Traitor's Son: The Raven Duet Book #2 (7 page)

Late eighteen hundreds . . . assembled by a shaman called Atahalne? The fine hair on the back of Jase’s neck was trying to rise, and he rubbed it.

“Could those ashes be from something that could cause hallucinations?”

Georg rolled his eyes. “Not. A. Drug. Get it? Human ashes, from the cremation of a man who died less than two months ago, according to the biodater. And how they got mixed in with two-hundred-year-old pollen and sand is very much a mystery. Where did you get this?”

Ferd looked worried. “Human ashes? Like, maybe someone murdered someone and burned up his body to conceal the crime? Can you tell who it was from his DNA? We don’t have to take this to the cops, do we?”

Manny snorted. “Bro, if someone cremated a body to conceal the deed, they’d scatter the ashes, or dump them in a river, or bury them—not mix them into a little pouch with ancient pollen and stuff.”

“Besides,” added Georg, “DNA does not survive cremation. I’m doing chemical analysis here. This man—it was a man, by the way—had very late-stage cancer, and had been treated for it with modern medications, which did leave traces in the ash. I can’t say for certain that cancer killed him, but if it did, it would have done so swiftly. But whose ashes were they? And why did someone add them to what looks to be an authentic antique medicine bag? Where
did
you get this?”

His mild eyes were alight with curiosity.

“We found it in a ferry locker,” Ferd said. “On the top shelf, in the back corner. Like someone who’d used the locker before had maybe missed it. We thought it might have been a drug drop, but . . . No street value at all?”

“None,” said cousin Manny firmly. “And no murder either, you freak.”

“Are you sure there’s nothing that could cause hallucinations?” Jase asked. “What about the remnants of the cancer drugs? If someone breathed them in, for instance. Or touched them?”

Georg laughed. “You’re joking. There aren’t enough toxins in this whole sample to cause so much as a twitch in your blood chemistry, not even if you mainlined them. The pollen is so old, it probably wouldn’t even make you sneeze. Well, maybe if you sorted it out from the sand, and snorted the whole thing. But I assure you, that’s all it would do. The only thing of value here is the antiquity of the pollens—which could be worth a few hundred if you could find a buyer. And that’s something I might be able to help you with . . . for a percentage, of course.”

He looked hopefully at Ferd, who launched into negotiations.

Jase left them to it. If the stuff wasn’t drugs—and Georg sounded like he knew what he was talking about—then what had he seen in that sunlit wood?

Georg asked to keep the sample he had, since he needed to work up a complete list of the pollens for any potential buyer. Ferd told him he could, as long as he remembered that they had a lot more of it and promised to cut them in on the deal. Usually the prospect of making several hundred dollars would have interested Jase almost as much as it did Ferd. But now . . .

Either he had a brain tumor that was manifesting in some very strange ways, or he had seen a girl turn into a bird. If it wasn’t for the contents of that pouch, Jase would be comming his doctor to schedule a brain scan right now. But as it was . . .

Two-hundred-year-old pollen and leather. Just the kind of ingredients some ancient shaman might have assembled for healing a planet. Mixed with the ashes of a modern man. Jase had no idea how that had happened, but the combination was almost weird enough to make him believe . . .

Could Raven have been telling the truth?

If she had been telling the truth, if shapeshifters and leys and magic might be real . . . well, Jase knew who to ask.

At dinner that evening he told his parents, “I’m thinking of driving out to visit Gramps and Gima tomorrow. Is that OK?”

His father’s face tightened. It was a subtle expression—most people wouldn’t have noticed—but Jase had been watching for it.

“Don’t you have homework this weekend?” his mother asked. “I thought you had a break coming up.”

“Not for two more weeks.”

Unlike the public schools, which sensibly let kids out to take advantage of the summer and let them study in the winter, Jase’s private school ran all year, with periodic one- and two-week breaks. Their only concession to Alaska’s seasons was to schedule more of those breaks when the sun shone. Not nearly enough of them, as far as Jase was concerned.

“It’s been a while since I’ve been there. And I’m all caught up with homework.” He’d spent what was left of the afternoon making sure of that, since he’d known his mother would ask. “I’ll be back Sunday evening at the latest.”

One advantage of a driving job in a state where all the cities were most of a day’s drive apart was that even his mother had become accustomed to Jase being away overnight. But that didn’t diminish the curiosity in her eyes.

“Last time you saw Gramps and Gima, you said you wouldn’t go back till your grandfather sent you an engraved invitation. And that was just four months ago. I’m glad you’re going, of course, but . . . Wait, that girl you went hiking with. Was she Alaska Native?”

“Yes.” Jase’s face grew warm, though it wasn’t even a lie, exactly. The blush only reinforced his mother’s analysis, and his conscience panged when he saw how pleased she looked. She’d been trying for years to mend the rifts in her husband’s family, or at least keep a com line open. She’d been upset when Jase said he wasn’t going back—though she should have known he didn’t mean it.

“Let us know where you end up for the night,” she said, and then started chattering about a new exhibit in the gallery where she worked—to cover the fact that his father hadn’t said a word.

***

The drive from Anchorage to Valdez took six hours, at the best speed Jase dared make. It was drizzling when he reached the coast. It usually was, and that was still better than in southern Alaska, where it rained all the time as far as Jase could tell. He pulled a raincoat out of his trunk and locked up the Tesla. The next water shuttle to the resort was due in twenty minutes, which wasn’t bad, considering it ran every two hours.

It was a tourist boat, double hulled for extra stability, which was hardly needed in Prince William Sound. But the last part of the trip was open to the chop from the Gulf of Alaska, so Jase found a seat in the center of the lower deck. He got seasick in anything worse than the slightest motion.

Despite the weather, most of the tourists crowded the outside decks, recording scenery and birds and whatever the captain talked about over the ship’s com system.

Jase pulled out his com pod and tuned the small screen to an auto-tech series he’d been working his way through whenever he had time.

His school councilors were nagging him to start making career choices—and when Jase named his only preference, they promptly tried to discourage him with the amount of math and physics you had to know for automotive design. And it wasn’t like Jase’s other grades were better than the solid B– he got in math and science. He was never sure if they tried to discourage him because his father had hinted that he wanted his son to do something else, or if it was simply that graduates of Murie Prep weren’t supposed to become
mechanics.

Eventually the boat chugged into the dock, and Jase gathered up his stuff and disembarked. The area around the resort was thoroughly familiar, and his overnight bag wasn’t heavy. He ignored the sprawling timber-and-glass “lodges” scattered up the hillside, and took the path that ran beside the tram track. Past the golf course—empty in this weather—and around a jutting slope to what the resort called an Authentic Alaska Native Village. The local Ananut called it the Disney Village—when they didn’t call it something worse.

No one lived in any of the houses, of course, but even in the rain a few tourists wandered from one craft demonstration to the next, and all the shops were open. Jase considered stopping at the coffee shop, but with any luck his grandmother would be home to let him in and feed him. And maybe persuade his grandfather to talk to him calmly, for once, instead of demanding that Jase take sides. In a fight that had begun when he was three, and been settled completely by the time he was seven. His father had won. His grandfather lost. It was time they both got over it.

Past the Disney Village the graveled path gave way to a rocky muddy trail, but it wasn’t narrow or brushed over. Most of the women from the real village and a lot of the men—all of them, when they weren’t allowed to fish—worked for the resort in some capacity.

It had kept the real village alive, his father said. When his father was young, half the houses had been abandoned, with the village meetinghouse all but falling apart. Now . . . Well, it wasn’t the upper slope of Flattop Mountain, but the small weathered houses were in good repair. Some even had modern glass in their windows, though the old glass wasn’t that bad. One of Jase’s earliest memories was lying on the floor in his grandparents’ living room, surrounded by toys, with the heat of the sun streaming through on his back in a way polarizing glass never permitted.

His grandfather claimed the resort had completed the destruction of the Ananut Way of Life. It might even be true, at least in part. There were new restrictions on hunting and fishing, but it was a hunting/fishing resort! They had to offer their guests the best sport, in the best seasons.

The new village house, which the resort had built as part of the agreement his father had negotiated, had not only modern glass, but enough room for all the Ananut Corporation’s offices, as well as the big meeting hall. The villagers must finally have accepted it, because as Jase passed he noticed well-tended flower beds around it, which couldn’t have been planted by resort-paid gardeners. After the resort’s first attempts to “help out in the local community” had been so furiously rejected, they’d fulfilled their contracts, but otherwise left “the locals” on their own.

But whatever the Ananut felt about the resort-provided village house, they hadn’t changed their opinion of the deal that produced it. The rain was keeping people inside, so Jase had to ignore only a few hostile glares as he made his way down the street to his grandmother’s house.
Her
house, by ancient Ananut tradition, so if she was home his grandfather would have to let Jase in. If Jase told the old man he’d come seeking a shaman’s advice, surely a shaman couldn’t turn him away.

As he stepped onto the crumbling concrete walk, his grandfather came out and stood on the porch, arms folded, barring the way.

Jase had been told that he looked just like his grandfather had in his youth, but Jase thought that if he lived to be a hundred he could never look as formidable as that grim old man.

He had to try.

“Hey, Gramps. I’m glad you’re here. I wanted to—”

“The sport fishermen are out,” said his grandfather. “So your father’s masters told us to stay home. Are you prepared to admit he was wrong?”

Evidently, his grandmother wasn’t home. Jase sighed.

“Do we always have to start with that? Aren’t there supposed to be two sides to every—”

His grandfather went into the house, closing the door behind him.

“Carp.” If he hadn’t needed information, Jase would have turned and left. His love for his father, his own self-respect, demanded it. But Jase did need information, and his grandfather was the only shaman he knew.

He climbed the steps and knocked on the door. He didn’t expect an answer, so he waited only a moment before he called, “Gramps, I know you’re listening.” He hoped his grandfather was listening. “Look, there’s something I need to ask about. It’s an Ananut thing.”

The door didn’t move. Jase pressed his ear against it; not a sound.

“It’s a shaman thing,” he called, a bit more loudly. So what if everyone on the street was opening their windows to listen. “And it’s important. I need your advice. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t need help, you stubborn—”

The canned chatter of d-vid came through the door. Jase gritted his teeth and tried the knob.

Locked.

Jase kicked the door, turned and left. He should have known his grandfather wouldn’t put aside his grudges, even to be a shaman. Not for the traitor’s son.

Jase stalked down the street, water from the puddles leaking into his shoes. He could feel the glares now. One surly old woman actually spat at him as he went by, and sneered when he hopped aside.

Jase refused to run, but he was alert for sounds on the trail behind him, and some of the tension went out of his shoulders when he entered the Disney Village, full of neutral witnesses. His pace had slowed by the time he reached the golf course. There were still no golfers, but resort workers used this path, and you never knew when a tourist tram might whiz by.

Jase checked his pod for the time—over an hour before the resort’s shuttle arrived to take him back to Valdez, and almost two hours on the water after that. It would be late to start driving after it docked, but if he checked into a motel in Valdez he wouldn’t be able to sleep, anyway. He felt like driving, late into the sunlit summer night, drowning frustration and humiliation in speed. After midnight, the highway patrollers thinned out. If he chose the right stretch of road he could let the Tesla out till the wind roared past and he could hear the turbine howl of the electric motor. It did make a noise when he really ran it up. Jase wondered how many drivers ever went fast enough to hear it. Maybe he would, tonight.

Jase sank onto one of the benches at the shuttle dock. The resort had put up a canopy, so he could pull back his hood and not get drenched, but he kept his raincoat on. Even in the summer, Alaskan rain wasn’t warm.

He’d been there less than five minutes, when his grandmother came up and sat beside him.

She didn’t say anything, waiting for Jase to speak, but from her it didn’t feel like pressure. More like acceptance of whatever he did or didn’t want to say.

“The speed of small-town gossip,” Jase said. “Someone warned him that I was coming too.”

“I got it from Helen, in the coffee shop,” said his grandmother. “Or I’d have been home when you got there. I’d guess one of the shuttle crew called your grandfather. They’re mostly off-work fishermen this time of year. Or their children. And he didn’t call me either, the stubborn old fart! Your mother’s not with you?”