A Plunder of Souls (The Thieftaker Chronicles) (41 page)

The other shades halted. The younger Ramsey paled.

“I told you never to do this again!” he said, death in his voice.

“Aye,” Ethan said. “I don’t much care. I won’t release him. If you want to kill me, you’ll have to do it with your father’s spirit watching, knowing that you’re dooming him as well.”

“Can’t you fight him?” Ramsey asked his father, desperation in his voice. He pointed at Uncle Reg. “Can’t you do something to his ghost?” He clenched his fists again. “I’m doing this for you!” he shouted. “You’ll be with me soon! Alive again!”

The shade stared back at his son briefly before turning and walking to where Gavin’s body lay. He stood over the dead man, shaking his head.

“He betrayed you at the end,” Ramsey said. There was a plea in his voice. “He could have helped you; he could have saved you. But he didn’t.”

The shade gave no indication that he had heard.

Ramsey cut his arm. “
Interfice eos ex cruore evocatum!
” he said. Kill them, conjured from blood!

The other shades jerked into motion and began to converge on them once more. Mariz sidled closer to him.

“Another spell, Kaille. Quickly!”

The shades moved slowly, but they were near enough now that in just a few seconds they could kill the conjurers much as the other wraith had killed Gavin. But that, Ethan realized, was not their purpose. They were converging not only on Ethan and Mariz, but also on Uncle Reg and Mariz’s ghost. If the shades could destroy them, Ethan and Mariz would be robbed of their powers, and the ghost of Nathaniel Ramsey would be released from their summons.

Ethan said nothing, but turned to Patience’s ghost. She would be one of the first shades to reach them. Ramsey had cast a spell to make them appear, and had cast again just now to order them back into motion. Did the symbol he had carved in the cadavers require a spell in order to work? And if so, was it possible that the spell Ethan had carved into Patience’s body worked the same way?

“Now, Kaille!” Mariz said, his voice rising.

What would the wording be? How had he cast that initial spell? The Latin, roughly translated, had said,
Protect this corpse and its spirit from magick, keep it free from the influence of others, conjured in herbs and this symbol.
So a spell now …

Ethan slashed at his arm. “There’s no time to teach you,” he said. “We just have to hope that I can conjure on my own this one time.”

Mariz cut his arm too, and held it out just beside Ethan’s. “I do not know what you are doing, but perhaps this will help.”

Ethan nodded. “
Tega hunc spiritum contra alienam auctoritatem, ex cruore nostro et signo meo evocatum.
” Protect this spirit from the influence of others, conjured from our blood and my symbol.

The spell pealed like a church bell and wiped the blood from their forearms. But still the shades closed in on them. One reached out a translucent hand and touched Ethan’s neck. He gasped, jerked away.

“That didn’t seem to help you very much, Kaille!” Ramsey called.

Ethan cut himself again, thinking that perhaps he had time to try the spell one last time.

But before he could speak the incantation, the shade of Patience Walters halted. Her eyes changed; they didn’t grow dimmer or brighter, but they seemed to focus once more. She could see him.

“Patience?” Ethan whispered.

She hesitated, nodded. She raised a hand, and the other shades halted their advance.

“What are you doing?” Ramsey demanded. “I told you to kill them!”

Patience gestured for the other shades to back away, and almost immediately they began to do so.

Ramsey dragged his blade across his arm and shouted out the same killing command he had given seconds before. The conjuring hummed in the floor and walls, but the shades didn’t obey him.

“What have you done, Kaille?”

“They’re not yours to control anymore.”

“Of course they are! My symbol is on them! They can’t refuse me!”

“They have a new captain. You said so yourself.”

“And she’s marked as mine, just like the rest!”

“I marked her before you did. And my symbol keeps her free.”

Ramsey’s mouth fell open. “Impossible!” he said, breathing the word. “I would have seen it!”

“Would you, Ramsey? Did you really look at her, or did you merely defile her grave, mutilate her corpse, and claim her as your own?”

The captain said nothing.

Ethan still had blood on his arm. “
Ignis ex cruore evocatus!
” Fire, conjured from blood!

Ramsey staggered as from a blow, and nearly toppled back into the hole in the floor from which he had climbed. But his warding still held. He retreated to the other side of the pit, and cut his arm, even as Ethan and Mariz cut theirs again.

Sephira and her men still fought the crew of the
Muirenn
. Several men lay on the floor; some of them bled, others appeared to have broken limbs. Several weren’t moving at all; Ethan couldn’t tell if they were dead or unconscious. The fight still seemed to be going Sephira’s way.

Ethan faced Patience. “Don’t let the shades kill anyone,” he said. “But don’t let Ramsey out of here, either. If he escapes he’ll find a way to control you again, and I’m not sure I can save you a second time.”

She nodded and turned away from him, encompassing the other ghosts in her gaze. Seconds later, the shades began to fan out across the warehouse floor. Ramsey backed away from them, his eyes wide as they darted from one decayed visage to another.

One of the shades broke away from the others, and moved to Ramsey’s side: the ghost of Nathaniel Ramsey. The others, including Patience, stopped.

“If you release them, Ramsey, I’ll release your father. We still have to end this, one way or another, but he doesn’t have to watch it all.”

“All right,” the captain said. “I’ll send them away. You do the same.”

“No. I’m not talking about making your shades disappear for a while. I want you to release them. Use a conjuring to end your mastery of that symbol you carved into them, and tell what’s left of your crew to unload from your ship the body parts you stole.”

Ramsey shook his head. “I won’t do that.”

“Then your father will watch you die. Patience.”

The shade looked back at him.

Ethan nodded once, and the shades resumed their advance. Ramsey backed away, his father keeping pace with him.

“I don’t like this, Ethan,” Sephira called, eyeing the shades.

There didn’t appear to be a back door to the warehouse, something Ethan hadn’t noticed before. And neither Sephira and her men nor the crew of the
Muirenn
could reach the front of the building without passing uncomfortably close to the wraiths.

“Help them,” Ethan said to Mariz. “I’ll stay with Ramsey.”

Mariz nodded and ran to join Sephira.

“Just you and me now, eh?” Ramsey asked, smiling but looking pale. “Good. That’s what I’ve wanted all along.”

Power thrummed and the building shook. Mariz had broken a large hole in the side of the building. Sephira and her men streamed out into the gloaming, as did most of Ramsey’s crew. Both sides helped up some of the men who lay on the floor. But others they left. It seemed that both Sephira and Ramsey had lost more men this day.

“Captain?” one of them called, lingering beside the gap in the wall.

“Go!” Ramsey said.

“Tell him to return the body parts, Ramsey. Let me send your father away.”

“I won’t.”

The sailor watched them for another moment before leaving the building. Mariz stared after the man, then turned and walked back toward Ethan and Ramsey, cutting his arm again as he did.

“I thought you were going to fight me alone, Kaille? Are you that afraid of me?”

“Your problem, Ramsey, is that you hate me so much you’ve allowed that hatred to consume you. I’m trying to bring peace to the shades you’ve awakened, and to the families of the dead. That’s why I’m here. And if I have to enlist a hundred conjurers to help me defeat you, that’s what I’ll do. You don’t control these souls anymore. I can kill you if I want. No one will be lost. I’m offering you one last chance to surrender and live.”

The shades had the captain surrounded now, though they kept their distance. He was in no imminent danger from them, but he was very much trapped.

“You think you’ve beaten me,” he said. “You think that without the shades, I’m just another conjurer, like you and your friend here. You’re wrong. I’m still stronger than both of you, and I will never surrender to you.”

He raised his arm, which still was still bloody. “
Vola ex cruore evocatum.
”

Ethan ducked out of instinct, but the barrel that flew from the far wall didn’t move in his direction. Instead, it soared toward Janna.

“
Subsiste!
” Ramsey said as it reached her. Stop!

And it did. The barrel remained suspended perhaps ten feet above Janna’s motionless form.

“If I die, it falls on her,” Ramsey said. “At the first word of Latin you speak, it falls on her. If you go near her or come closer to me, or if even one of those shades moves a finger, she dies.” He grinned. “Your move, Kaille.”

Chapter

T
WENTY
-
THREE

The barrel revolved slowly, but it did not otherwise move. And neither did Janna.

“Now, release my father.”

Ramsey might as well have had a pistol aimed at Ethan’s head, full-cocked and ready to fire.

“I swear, I’ll kill her if you don’t.”

“No, he will not,” Mariz said before Ethan could answer. “She is all he has. If he kills her, we kill him, and this is over. He will not spend his one advantage for the benefit of his father’s ghost. He is afraid to die; I can see it in his eyes. He will keep Janna alive until he is free of this place. In the end, that is all he cares about.”

Ramsey sliced his forearm again. “
Discuti ex cruore evocatum!
” Shatter, conjured from blood!

Mariz fell back, as if he had been punched in the jaw. But immediately he climbed to his feet once more. The warding the three of them had cast had proven more durable and more powerful than any warding Ethan had ever cast on his own. Without it, Ramsey would have killed all of them by now. And though he hadn’t managed to kill Mariz, it didn’t escape Ethan’s notice that he could cast spells while also holding that barrel over Janna. He might have been desperate and outnumbered, but he remained dangerously powerful.

“I do not think he liked what I had to say. Perhaps there was too much truth to it, yes?”

“Another word out of you, and I swear I’ll kill her!”

The shade of Ramsey’s father had been watching all of this, and now he left Ramsey’s side.

“Father, where are you going?”

They shade didn’t falter, but walked to where Patience stood, turned, and took his place next to her, his arms crossed over his chest as he glowered at his son.

“Don’t you understand?” Ramsey said. “I’m doing this for you! I’m going to bring you back, and together we’ll be able to cast any spell, avenge every wrong!”

Ethan lowered his gaze. He couldn’t allow to Ramsey to leave this place as long as he still had the means to control the shades, and he was prepared to kill the captain if he had to. But just then, he couldn’t bear the pain he saw in Ramsey’s eyes.

“They’re our enemies,” Ramsey said, his voice dropping almost to a whisper. “You may not see it, but that’s all right. I know what they are, and I’ll fight them, even if you won’t.”

“I can let him go, Ramsey,” Ethan said, speaking softly. “Do what I’ve asked of you, and he won’t have to see any more of this.”

“Stop!” Ramsey shouted, the word echoing through the building. “Don’t say another word, or I really will kill her! I need … Just don’t say another word!”

“
Discuti ex cruore evocatum.
” Shatter, conjured from blood.

The voice and the spell came from behind them, and was followed an instant after by a violent rending of wood. Scraps of the suspended barrel scattered over the floor of the warehouse, and the metal stays, twisted nearly beyond recognition, fell with a loud clatter.

“Those shouldn’t be hangin’ in the air like that,” Janna said, sitting up. “A person could get hurt.” She stood, tottered, but kept her feet and walked unsteadily to join Ethan and Mariz. “If you need me, I can conjure more.”

“We don’t need to conjure as one anymore,” Ethan said, keeping his gaze fixed on Ramsey. “But we might need a spell or two before this is over.”

“Fine,” Ramsey said. “I’ll release them, and you can let my father go.”

“And the body parts you stole?”

“I’ll use an illusion spell now to tell my crew to unload them. If you don’t believe me, use an illusion spell of your own to watch.”

“Do not trust him, Kaille,” Mariz said. “Even now, he tries to deceive us.”

Janna nodded, her eyes on the captain. “I agree.”

In recent days, Ethan had been too trusting, too willing to believe that he could reason with Ramsey. He wasn’t about to make the same mistake. Ramsey had lost control of the shades; he could not escape unless he first rid himself of his ghosts. He was prepared to fight to the death, and he didn’t want his father to bear witness to whatever end awaited him.

Ethan understood this. But from the outset of this ordeal, his first goal had been to win the freedom of the dead, so that they could rest once more. He couldn’t waste this opportunity.

“All right,” Ethan said. “I’ll cast with you. Once I see you give the order to your men, I’ll release your father.”

Janna gripped his arm. “Kaille, no!”

“We cannot let you do this,” Mariz said.

“You have to! As long as he has those body parts, he can do this again. He can keep all of us from conjuring.”

Mariz shook his head. “Not if he is dead. Order the shades to kill him, just as he did to your friend, Gavin. Then this will be over.”

Hearing this, the shade of Nathaniel Ramsey drew a knife from his belt, and lunged at Patience, seeking to stab her through the heart. Ethan didn’t know what damage one shade could do to another, but Patience leaped back out of Nathaniel’s reach. The other shades scattered, as frightened as she of the old captain’s wrath.