the whole point. I want to see if I can figure out where it is.”

“If I took the locket, you’d find it, no trouble at all.”

“Well, yes, but I want to get better at this.”

“Then let’s give it a try,” he says. He bends down, kisses me quick on the lips, then closes the door on his way out. My cabin is suddenly empty and quiet without him.

His footsteps fade down the hall, toward the hatch that leads to the lower deck with the horses. Listening to his footsteps feels like cheating, so I close my eyes and focus on the gold instead of Jefferson’s boots. It’s like a torch in my mind, descending to the lower deck, growing gradually fainter, then brighter again as it passes directly beneath me and up the other stairs. Clever Jefferson.

The saddlebag finally comes to rest on the poop deck, where Jefferson and I watched the stars last night.

It’s at the end of the ship farthest from me now, but the torch in my mind is still bright. I reach out my hand, close my fist, and try to pull the gold.

It slips through my fingers like water.

I squeeze my fist and try again.

My arm shakes. Fingernails dig into my palm hard enough to hurt. My head pounds like a steam engine about to explode. I yank my fist toward my stomach.

The gold moves.

It slides across the deck, thumps down the wooden steps to the quarterdeck, and slams against a railing.

I fall backward, panting, dizzy, partly because the use of power is heady and strange. But partly because I think I’ve figured out what we’re going to do with it.

Jefferson’s boots pound down the steps and through the hallway. “Lee! Lee!”

The baby starts crying, and Becky shouts, “Jefferson Kingfisher, I just got this child to sleep!”

“Sorry, ma’am! Won’t happen again.”

I stand up and fling open the door. Jefferson is wide-eyed and grinning as he comes down the hall, saddlebag over his shoulder. He fights hard to keep his voice a whisper: “Did you do that?”

I grin back at him. “You know I did. I need to rest, then I need to practice again. I might have an idea.”

He plants a quick kiss on my lips. “You are a wonder,” he says, with that almost smile I love so much.

I want more than a little kiss. “All this practice. My shoulders hurt—do you want to come rub them for a bit?” As soon as the words leave my mouth, I know I’m the daftest girl who ever tried to flirt. My cheeks flame.

But Jefferson grins. He slips the saddlebag off his shoulder and quietly shuts the door. “That’s a good idea.”

He lifts my hair and kisses the back of my neck, sending tingles up and down my spine. “Jeff,” I say. Like it’s a warning. Or maybe an invitation.

“Just a little kissing, right?” he says.

“Right.”

His strong fingers sink into my muscles, hurting and relieving hurt at the same time. The throbbing in my head starts to subside. I let myself sink down into the cot like it’s the most comfortable featherbed that ever existed. Doing something about Hardwick can wait for a while.





Chapter Fifteen


I allow myself one more day of thinking and practicing with my gold and plotting with my friends. It takes all of us together to figure out how to take Hardwick down. And it will take all of us together to do it, even Jim Boisclair and Melancthon, though the sailor will never know the particulars. By evening, after several meetings and a few errands, we have the skeleton of a plan. Tonight, we begin putting it into place.

To blend into the night, I’m wearing dark trousers and an old black sweater that Henry found at a general store. A miner’s hat made of dark brown leather will hide my hair. For the first time in months, I’ve bound my breasts with a shawl.

The goal is to go unnoticed. But if I am noticed, it’s best I be seen as a boy, which makes me a dime a dozen in this city, not unusual at all.

“You sure you’re ready?” Jefferson says, as we walk together toward the galley. Like me, he’s dressed in dark trousers and a dark woolen shirt. “You’re about to take an awful risk.”

He’s right. We could use several more days of planning. Weeks, even. “The auction is in two more days, and after that, Hardwick’s going to take his money and run. We have to do this now.”

“We have to steal his money, his reputation, and his allies—that’s what you keep saying.”

“I like how it sounds when you say it. We have to steal justice.”

He grins. “Let’s start with his money. I asked Mary to—”