Thieves' Quarry (The Thieftaker Chronicles) (30 page)

“You a conjurer, too?” Janna asked him.

The doctor’s cheeks went red. “Well, no.”

“I didn’t think so. You’d best let Kaille here do the findin’.”

Ethan stood. “Let us be going, Doctor. Thank you,” he said to Janna. “I’m in your debt.”

She frowned. “You’re always in my debt.” She nodded toward Rickman. “Bring him next time you need somethin’. At least he buys my food and drink.”

“And fine food it was,” the doctor said.

Janna flashed a broad smile.

“I hope they let you open your place again soon, Janna,” Ethan said. “As soon as they do, I’ll come back and buy a meal and an ale.”

“Yeah, I’ll believe that when I see it.”

She smiled again at the doctor and then returned to her kitchen. Ethan and Rickman pulled on their coats once more and left the Fat Spider. The rain continued to fall, and the air had grown colder still. Ethan wondered if nightfall would bring the first snow of the season.

The two men didn’t say much as they walked back through the city toward Kannice’s tavern. Ethan noticed regulars standing in pairs and small groups, or patrolling the soggy streets in larger companies. With the rainfall, and the fact that it was late on a Sunday, there were far more men in uniform on Boston’s streets than there were workers or merchants.

“It has the feel of a garrisoned town, doesn’t it?” Rickman said.

“I was thinking the same thing.”

Rickman gave him a sidelong glance. “Do you work with Samuel Adams?”

Ethan laughed quietly. “Hardly.”

The doctor recoiled. “Oh. Forgive me. I assumed, since you seemed to know so much about my dealings with him…”

“I’m sorry for laughing,” Ethan said. “Up until recently—until this occupation began, to be honest—I had considered myself utterly opposed to all for which Adams and Otis have agitated these past few years.”

“And now?”

Ethan shrugged. “I don’t know. This…” He waved a hand at yet another cluster of soldiers. “This changes things.”

The doctor eyed the regulars. “Yes, it did for me, as well.”

As they neared the Dowser, Ethan said, “Janna was right, you know. There’s not much you can do to help me find Gant and Osborne. I’m grateful to you for bringing Osborne’s disappearance to my attention, but I’m afraid you’re going to have to leave the rest of this to me.”

“I’ll leave the witchery—pardon me; the conjuring—to you. But I believe I can help in other ways.”

Before Ethan could answer, they came around the slow bend in Sudbury Street to within sight of the Dowser. At least a dozen regulars stood outside the tavern, with Sheriff Greenleaf and a man who looked suspiciously like Captain Thomas Preston standing at the fore of the company.

Ethan slowed.

Rickman muttered, “Damn,” under his breath.

“That’s him!” Greenleaf said, pointing their way.

The sheriff and captain strode in their direction, the regulars in lockstep behind them. Ethan and the doctor halted; Ethan had to resist an urge to flee.

“Are they coming for you or for me?” Rickman asked in a whisper.

“I assume they’re interested in me,” Ethan said.

“Why? What have you done?”

Ethan shook his head. “It doesn’t seem to matter.”

Preston stopped a short distance from Ethan, his sword drawn. The regulars had leveled their muskets at Ethan’s chest, rainwater dripping from their gleaming bayonets. Greenleaf didn’t stop until he was nearly nose-to-nose with Ethan. He was grinning; Ethan thought he must be enjoying himself.

“Ethan Kaille?” Greenleaf said.

“What can I do for you, Sheriff?”

“You’re to come with us to the city gaol.”

At the sheriff’s mention of the prison, Ethan’s stomach began to knot like wet rope, but he kept his voice steady as he asked, “And why am I being arrested?”

“You’re to be tried and hanged for murder.”

“Murder!” Ethan repeated. “And who am I supposed to have killed?”

“Simon Gant, of course.”

Ethan’s legs nearly gave way beneath him. “Gant’s dead?”

Greenleaf chuckled. “Dissemble all you like, Kaille. But this time you’ll not wheedle your way to freedom. I have witnesses who heard you asking about him, talking about how he had beaten you.” He reached out and grabbed Ethan roughly by the chin, turning his face so that he could see Ethan’s cheek and jaw. “I can still see the bruises a bit, though not as much as I would have expected. I’d wager we both know why, don’t we? If I can’t hang you for a murderer, I’ll hang you for a witch.”

Ethan jerked his head out of the man’s grasp. “Where did you find him?”

“Gant you mean?” the sheriff said. He shook his head. “I’m not going to play your games.”

“I don’t believe this man killed anyone, Sheriff,” Rickman said. “He’s been with me for some time now, and prior to that he was in that tavern there. When is this man, Gant, supposed to have died?”

Greenleaf’s eyes narrowed and he looked the doctor up and down. “Never mind that. Who are you?”

“My name is William Rickman. I’m ship’s surgeon aboard His Majesty’s ship the
Launceston.
”

“And what are you doing in the company of this man, Doctor?” Preston asked.

“You know as well as I do, Captain. Mister Kaille has been asked by agents of the Customs Board to look into a … a matter of some importance to the British fleet. I worked with him at Castle William, where you met with us. And I continue to work with him here in Boston.”

“Well, you’d be best off keeping your distance from him,” Greenleaf said. “I wouldn’t expect a man of your position to be aware of this, but he’s known to be a witch, not to mention a mutineer, a liar, and a cheat. Gant beat him to within an inch of his life, and he wanted his revenge.”

“He came to the camp where my regiment is billeted,” Preston said, taking up Greenleaf’s story so smoothly that Ethan wondered if they had rehearsed it beforehand. “He asked one of my soldiers about where he might find Gant, and even offered to pay the man in treasure that he planned to recover once Gant was taken care of. His bruises were more obvious then. Thinking back on it now, we all should have known why he wanted to find Gant.”

“Is any of this true?” Rickman asked.

“All of it,” Ethan said. “And none of it. I did go looking for him, I did speak with a soldier, and I did offer to share some plunder with him. Gant was a smuggler, and this man knew it. It was the only way I could think of to learn whatever it was he knew. But I wanted to find Gant, not kill him.”

“I think it’s clear that you did both,” Greenleaf said.

“Let me guess,” Ethan said. “There wasn’t a mark on the man. He just seemed to have dropped where he stood.”

A cruel smile stretched across the sheriff’s broad face. “Very good. It’s almost like you were there.”

“I don’t understand,” Rickman said.

“He was killed by a conjuring,” Ethan told him, still gazing at the sheriff. “Just like the others.”

Greenleaf’s face fell. “What others?”

“You have to let me see him, Sheriff,” Ethan said.

“See who?”

“Gant. You have to let me see the body.”

Ethan might as well have said that Greenleaf had to give him the keys to the prison.

“Why in God’s name would I let you do that?” the sheriff asked, a sneer twisting his face.

Because I can see the color of the power used to kill him. Because I can learn what kind of spell it was, and perhaps find the conjurer who cast it.
But of course Ethan couldn’t say any of these things. Greenleaf’s threat to have him hanged as a witch was just that: a threat, empty and meaningless. But as soon as Ethan admitted to being a conjurer in front of the sheriff and Preston and all these men, his life would be forfeit.

“I can help you find the person who killed him,” Ethan answered, not daring to say more, knowing that this wouldn’t be enough to convince Greenleaf of anything.

“Tell me what you meant before,” the sheriff said. “What others?”

Ethan glanced at Rickman, who stared at the ground, but gave one slight shake of his head.

“It was nothing,” Ethan said. “I misspoke.”

Greenleaf regarded the doctor. “Very well.” He looked back at Preston. “Captain?”

Preston said something to his men that Ethan couldn’t hear. One of the soldiers took Ethan’s knife and two others grasped him firmly by each arm and started to march him back the way he and Rickman had come. The other regulars fell in around him. Preston and the sheriff followed.

“Is there someone I should tell?” the doctor called after Ethan.

Ethan craned his neck to look back. He stumbled, and the men beside him tightened their grips on his arms. “Kannice Lester, the woman who owns the tavern where you found me.”

“I’ll go to her right now! And I’ll do everything in my power to win your freedom! I swear it!”

Ethan nodded once, and faced forward again. The soldiers’ fingers dug into his flesh like manacles of steel. The wind blew, the rain pelted down on his bare head and drenched his coat. But these were nothing to him. Already Ethan could smell the fetor of the cell awaiting him in Boston’s gaol.

Chapter

E
IGHTEEN

Despite all his scrapes with Greenleaf and his encounters with representatives of the Crown, Ethan had not set foot in a prison since the night of his release from servitude in Barbados. Even then, the cell had only been a place where he could sleep until he set out the following morning for the Town of Saint Michael, whence he was to depart by ship for Charleston. He hadn’t truly been a prisoner in a cell since the days of his trial for the
Ruby Blade
mutiny.

And yet as he neared the prison, memories of that old cell and of his captivity in Barbados flooded his mind like a rising storm tide. War had never frightened him, even in his youth. He had sailed through ocean storms that would have reduced some grown men to sobbing babes. He had been beaten and threatened; he had come close to dying more times than he could count. None of that scared him. But prison … He found himself choking back tears. His legs trembled as the regulars led him down the length of Queen Street that passed before the courthouse and gaol. One would have thought that he had just run up to the very top of Beacon Hill, his heart labored so. He could smell his own sweat, his own fear, and he hated himself. He recalled that feeling, as well. The one small mercy was that neither Kannice nor Diver, nor any of the other people in his life, could see him at this moment. He was entirely alone and for now at least he was glad.

The gaol sat in the midst of one of Boston’s finer neighborhoods, as out of place as a beggar—or perhaps a thieftaker—among men of society. It was a plain building, not particularly menacing and noteworthy only for its ancient, heavy oak door, which looked to Ethan as implacable as a mountain. A few small windows broke up the solid, ugly façade, but otherwise it was nothing more or less than a great stone box. And they were going to put him inside of it.

The soldiers halted. Greenleaf stepped past them, gesturing with a quick wave of his hand for the two who held Ethan to follow him. He led them through the prison entrance into the rank shadows within.

“Bring him this way,” the sheriff said, his voice echoing in the cramped space.

The two regulars steered Ethan down a narrow corridor and through a second door nearly as ponderous as the one in front. As soon as they stepped into this second passageway, the smell hit Ethan, and he gagged. Sweat, urine, feces, vomit, fear, desperation, hopelessness. He was drowning in a noisome sea. The men holding him practically had to carry him along the stone corridor, his feet half walking, half dragging. The soldiers’ fingers were like iron, gouging the muscles in his arm. And Ethan clung to that pain as a respite from his memories and his terror.

The last door on the left side of the corridor stood open. Greenleaf stopped beside it, smirking at Ethan as the men ushered him past and into the cell. It might as well have been the same cell in which he had been held during his trial. A shaft of silvery gray light shone through the small window high on the wall opposite the cell door. A pallet, tattered and leaking straw, lay along one wall with a single brown woolen blanket folded at the foot. The foul smell from the privy hole in the far corner permeated the chamber, forcing Ethan to clamp his teeth against a wave of nausea.

But he made himself stand on his own two feet, and tried to wrest his arms from the hands of the soldiers. He had survived prison before; he would do so again.

“Chain him up,” Greenleaf said from behind them.

Ethan tried to turn. “What?” he said, the word scraped from his throat.

The sheriff entered the cell and jangled a manacle that Ethan hadn’t noticed before. It was bolted to the wall beside him. Several of them were.

“As I said before, Kaille, I know what you are. I may not be an expert in the ways of witchcraft, but I know better than to leave you in this cell and expect you to be here still come the morn. My thought is that if you can’t speak your witchery, and if you can’t wave your hands around in all manner and call demons to you in that way, you’ll be powerless. And that’s what I want.” He gestured to the soldiers. “Chain him, lads. Don’t worry about being too gentle with him, either.”

The soldiers pushed Ethan against the wall, wrenched his arms up into an awkward position, and clamped the manacles around his wrists. The chains might have been set for a larger man, or Greenleaf might not have cared a whit for Ethan’s comfort. In either case, the cuffs were so far apart that they stretched Ethan’s arms and shoulders, leaving him in a great deal of discomfort and unable to move his hands at all. The iron carved into his skin, but only enough to bruise; not enough to make him bleed. The regulars attached two more manacles to his ankles. These were less restricting, though that hardly mattered given the positioning of the cuffs holding his wrists. At last, they put an iron collar around his neck and tied a gag in his mouth.

“There,” Greenleaf said, a smug smile on his face as he examined the chains and tested the bolts that held them to the rough, cold stone. “I don’t expect you’ll be going anywhere. At least, not until we say so.”