Thieves' Quarry (The Thieftaker Chronicles) (13 page)

“Yes, I do.”

Ethan forced a thin smile. He was too weary to deny it, and he didn’t think that Rickman would have believed him anyway. “Very good, Doctor. I hope you’ll keep in mind that people like me are still hanged as witches. I’d prefer that others didn’t know.”

Rickman blinked once, his mouth open. For all the man’s bluster and confidence, he seemed to have been quite unprepared for Ethan’s admission.

“Yes,” he said. “Yes, of course. I mean, no, I won’t tell anyone. I just—” He regarded Ethan with wonder, his face like that of a child watching rockets go off for the first time. “You really are a witch?”

Maybe Ethan should have been amused, but having the truth wrung out of him for the second time this day had put him in a sour mood. “We prefer to be called conjurers or spellers,” he said, his voice flat. “But yes, I am.”

“Good Lord,” the doctor said, breathless. “I have so many questions.”

Ethan turned and walked to the stairs. “I’m sure. But it’s late, and I have no desire to answer them.”

He started to climb out of the vaults, and a moment later heard Rickman hurrying after him. Uncle Reg walked at Ethan’s side, watching him expectantly.

“Sorry,” Ethan whispered. “
Dimitto te.
” I release you.

“Perhaps we can speak tomorrow,” the doctor said, the words echoing in the narrow stairway.

Ethan said nothing.

The air aboveground had grown as cool as that in the vaults, and a fine gray mist had settled over Castle William, partially obscuring the stars overhead. Ethan could still hear a few men singing on the ships, but the choruses of “Yankee Doodle” seemed to have stopped.

Rickman and Ethan walked to the officers’ barracks, a short distance south of the vault, and found a pair of empty cots set just inside the door of the first building. Ethan was famished and would have liked to wash off the faint musty smell of the vaults. He thought he could also smell the stink of rot and death on his clothing, but he might have imagined it. He had spent too much of his day among the dead. Despite his hunger and his desire to bathe, he fell onto one of the cots and soon had drifted into a deep, dreamless slumber.

He awoke to find himself alone in the barracks. Daylight streamed in through the building’s small windows, and a steady wind whistled in the stone. Officers shouted commands on the parade nearby, their calls a counterpoint to the rhythm of marching and the rattle of rifle drills.

Ethan climbed out of bed, ran a hand through his hair, and headed outside. The sky was covered with high, white clouds. Ethan shielded his eyes with an open hand and looked around for Rickman or any other familiar face. Seeing no one he knew, he walked back to the vaults and descended the stairs. Before he reached the corridor he heard voices and thought he could smell a hint of rot coming from all those bodies.

Stepping into the torchlight, he saw the doctor standing with the corporal from the previous night and a second British officer he didn’t recognize.

“Ah, Mister Kaille,” Rickman said. “Welcome. If you can bear with us for a minute or two, I think we’ll have a name for you.”

“All right.”

The three men wasted little time moving down the line of dead. They bothered only with those men who hadn’t been identified the night before. When they reached the last of the bodies, Rickman looked through the manifest once more and nodded, a satisfied grin on his face.

“Simon Gant,” the doctor said, looking at Ethan.

“Gant,” Ethan repeated. The name sounded familiar. He said it again and looked at the corporal he had met the night before. “Do you know him? Can you tell me anything about him?”

The young officer’s jaw tightened. “Aye, I know him, the deserting bastard. I’d like to get my hands on him, too. Never liked him. Always thought he was hiding something, if you know what I mean. I should have known he’d come to this.”

“Maybe I can find him for you,” Ethan said. “Tell me what he looks like.”

“He’s a big man,” the corporal said. “Tall, brawny. He has red hair and a ruddy face. I suppose some might say he’s good-looking; he always seemed to have a lady with him when he was on leave.”

An image had started to form in Ethan’s mind. He had seen this man; he felt certain of it.

“His nose looks like it had been broken a couple of times, but the really odd thing about him is that his eyes—”

“Are different colors!” Ethan broke in.

“That’s right!” said the man, sounding surprised. “One’s blue and the other’s green. You know him?”

“It seems that I do,” Ethan said. “I needed the reminder. Thank you.”

The corporal grinned.

Ethan knew Gant, all right. He had met the thief once, years ago, when he first returned to Boston from Barbados. But the memory of their encounter remained clear, because of all that had come after. As the corporal said, Gant was a brute of a man; tall, broad-shouldered, thick around the middle. He had stolen some coin and jewelry from a home in the North End, and the man he robbed, a shopkeeper of some limited means, was one of the first to hire Ethan as a thieftaker.

Ethan had little trouble tracking Gant down; the thief had been blessed with great physical strength but little intellect. But at that time Ethan wasn’t as skilled with spells as he was now, and Gant managed to get away.

The next thing Ethan heard, Sephira Pryce had intervened, retrieving the goods from Gant and returning them to the shopkeeper. Initially, Ethan blamed poor luck for the loss of his commission. Only later did he come to realize that any time he took a job he risked losing money to Sephira and her toughs. But in the weeks and months that followed this first incident, Ethan began to hear stories about Gant and Sephira. Some said that he worked for her. Some said that she wanted him dead. Some said that their feud was all a ruse, that in fact they were partners.

And then, in the fall of 1761, Gant left Boston to fight the French, and that was the last Ethan heard of him. Until today.

The corporal and his friend still stood in the vaults watching Ethan and the doctor. Ethan sensed that they expected—or at least hoped—to be assigned some new task.

For his part, Ethan needed time alone with the dead—or if not alone, at least not in the company of the soldiers. Apparently Rickman sensed this.

“Thank you, gentlemen,” the doctor said to the officers. “Your help has been invaluable. We’ll be certain to convey as much to your superiors.”

The corporal’s face fell. “There’s nothing more you need?” It seemed that working in the vaults, even with scores of dead men arrayed before them, was preferable to laboring on the ships.

“Thank you, no,” said the doctor.

The two men exchanged a look and offered a reluctant salute to Rickman. The corporal nodded once to Ethan and led his companion back up the stairs.

“My thanks, Doctor,” Ethan said, walking to the body of Jonathan Sharpe, the first of the dead men Uncle Reg had indicated the night before.

There were active conjurers—men and women like Ethan who cast spells with some frequency. And there were others, like Ethan’s sister Bett, who out of fear, or ignorance of their family history, or some odd sense of righteousness, never conjured. Ethan wanted to know which best described the two dead conjurers in the corridor.

He lifted the first man’s arm and pushed up his sleeve.

“What are you doing?” Rickman asked.

Ethan paused over the dead man. Admitting to the doctor that he was a conjurer was one thing; he wasn’t prepared to explain Uncle Reg to the man. He didn’t know how Rickman would react to the notion of a ghost joining them down here in the vaults. “I have reason to believe that this man and one other down at the end of the corridor were both conjurers. I want to see if they were active spellers or if they merely had speller blood in their veins.” He went back to working the sleeve up the dead man’s arm.

“How can you tell?”

“From that,” Ethan said, pointing to the dead man’s forearm. It was scored with a lattice of white scars, which had been made even more stark than usual as the man’s arm had started to grow bloated.

“The scars?”

“That’s right.” He pulled Sharpe’s sleeve back in place, laid the man’s arm back down, and pushed up his own sleeve to reveal similar marks. “You see?”

“But why—?”

“Blood,” Ethan said. “Conjurings need a source, usually a living source for more powerful spells. Blood is the most easily available, as well as the most effective.” He pushed his sleeve back down and walked to the second conjurer, Caleb Osborne, the older man with silver-flecked hair.

Osborne had no scars on his forearm. At least not his left forearm. But when Ethan looked at the corpse’s right forearm, he found that it was thick with scarring. Osborne must have been left-handed. Ethan looked more closely at the man’s hands and found that the left was more heavily callused than the right.

“He’s scarred, too,” Rickman said.

“Yes. They were both active conjurers. I wonder if each knew that the other was a speller.”

“I had no idea that there were so many of your kind,” the doctor said, his voice low.

“There aren’t. I was rather surprised to find even one among these men. To have found two is … most odd.”

“And yet you knew to look.” Rickman’s tone was mild enough, but he watched Ethan, perhaps expecting him to flee at any moment. Or to attack.

“A conjuring killed these men. That much is clear to me. And so it struck me as logical that there might be conjurers aboard the ship.”

“And you think that whoever is responsible might have been directing his attack at one or both of these … these conjurers.”

“I believe that’s one possibility.”

“Are there other possibilities?”

“Of course,” Ethan said, thinking of Spectacles and of Sephira Pryce.

Torches flickered and spluttered in the ensuing silence. Aboveground, commanders continued to exhort their men.

“There’s nothing more that I can do here,” Ethan said, his gaze sweeping over the dead one last time. “And I’d like to return home.”

Rickman took a long breath. “Yes, of course. Let’s get out of here. I’ll see to it that you’re rowed back to Long Wharf immediately.”

They left the vaults, climbing back up into the light of day, like reprieved souls rising from the devil’s realm. As much as he had tried to inure himself to moving among the dead, Ethan was deeply relieved to know he wouldn’t have to go back down there again.

It took some time for Rickman to find someone who could get a message to Lieutenant Senhouse on the
Launceston
, and still a while longer for Senhouse to dispatch a pinnace to the island. But eventually, late in the morning, the small boat that would take Ethan back to Boston reached the fortress.

Rickman accompanied Ethan onto the wharf. “Thank you for your help,” he said, extending a hand. “I found our time together most educational.”

Ethan grinned. “I was glad to be of service. As my inquiry continues, I may need your expertise. Will I be able to reach you aboard the
Launceston
?”

Rickman’s expression sobered, and he leaned closer, still gripping Ethan’s hand. “For a while longer, yes,” he said, speaking softly. “But the fleet is only here to transport the British army. Once they’re settled on land, our presence here is no longer necessary. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“The occupation will begin soon. Today? Tomorrow?”

Rickman straightened without answering and released Ethan’s hand. “Take care of yourself, Mister Kaille.”

“And you, Doctor.”

Ethan stepped into the boat. Once he had settled himself, the oarsmen pushed off from the dock and started back across the harbor to Long Wharf.

With the tide heading out, and a strong breeze roughening the waters, the journey back to the city took the better part of an hour. Ethan spent much of the time wondering whether it was happenstance that had put Jonathan Sharpe and Caleb Osborne together in the Twenty-ninth Regiment, or if the two men might have known each other and planned to wind up in the same company. What, if anything, did they have to do with Simon Gant? And what role, if any, had they played in the spell that killed them and ninety-five of their comrades? There were too many coincidences and too many questions hanging over this one ship.

Upon landing at Long Wharf, Ethan made his way back toward Henry’s cooperage. It had been the better part of a day since last he had eaten a decent meal, and he could smell the staleness in his clothes.

But as he approached his home, he felt an unexpected brush of power. It wasn’t a pulse, as it would have been if someone had spoken a conjuring. Rather, it felt as if he had walked through a spell, a conjured spiderweb, minute fibers of power stretching and breaking across his face and limbs.

A pulse of power followed an instant later. Ethan grabbed for his knife, knowing that he had too little time, that he had been careless, and fearing that his foolishness would cost him his life.

He felt the spell rushing toward him; he could almost hear it humming in the cobblestones. It hit him full in the chest, knocking him off his feet, stealing his breath. He hit the ground hard, tried to get to his feet.

But he could feel darkness taking him, and there was nothing he could do to stop it.

Chapter

E
IGHT

A splatter of cold water to the face woke Ethan up. He opened his eyes, felt the world heave and spin, and squeezed them shut again. The last time he felt this way, he had spent the previous night celebrating his release from Barbados by drinking two flasks of Madeira wine all by himself.

“More water.”

He recognized that voice, but before he could open his eyes again, or tell them that the first splash of water had been enough, he was doused a second time.

“Time to wake up, Ethan,” Sephira said.

Someone snickered. Yellow-hair probably, or maybe Nap.

Ethan opened his eyes again, and though the world around him still spun, he managed to force himself up onto an elbow. He was lying on grass, and his first thought was that they had taken him to the Common again, as they had once before when intending to kill him. In the next instant he realized that if Sephira had wanted him dead, he would never have awakened. Surveying his surroundings, Ethan saw that he was on a lawn behind Sephira’s house. Yellow-hair, Nap, and Gordon stood nearby. Yellow-hair—Nigel—had a bucket in his hand and a mocking grin on his face.