Seeker by Arwen Elys Dayton Page A

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 thesuite 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