Dead Man's Reach (20 page)

“Perhaps we are wrong, then, about Ramsey. Perhaps it is this other conjurer.”

Ethan shrugged. “Maybe. I've wondered in recent days whether I'm so afraid of Ramsey's return that I'm incapable of rational thought.”

“Where Ramsey is concerned,” Mariz said, “fear
is
rational thought. You should be careful; turn your back on no one.”

This much, at least, Ethan had figured out for himself. He raised a hand in farewell and walked away.

 

Chapter

E
LEVEN

Ethan's conversation with Janna went much as had his exchange with Mariz. She had never heard of one conjurer using another in the way this speller seemed to be using Ethan, which was a striking admission coming from her: Janna knew more about spellmaking than any conjurer he'd met. But though perplexed by what he told her about the spells, she remained unconvinced that Ramsey was behind the attacks.

“You're thinking' too much like a thieftaker an' not enough like a crazy man,” she told him.

“That might be the nicest thing you've ever said to me.”

She scowled. “You understand what I'm saying. Ramsey wants you dead, and he's not one for bein' subtle.”

“What if this is all he can manage now, Janna? What if he was so badly hurt in the fire last summer that he's not strong enough for a battle? Maybe subtlety is all he has left.”

She pondered this for some time before conceding that he might be right. Ethan would have preferred that she try harder to convince him he was wrong.

After leaving the Fat Spider, Ethan made his way back past the South End through Cornhill. He had planned to return to the Dowsing Rod, but as he drew nearer to Murray's Barracks, an idea came to him. He had gone to the Green Dragon to see if a conjurer in the Sons of Liberty could have been casting these mysterious spells. But there were others in Boston who might have something to gain from more violent confrontations between patriots and Tories. And his finding spell had revealed a conjurer in the center of the city, perhaps near the barracks.

Slipping off of Treamount Street before he reached the corner of Queen, Ethan made sure he could not be seen. Rather than risk calling attention to himself by removing his greatcoat, he bit down on the inside of his cheek and whispered, “
Velamentum ex cruore evocatum.
” Concealment, conjured from blood.

The spell pulsed, and Reg watched as the conjuring settled over him.

“There may be conjurers where I'm going,” Ethan said. “I don't want them to see you.
Dimitto te.
” I release you.

The only thing Reg seemed to like less than being summoned was being dismissed. He glowered at Ethan as he faded from view. But Ethan had more pressing matters with which to concern himself. Walking through the city under a concealment spell was difficult under the best of circumstances, as he had to take care that he made no noise with his footsteps. But with fresh snow on the ground, his task became that much more complicated. He needed to place his feet only in spots where the snow had already been packed down by others.

He walked slowly, taking great care with each step. He passed groups of soldiers, watching them for any sign that they sensed his presence, but every man he saw ignored him. Reaching the entrance to the barracks, which was an old sugar warehouse owned by James Murray and James Smith, he waited as several men emerged from the building onto the street before easing inside.

Ethan wasn't sure what he had expected of the barracks, but upon entering he was shocked by the squalor of the soldiers' quarters. The air stank of sweat and urine and stale food. Though the warehouse was spacious, cots were crowded into it, leaving little room for walking; the men enjoyed no privacy. It was no wonder the occupying army had seen so many desertions over the past year and a half, or that such a large number of soldiers had resorted to thieving.

Still, the soldiers Ethan saw in the barracks, who had gathered in large and small clusters throughout the large space, seemed content to gamble at cards and laugh at one another's jokes. A few men in one corner of the room groused about “the damn'd dogs” they had encountered in the streets, and the “whores and mongrels” who served them in the various publick houses they frequented.

Ethan didn't remain with this group long enough to learn if they counted Kannice among them. Several times he heard men speak of using their muskets the next time they were accosted by gangs of toughs, but he thought this more bluster than anything else. Most of the men who said these things were young and appeared to be showing off for their older comrades.

He did not sense any conjurers among the regulars lounging in the barracks, but a skilled speller might have avoided detection. To be certain, he decided to try a spell. He moved to a spot near the center of the room, so that he could see most every man in the warehouse, and quietly removed three leaves of mullein from the pouch in his pocket.

Tegimen ex verbasco evocatum,
he said in his mind. Warding, conjured from mullein.

He didn't anticipate that he would need the warding to protect himself, but a speller did not waste conjurings. Still, the warding was far less important than the act of conjuring itself.

Most of the men showed no sign of feeling the spell. But one soldier, a young, lanky man reclining on a cot near the southern end of the room, tensed and sat up.

“
Abi!
” Ethan whispered to Reg, who had appeared like spell-summoned fire next to him. Go away!

This command pulsed as had the first spell.

The young soldier was on his feet now, staring in Ethan's direction.

Cursing his recklessness, but glad to have the warding in place, Ethan backed toward the doorway, placing his feet with great care. When at last he reached the door he retreated into the street. Other soldiers milled about outside, but he avoided them and moved away from the barracks with as much speed and as little noise as he could manage. Still, he didn't go so far that he couldn't get a good look at the soldier should he appear at the barracks entrance. After a few seconds, the young soldier did just that, peering out into the street.

“Who's there?” the man asked in a low voice, the words tinged with a Scottish burr.

Ethan eased closer.

“Wha's the matter there, Morrison?” asked one of the men standing nearby.

“It's nothing. I thought I heard somethin'.”

“Hearin' things now, are ye?”

“Aye,” he said. Still he surveyed Brattle Street. It might have been Ethan's imagination, but he thought that the man's gaze lingered on him briefly. He didn't so much as draw breath.

“I'm gonna step outside for a bit,” the man called to someone in the barracks.

He started in Ethan's direction, removing a knife from his belt as he walked. Ethan took a few more steps back, trying to match his footfalls with those of the soldier.

A chaise rattled past. Using the sound to mask his steps, Ethan hurried on to Queen Street.

He hadn't gotten far, however, when a spell growled in the ground. He knew it at once for a finding spell and spat a curse, turning the heads of some men nearby.

The spell rushed toward him, slipping over the street like an advancing tide over a sandy shore. It caught up with him in mere seconds, seeming to tug at his legs as might a retreating wave.

The young soldier had followed him as far as the corner of Brattle Street, shadowed by a pale form. It appeared to be the ghost of a man, also dressed in soldier's garb. With the sun shining down on the snow, Ethan could barely make out the figure much less determine its exact color, but it looked to be a pale blue. After a moment, the ghost lifted a shimmering arm and pointed directly at him.

Ethan knew that with his concealment spell still in place, the soldier couldn't see him. Nevertheless, he felt exposed, vulnerable. He turned and ran, knowing that he risked giving himself away. At the first corner, he turned southward away from the Dowser and kept running, his bad leg aching.

When he came to School Street, he turned again, this time toward the waterfront. He passed King's Chapel, where his friend Trevor Pell served as a minister, and entered the narrower lanes of the Cornhill section of the city. He had followed a roundabout path, but he didn't want the soldier following him either to the Dowser, or to his room over Henry's cooperage, where he was headed now. He needed to remove his concealment conjuring, but he feared casting the spell too close to the barracks, since the pulse of his own conjuring would be as effective as a finding spell in telling the soldier where he was. The farther Ethan was from the man when he cast, the more difficult it would be for the soldier to determine his location.

As Ethan passed Henry's shop on his way around the building to the stairway in back that led to his room, Shelly lifted her head and thumped her tail on the snow-covered lane. Dogs, Ethan had noticed in the past, could see through concealment conjurings; he had no idea why.

He climbed the stairs carefully, trying to make not a sound, and to keep his balance on the treacherous ice that covered the old wooden treads. Once he was safely in his room, with the door locked, he pulled off his greatcoat, cut his arm, and said, “
Fini velamentum ex cruore evocatum.
” End concealment, conjured from blood.

Reg materialized directly in front of him, frowning the way Ethan's mother used to when disappointed in his casting.

“I know,” Ethan said. “I'm a fool.”

Reg nodded.

“But now I know that there's at least one conjurer among the ranks of the Twenty-ninth Regiment. And he didn't like that I was there. Perhaps he has more in mind than just keeping the peace.”

Reg offered no response.

But Ethan remembered the soldier's finding spell. As reluctant as he was to conjure too much and draw the man to Henry's shop, Ethan knew that he had to attempt one more spell.

He cut himself again, dabbed at the welling blood, and marked his own forehead and face as he had done to Ebenezer Richardson several nights before.

“
Revela omnias magias ex cruore evocatas,
” he said. Reveal all magicks, conjured from blood.

The rumble of the spell seemed to emanate from the foundation of the building. Ethan's face felt cool where the blood evaporated. And when he looked down at his legs, where the soldier's finding spell had touched him, he saw that at last one of his
revela
spells had worked.

On the street, in the sunlight, the soldier's spectral guide had looked as pale as ice. In the murky light of Ethan's room, however, his power was a far deeper shade of blue.

Reg pointed a ghostly finger at the glow on Ethan's legs and raised his gaze to Ethan's.

“You recognize that color, don't you?”

Yes.

Ethan had hoped for this. Reg's eyes wouldn't have been fooled by the daylight as his were. He would have seen the soldier's ghost in its true form.

“Did you see it on Middle Street? Was this the color of the ghost you saw the day Chris Seider was shot?”

The ghost nodded.

A part of Ethan wished that he had confronted the soldier—Morrison, another man had called him—rather than running from him, though he knew how dangerous that could have been.

“Did he cast the spell that made Richardson fire? Or the spells that sparked the confrontation during Chris Seider's funeral? Or even the one used against Gordon?”

Reg didn't answer right off. Eventually he shrugged, an apology etched in his ancient features.

“I understand; it's all right.”

Considering his own question Ethan wasn't sure he believed that Morrison could have cast them. Those other spells left no residue, and at least two of them had been made to seem like they came from Ethan. The rich color of Morrison's magick indicated that he had some skill as a conjurer, but he had done nothing today to indicate he possessed enough power to have cast those other spells.

Which begged a different question: If Morrison's ghost was on Middle Street when Richardson fired into the crowd, did that mean he was working with someone else, who had cast those other spells? Was it possible that he was an associate of Nate Ramsey or even Jonathan Grant, the conjurer Ethan met at the Green Dragon? And had the soldier been on the street the previous night, when Ethan put himself between the regulars and the young men? He didn't remember seeing Morrison there, but he had been occupied with other matters.

Morrison might not have done anything to convince Ethan that he had power enough to cast these spells. But wasn't it more likely that he was responsible for the spells cast in recent days, than that Nate Ramsey had returned to Boston unnoticed?

With all of this to ponder, he left his room and again walked the length of Boston's waterfront, from Gibbon's Shipyard to Hudson's Point. As before, he did not find the
Muirenn
among the vessels in and around Boston's wharves. When he had finished, cold and exhausted, his bad leg screaming, he went to the Dowsing Rod, giving the barracks on Hillier's Street a wide berth as he left the North End.

He arrived at the tavern before most of Kannice's regular patrons, and took a seat in the farthest corner of the great room. Kelf placed before him an ale and a bowl of fish chowder. Ethan was ravenous, and was soon working on seconds of each. But as he ate, he brooded on how little he had learned this day.

Relieved as he was that he hadn't found Ramsey's ship, he wasn't entirely certain what he ought to do next. Chances were that Morrison wouldn't be leaving Boston any time soon. He was stuck here with his regiment, and unless he deserted, which didn't seem likely if he was plotting to sow conflict with these spells, Ethan would know where to find him. But while Ethan wanted desperately to question the soldier, he didn't think it wise to do so quite yet. Nor did he expect that a request made of Morrison's commanders for more information about the soldier would yield any results. The one person who might be able to learn something of Morrison was the sheriff, but as weary as he was, Ethan could not face a conversation with Greenleaf this night. With some reluctance, he vowed silently that he would seek out the sheriff come the morning.