White Silence Read Online Free PDF

him. Hugh would say so. Right now, Danny would have to agree.
    It was their last night at sea. And a fine clear night it was! After finishing their evening meal in the cabin, the three Immortals sat for a time on the deck, near the bow of the ship. Fitz had a small spyglass, and he and Duncan were pointing out the various constellations to Danny.
    “Look, Hugh,” The young Immortal pointed into the night sky at a fall of stars. “ ’Tis a shower of gold! Will it land, do you think, where we can pick it up?”
    Fitzcairn grinned and raised the spyglass to his right eye. “A pretty thought that, lad. All we’ll be needing to find is a handful or three each and we can live like nobility for a century or so.”
    “And never do an honest day’s work again, which would suit some of us, if I recall correctly,” Duncan added.
    Fitz swiped at him with the spyglass, and missed.
    “Mr. Macleod …” Danny hesitated. “You never did say—why are you with us, then, if not for the gold?”
    Duncan gazed into the distance, out over the midnight sea. “The man who lost that nugget of gold to Amanda—he didn’t talk much of what he’d done to make his fortune. But he did speak often of what are called the Northern Lights.” He gestured toward the sky. “Brilliant colors, sweeping across the stars. Sometimes in waves, like the tides. Only to be seen at the far edge of the world. It sounded like a sight that any man, Immortal or not, should see for himself.”
    “Like a rainbow of darkness, that’s what it sounds to me,” Danny said, eyes wide at the thought.
    “Well, lad,” Fitz said, as he handed Danny the spyglass, digging in his pockets for pipe and tobacco, “if luck is with us, there will be one of those pots of gold at the end of it. And admit it, MacLeod,” he added, “if we were to make a strike, you’d find some use for the wealth. Unless you’ve filled that warehouse in Paris already?”
    Duncan smiled. “There’s space left. I’ve only had it for a hundred years or so, you know.”
    Fitz answered the young Immortal’s unspoken question. “The Highlander collects, Danny. Odds and ends of things that catch his eye. A lot of it is plaid.”
    “I wouldn’t expect you to see the value in anything that could not be eaten, drunk, or taken to bed, Fitzcairn,” Duncan retorted. “But the day will come when some of those things will prove their worth.”
    “Do you have any fine glass?” Danny asked, obviously interested.
    “Glass? Why, yes, I do in fact,” Duncan replied, surprised. “Some crystal, Austrian-made. Amanda had one vase in the Queen of Spades—”
    “Tell him about Temperanceville,” Fitz said, as he made himself a comfortable seat on a nail keg.
    Danny leaned back on the rail next to Duncan. “When I was sixteen or so, I moved there—to Temperanceville—with the woman who had raised me as her own. It’s a town just by a city in the western part of the state of Pennsylvania. Pittsburgh, it’s called. It was, they say, built first as a fort, at the fork of three rivers. Have you ever been there, Mr. MacLeod? The countryside is fair green, and hilly.”
    “No, but I know of it,” Duncan replied. Pittsburgh had been fiercely abolitionist. Though he had had many contacts there around thirty years before, he had never actually seen the city.
    In the dark a match flared, as Fitz attempted to relight his pipe. “One of the places where we fought the bloody French.”
    “We?” If it were possible, the single word was said with a distinct burr.
    Fitz chuckled, as Danny continued. “There was work to be had in the area, in the mills and the mines and the factories. I found a place in one of the glass factories. The job was hot and hard, it was, but some of the things we made were lovely to see.” He smiled in the darkness. “I often wondered what fine tables they might be setting.”
    “You were there before the war?” Duncan asked.
    Danny sighed. “Aye. And after, too. Which was