The reverend blinked, as though the thought had never once occurred to him.
“Doyouknow what to feed a reindeer?” Alexei asked.
“No, but I can bring herders over from Siberia to teach the Aleut, and then they’ll have a new and more reliable source of food and clothing.”
“It seems easier to stop their current source of food and clothing from being hunted into extinction. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to get home for dinner.”
“But...” Rev. Jackson stood blinking at him. “You really won’t lend me a ship?”
Alexei rubbed his brow. “I don’t have a ship to spare. I’ve had three of them hung up for days on end while the RCS searched them.”
Reverend Jackson winced. “Ah yes. I heard about that.”
Heard about it but did nothing. Not that Alexei could blame the minister. If he were in Rev. Jackson’s position, he’d do whatever possible to avoid getting on the Caldwells’ bad side too. “Did you ask Kuluk whether he wanted reindeer brought to his island? If he’s willing to learn how to herd them?”
Again, the man blinked. “No, but I’m sure if we show up with?—”
“And you want to move the reindeer now, on the cusp of winter? Surely the time to move them, if ever, is during the spring or summer.”
The small man’s shoulders deflated. “So you’re telling me no?”
“I’m telling you the Aleuts should have a say in this, and if they want to pursue it, we need to wait until spring.”
“But you think the idea has merit?”
“It’s a different idea, but I can’t say that it’s a terrible one.” It had sounded ridiculous at first, but honestly, even though Washington, DC, was aware of the seal problem, they weren’t in a hurry to fix it. So if reindeer could provide a stable food source that wasn’t in danger of being overhunted, then who was he to say no? “Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to get home.”
Disappointment was written across the man’s face, but he didn’t argue. Instead, he thanked Alexei for his time, then hastened off in the direction of the boarding school.
By the time Alexei walked the final two blocks to his house on the water, the office above the warehouse was dark, and lights were glowing from the kitchen windows at the main house. He let himself in through the back door and was greeted with the scent of salmon stew and freshly baked sourdough bread.
“Alexei, you’re here.” Maggie, Sacha’s wife, smiled at him, her thick golden braid swinging at her back. “Dinner’s ready. We were just waiting on you to eat.”
“Let me wash up, and then I’ll call everyone.” He headed to the stand in the corner, where he poured water over his hands and lathered them.
He was drying his hands when Sacha stepped into the kitchen, his broad shoulders filling the doorway.
“How did the meeting go?” Sacha asked him, then headed straight to his wife and wrapped her in a hug.
Yuri entered the kitchen behind Sacha and rolled his eyes. “If you two are always going to be canoodling, maybe you should get your own house.”
Sacha frowned. “That’s a terrible idea. You’d have no one to cook for you.”
“Oh, that’s easily solved.” Yuri winked at Maggie. “We’d come for dinner at your house every night.”
“Where you’d still see them canoodling? I fail to see how that would solve the problem.” Alexei hung the towel back on the rack, then turned to face his brothers. “The meeting went exactly how you predicted, Sacha.”
“The governor is canceling our shipping contracts?” Sacha dropped his arms from around Maggie and headed around the table to the samovar.
“Yes. All three of them, effective immediately.”
Yuri beat Sacha to the samovar, where he poured himself a cup of tea first. “Did you tell the governor he owes us two thousand dollars per contract for canceling early?”
“I tried, but he claimed that we failed to uphold our end of the contracts, allowing him to cancel without penalty.”
Sacha had been about to pour himself a cup of tea, but he stopped abruptly, a bit of liquid sloshing out of the teapot and onto the hutch. “He said what?”
“We didn’t violate so much as a word of those contracts.” Yuri shoved a finger in Alexei’s direction.
