Son of Fortune Read Online Free PDF

shades of blue melted gradually down through the sky. The ocean was the color of black plums ripened to bursting.
    He heard a noise and looked up to see Fish approaching. He carried a bottle and two glasses and sat down beside Aiden. He pulled the cork from the bottle and poured two small drinks. A dense aroma—spicy and slightly medicinal—floated up. The liquor was smooth and scouring at the same time and tasted very foreign. Aiden gasped and managed not to choke. He leaned back on the pile of wood. The fresh smell of lumber made him feel strangely sad. That part of his life was over now. It was a rough, harsh life, but there was a lot of good about it too. Logging was challenging and dangerous, but at the end of every day he always felt satisfied. And there were few decisions to make, nothing to wonder about. Eat this, sleep here, chop down this tree.
    “Here—a present for you.” Fish pressed something smooth and sharp into Aiden’s hand. It was a glossy white triangle, nothing like a stone, though closest to a stone, the size of a playing card, smooth on one edge, jagged on the other two.
    “Shark tooth. It was stuck in the sole of your boot.”
    The tooth was surprisingly heavy and had an odd prehistoric elegance. Aiden found a bit of leather boot sole caught between two of the tiny saw points. He pried it free and rolled it between his fingers. It was like mitten fuzz, only rubbery and dense. His hands began to tremble. Fish said nothing but poured them both another drink. The clear, pungent liquor was thicker than water but less so than blood. Still, there was the harsh iron smell to it that reminded him of blood. Or maybe everything now made him think of blood. Would he ever again be free of blood? “What is it?”
    “It’s called aquavit—water of life.”
    “Then, to life,” Aiden said. They drank, then were silent for a few minutes, watching the sun sink into the water like a single burning coal.
    “Why did you go in the water for me?” Fish asked quietly.
    Aiden shrugged. “I know how to swim. It seemed like you didn’t.”
    “I don’t,” Fish confessed. “Sailors almost never do, unless they sail the tropics. But the shark could still have been near.”
    “I figured it was busy eating already. Figured I had a little time. I wouldn’t have gone in otherwise. So you know.”
    “No. That’s good to know.”
    “No offense.”
    “No.”
    “I didn’t think about the water being so cold,” Aiden said.
    “It was awfully cold.”
    “Just—it wasn’t a good-deed kind of thing. I only went in because I was pretty sure I would come out again.”
    Fish reached for the bottle and poured another ounce out in each glass.
    “I figured the odds were pretty good for me living,” Aiden went on. “If you lived too, so much the better. But if it came down to just one of us, me or you, well, it wouldn’t be me all drowned or in the belly of that shark right now.”
    “That’s reasonable.”
    “It wasn’t a question of who ought to live or not, or why or why not,” Aiden went on. The strange Swedish liquor, plus the piled-up shock of the past few days, was making him strangely talkative in a way he somehow couldn’t stop. “Only what could I probably do at the time with the way things were.”
    Fish looked at him with a puzzled expression. “Well, whatever reasoning you like, I am glad to be topside of the sea and outside that shark.” He raised his glass and clinked Aiden’s, and they both tossed back the water of life. They watched the last red arc of the sun vanish into the sapphire sea. Fish looked at the shark tooth that Aiden was absently rubbing. “Sven the Ancient can drill a hole in that if you like,” he said. “So you can wear it around your neck. Maybe even scrimshaw on it.”
    “Thanks, but I think I’ve had teeth close to my skin enough for now,” Aiden said. He pulled out the little leather pouch he wore around his neck. “I have a place for it.” He did not look at