George Martin - Fevre Dream

“Julian waited until I had finished screaming, and then he said quietly, ‘There are two boards left, Joshua. Pull them off and let him out. You must be very thirsty.’ Sour Billy sniggered. I said nothing. ‘Go on, dear Joshua,’ Julian said. ‘Tonight you will truly join us, so you may never run again. Go on, dear Joshua. Free him. Kill him. And his eyes held mine. I felt their force, pulling, pulling me inside him, trying to take hold of me and make me do his bidding. Once I had tasted blood again, I would be his, body and soul, forever. He had beaten me a dozen times, forced me to kneel to him, compelled me to let him drink of my own blood. But he had never been able to make me kill. It was my last protection of what I was and what I believed in and what I tried to do, and now his eyes were tearing it down, and behind it was only death and blood and terror, and the endless empty nights that soon would be my life.”

Joshua York stopped then, and looked away. There had been something clouded and unreadable in his eyes. Abner Marsh saw to his astonishment that Joshua’s hand was shaking. “Joshua,” he said, “whatever happened, it was thirteen years ago. It’s past, it’s gone like all those folks you killed in England and such. And you didn’t have no choice, no choice a-tall. It was you that told me you can’t have good or evil without a choice. You ain’t what Julian is, no matter if you did kill that man.”

York looked at him straight on and gave a strange little smile. “Abner, I did not kill that man.”

“No? Then what…”

“I fought back,” said Joshua. “I was wild, Abner. I looked him in the eyes, and I defied him. I fought him. And this time I won. We stood there for a good ten minutes, and finally Julian broke away, snarling, and retreated up the stairs to his cabin, Sour Billy scurrying after him. The rest of my people stood staring at me astonished. Raymond Ortega stepped forward and challenged me. In less than a minute, he was kneeling. ‘Bloodmaster,’ he said, bowing his head. Then, one by one, the others began to kneel. Armand and Cara, Cynthia, Jorge and Michel LeCouer, even Kurt, all of them. Simon had such victory on his face. So did others. Julian’s had been a bitter reign for several of them. Now they were free. I had vanquished Damon Julian, for all his strength, for all his age. I was the leader of my people once again. I realized then that I faced a choice. Unless I acted, and quickly, the Fevre Dream would be discovered, and I and Julian and all our race would die.”

“What did you do?”

“I found Sour Billy. He had been mate, after all. He was outside Julian’s cabin, confused, cowering. I put him in charge of the main deck, and told the others to do as he told them. They worked. As stokers, as strikers, as engineers. With Billy half-scared to death and giving orders, they got our steam up. We fueled her with wood and lard and corpses. Ghastly, I know, but we had to get rid of the bodies, and we could not stop to wood up without great risk. I went up to the pilot house and took the wheel. Up there, at least, no one had died. She ran with all her lights out, so no one could see us even if they had eyes to penetrate that fog. At times we had to take soundings and creep along, and other times-when the fog pulled back from us-we slid downriver fast enough to make you proud, Abner! We passed a few other steamboats in the dark, and I whistled to them and they whistled back, but no one got close enough to read our name. The river was empty that night, most of the traffic tied up because of the fog. I was being a reckless pilot, but the alternative was discovery and certain death. When dawn came, we were still on the river. I would not let them retire. Billy had the tarpaulins rigged around the main deck, as protection from the sun. I remained in the pilot house. We passed New Orleans near sunbreak, went downstream, and turned off into the bayou. It was narrow and shallow, the most difficult part of the trip. We had to sound every inch of it. But finally we reached Julian’s old plantation. Only then did I let myself seek the shelter of my cabin. I was badly burned. Again.” He smiled ruefully. “I seem to have made a habit of that,” he said. “The next night I surveyed Julian’s land. We had tied up the steamer at a half-rotted old wharf on the bayou, but she was too conspicuous. If you thought to come to Cypress Landing, you would find her easily. I was loath to destroy her, since we might need the mobility she gave us, yet I knew she had to be better hidden.

“I found my answer. The plantation had once been given over to indigo. The owners had begun growing the more lucrative sugarcane more than fifty years before, and of course Julian had grown nothing at all-but well south of the main house, I found the old, abandoned indigo vats on a waterway leading from the bayou. It was a still, stagnant backwater, overgrown and foul-smelling. Indigo is not wholesome. The channel was barely wide enough for the Fevre Dream, and clearly not deep enough.

“So I contrived to deepen it. We unloaded the steamer, and worked at clearing the undergrowth and cutting back the trees and dredging the backwater. A month of labor, Abner, nearly every night. And then I took the steamer down the bayou, angled her into the backwater with much difficulty, and squeezed her through. When I stopped her, we were scraping bottom, but she was essentially invisible, screened on all sides by foliage. In the weeks that followed we dammed up the mouth of the backwater where it met the bayou, replaced the mud and sand we had so laboriously dredged out, and endeavored to drain the waterway. Within a month or so, the Fevre Dream rested on damp, muddy ground, veiled by live oak and cypress, and one would never guess there had been water there.”

Abner Marsh frowned unhappily. “That’s no goddamned end for a steamboat,” he said bitterly. “Not her, especially. She deserved better’n that.”

“I know,” said Joshua, “but I had the safety of my people to think about. I made my choice, Abner, and when it was done I was pleased and triumphant. We would never be found now. Most of the bodies had been burnt or buried. Julian had hardly been seen since the night I had defied and conquered him. He left his cabin infrequently, and then only for food. Sour Billy was the only one who spoke to him. Billy was afraid and obedient, and the others all followed me, drank with me. I had ordered Billy to remove my liquor from Julian’s cabin and keep it behind the bar in the main saloon. We drank it every night with supper. There was only one major problem remaining before I went on to consider the future of my race-our prisoners, those passengers who had survived that night of terror. We had kept them confined all during our flight and labors, though none of them had suffered harm. I had seen that they were fed and well-treated. I had even tried to talk to them, to reason with them, but it was useless-when I entered their staterooms, they would become hysterical with fear. I had no appetite for keeping them caged up indefinitely, but they had seen everything, and I did not see how I could safely let them go.

“Then the problem was solved for me. One black night, Damon Julian left his cabin. He still lived on the steamer, as did a few others, those who had been closest to him. I was ashore that night, with a dozen others, working in the main house, which Julian had allowed to deteriorate shamefully. When I returned to the Fevre Dream, I found that two of our prisoners had been taken from their staterooms and killed. Raymond and Kurt and Adrienne were sitting in the grand saloon over the bodies, feeding, and Julian was presiding over it all.”

Abner Marsh snorted. “Damn it, Joshua, you ought to have killed him when you had the chance.”

“Yes,” Joshua York agreed, much to Marsh’s surprise. “I thought I could control him. A grievous error. Of course, that night he reemerged, I tried to rectify that error. I was furious and sick. We exchanged bitter words, and I was determined that this would be the last crime of his long and monstrous life. I commanded him to face me. I intended to make him kneel and offer up his own blood, again and again if need be, until he was mine, until he was drained and broken and harmless. He rose and faced me and…” York gave a hard, hopeless laugh.