Sacha grinned. “Never thought I’d say it, but I think our little brother has finally learned to think rather than leap.”
Alexei huffed a laugh. “Or he’s still leaping, but at least he’s aiming in the right direction these days.”
“So what happens now?” Sacha rubbed his beard. “Do we go to the bank and get a nice fat banknote to hand over to that poor widow?”
“Yes, and after that, we’re going to visit Harold Farnsworth.”
12
Sitka; the Same Day
Yuri tugged at his collar and leaned forward, squinting at numbers on the ledger. A bead of sweat itched at his temple. He ignored it and focused on the ledger, tapping his pencil as he scanned the list of shipping weights, dock fees, and something that looked suspiciously like a misfiled invoice for six crates of salted cod.
“How does Alexei do this day after day without clawing his eyes out?”
Mikhail smirked from where he stood in the open space in front of the windows, swinging his Indian clubs in controlled, rhythmic arcs. Being an explorer in Alaska meant Mikhail didn’t have work during the winter, and this was one of the many ways he stayed fit. “Tired of doing Alexei’s paperwork?”
He’d grown tired of it after about twenty minutes. On the first day Alexei had left. And that had been six days ago. “No wonder he never smiles. I wouldn’t smile either if I had to calculate ledgers and match shipping manifests with warehouse records.”
“Don’t tell anyone, but I think Alexei likes the paperwork.” Mikhail drew one of the clubs forward in a loop across his chest, then guided it up over his shoulder and back down again, not breaking his concentration.
Yuri slid a random envelope into the ledger to mark his place, then snapped it shut. Alexei could sort through most of this after he returned. His older brother might have said he wanted the audit done by the time he returned, but he didn’t actually expect Yuri to follow through and have it completed, did he?
Alexei had been gone before, sometimes for as long as three months. But they typically had time to prepare for his absence, to decide which paperwork was essential and which could wait. And Alexei always let the businesses he was working with know when he would be gone for an extended period of time, which cut down on correspondence.
This was the first time Alexei had actually given him a specific task to complete. He could still recall the way Alexei had narrowed his eyes at him, still hear the sound of his voice when he’d said,I’m in the middle of doing our semiannual audit.... You should be able to finish it by the time I return.
It was an impossible task. Why did the audit need to be done at all? He’d found only a few discrepancies so far, and none of them were significant enough to impact the functioning of the business.
“I need a bit of air.” Yuri shoved away from Alexei’s desk, the polished surface not even visible beneath the mess of letters and shipping manifests and ledgers. “I’ll be back.”
Mikhail’s muscles flexed as he transitioned into yet another series of movements. This one involved swinging both sets of clubs high above his head before bringing them out in a series of wide circles. “Where are you going?”
“To the post office. I interviewed three men for mining-foreman positions while I was in San Francisco, and I want to see if any of their letters of recommendation have arrived.”
“You interviewed mining foremen?” Mikhail stopped, dropping his clubs to his side. “Why?”
“You know why.”
“We haven’t even filed a claim.” Mikhail set the clubs down and grabbed a towel, which he used to wipe the back of his neck and his forehead.
“Correction, you haven’t filed a claim here. In Sitka.”
“Don’t tell me you filed a claim in San Francisco for that gold vein I found in November.”
“Of course I filed a claim.”
Mikhail had found the vein purely by accident. He’d been sent on a late-season rescue mission to find a team of missing botanists who had gotten lost after their guide had died in a bear attack. He’d returned from the expedition with two things he hadn’t expected. A future wife, and the location of a gold vein hidden deep in the mountains of the Stikine wilderness.
After he’d gotten home, the family had talked about filing a claim in Seattle so that no one in Alaska would know about the discovery, but Alexei sent Yuri to San Francisco before anyone had reason to travel to Seattle. Yuri had just assumed he should file a claim there, but Mikhail clearly hadn’t been expecting him to do so.
“We’re about to buy a shipyard, and after that, Alexei will still want to buy a barge—either that or build one in our new shipyard.” Yuri crossed his arms over his chest. “Both of those things will cost money. How better to get it than by mining the vein you found? That will involve hiring a foreman and likely setting up a small stamp mill. I don’t know if we’ll need an entire refinery on-site or if we can pay another company to process the gold, but I figured the right foreman could tell us that.”
Mikhail’s face darkened into a scowl. “This is going to get out, you know. Everyone will discover that we own a claim.”
“My plan is for no one to know until we start exporting gold sometime this summer. If we handle things right and hire people from California rather than Alaska, we should be able to keep the entire operation secret for a few months.”
“I don’t like it.”
