"What a Father's Tears Are Worth"

Tom drew the oilcloth packet from his shirt.

It came out warm, blood-warm still, the black wax seal whole and unbroken. Marrow's eyes followed it from the root. The captain did not speak, but his hand lifted a fraction off his thigh — a small, weary gesture of permission, of yes. Twenty years of weight in two slow tears, and Tom would not be the boy who weighed it again.

He crossed the leaf-mould and put the packet in Isabeau's free hand.

Her fingers closed on it. They trembled — just once, just enough — and Tom saw, for one unguarded heartbeat, that she had not been certain he would. That she had come down the slope ready to be refused, ready to be shot at, ready for any answer but this one.

"My father chose well," she said again, very softly. The pistol came uncocked at her hip, the powder pan closed with a small clean snap. She tucked it into her sash. "Mama Yves. It is good to see you living."

"And you, child."

"There is a sister." Isabeau's eyes did not leave Tom's. "Half-sister. My father's first marriage, before my mother. Hélène walks Saint-Pierre with my face and my name and a great deal of my father's old money, and she has been hunting him these eleven years for what is in that packet. She paid the cord-men. She paid the hunter you burned. She does not yet know I am on this island."

Beñat, on his knees, had stopped smiling.

"The sloop in the bay," Isabeau said. "Is mine, not hers. But the watch aboard are her men. They believe they wait for the hunter's return. They will not believe me long."

Marrow's hand closed weakly on Tom's wrist.

"Boy," he whispered. "One more fight."