A Plunder of Souls (The Thieftaker Chronicles) (31 page)

The shade glowered, and his ghostly hand strayed to the pistol holstered on his belt.

“You have every right to despise me. So does your son, for that matter. But what he’s doing is wrong. You know this; I can see you do. And I need your help to stop him. This will not end well for him.”

The shade shook his head and pointed a finger at Ethan.
It won’t end well for you.

“Probably not. But that changes nothing. You’ve already told me that you don’t wish to come back. You prefer to rest. Your son wants you to live once more, but you must know that it’s not that simple, that bringing back the dead will have unintended consequences. Did Nate even ask you if you want this? Or did he assume that you did?”

The shade’s gaze slid away.

“At least you know that he’s acting out of love for you. The other shades don’t have even that. He has disturbed their rest, made them slaves to his will, for no other reason than because he can. Surely you see the injustice of that.”

The ghost’s anger appeared to have sluiced away, leaving him troubled and forlorn.

“What is he trying to do?” Ethan asked. A thought came to him. “I’ve assumed that the difficulty I’m having casting spells is incidental to his ultimate aim. But it’s not, is it?”

The ghost fixed his eyes on Ethan again.

“That’s what he wants: he seeks to render the rest of us powerless, and thus to make himself the lone conjurer in our world.”

It was madness, and yet so utterly logical that once he put words to it he felt certain that he was right. The shade did not deny it. Ethan hoped that he would shake his head, communicate in some way that while his son was ruthless and cunning, his ambitions did not run so deep. But he continued to stare at Ethan, offering no response.

“Can he do it?” Ethan asked.

Ramsey’s shade opened his hands and shrugged.

Ethan turned to Reg. “Can he?”

The old warrior nodded.

“Damn. Is he close to succeeding? I’ve struggled with other spells, but I had no trouble summoning Patience and now the captain.”

Reg pointed to himself and to the shade of Nathaniel Ramsey. He opened his arms wide.

“There are shades everywhere,” Ethan said. When Reg nodded, he said, “And that’s why the summonings have worked. Of all the conjuring I could do, calling shades to me is the easiest right now. Because of Ramsey.” At last he was beginning to make sense of all that had happened to him in recent days. “My other spells still won’t work reliably.”

Reg nodded.

Ethan turned back to Ramsey’s shade. “Again I ask you, what is his purpose? If he can stand unopposed, with no other conjurers able to stop him, what will he do with such power?”

The shade made a small gesture with his hand; Ethan wasn’t sure what he intended it to signify. Before the old captain could do more, he stiffened, his eyes growing wide. He spun toward the door.

And even as he did, the door exploded inward, the hinges twisting, the wooden planks snapping as if they were made of twigs. Ethan was thrown back. He tumbled over his bed and crashed into the wall behind it. He narrowly missed the window, which shattered, shards of glass raining down onto him.

Dazed, his back and shoulders and head aching, he raised himself up and saw Nate Ramsey standing in the doorway. The captain had his fists clenched; his face was contorted in a snarl.

“You want to know what I would do?” the man said. “Whatever the hell I want!”

Chapter

S
EVENTEEN

“Ramsey—”

“Release my father this instant, or I swear I’ll burn to the ground every house within three streets of here.”

Ethan climbed to his feet, felt a trickle of blood on his temple. He didn’t wish to endanger Henry’s shop or the other homes and businesses nearby. But he knew from what Janna had told him that Ramsey couldn’t risk killing him, not if he intended to bring back his father. He hoped that Ramsey knew this as well. “I don’t think you will. I think you understand that if you kill me, your father’s spirit will be lost to you.”

The younger Ramsey glared at him, hatred in his eyes, his knife held ready. The shade of the old captain spared Ethan not a glance, but kept his gleaming green eyes on his son. Eventually, Nate shifted his gaze to his father’s ghost, his expression softening, his rage giving way to pain.

Taking this opportunity, Ethan chanted a spell in his head.
Tegimen ex verbasco evocatum.
Warding, conjured from mullein. He felt the pulse of the spell, but he had no idea if it had worked.

At the first rumble of the conjuring, however, Ramsey seemed to remember where he was. He slashed his blade across his exposed forearm.

“
Exure ex cruore evocatum!
” Burn, conjured from blood.

The pain—sudden, needle-sharp—tore a cry from Ethan’s throat. He clutched his arm, saw blisters rising on his skin. So much for his warding.

“How dare you summon the spirit of my father! Release him now!”

With his good hand, Ethan pulled his knife from the sheath on his belt.

Ramsey glanced at the blade and shook his head. “You’ve learned nothing! You’re like a moth singeing its wings on a candle flame over and over again. Your warding failed, Kaille. So will whatever spell you’re considering. You cannot fight me. I’ve told you this before, and still you try.”

“Of course I try. The alternative is surrender, and that I won’t do.”

“No, the alternative is failure, and it’s already overtaken you.” He cut himself again. “
Discuti ex cruore evocatum.
” Shatter, conjured from blood.

The conjuring hummed, bone snapped, and Ethan’s bad leg gave way beneath him, the agony threatening to overwhelm him.

“Let my father go!” Ramsey said, bellowing the words and taking a step toward him.

Ethan gritted his teeth and closed his eyes. He would have liked to set the man’s hair and clothes on fire, even if it meant burning his room and Henry’s shop to the ground. Or better yet, he wanted to break every bone in Ramsey’s body. But he knew that his conjurings would fail, and the attempts themselves would provoke the captain to hurt him more. He knew as well that he could no more kill Ramsey than the captain could kill him. Ethan held the father’s soul; Ramsey held the souls of dozens, including, perhaps, that of Patience Walters. It was as if they each held a pistol aimed at the other’s heart. They could threaten, they could hurt one another. But neither dared fire the killing shot.

Still, it galled Ethan that he could not even protect himself from the captain’s assaults. The last time he had felt this impotent, this defenseless, he had been a prisoner. And yet, it seemed that Ramsey was not yet done sounding the depths of Ethan’s despair.

“You know that you failed as well to save your friend.” He lowered himself into a chair, watching his father’s ghost, perhaps deciding that Ethan could not harm the shade in any meaningful way. “I felt your conjuring. I know what you did, and yet I still managed to dig her up and take what I needed. She’s mine now, just like the others. Except we both know that she’s nothing like the rest. She was a conjurer in life, and so her shade has access to powers that the others can’t even comprehend. She will lead them, and I will command her. And you can do nothing to stop me.”

It was too much. Foolish though he might have been, Ethan refused to relent. Most conjurers would have warded themselves before coming to attack one of their kind, but Ramsey was so convinced of his own superiority that Ethan thought it possible he had neglected to take that precaution. If he could manage to cast a spell, he could hurt the captain and perhaps drive him off. At the very least, he could keep Ramsey from hurting him again. But what spell? Was it possible that a more obscure conjuring, one the captain could not anticipate, would have a better chance of succeeding?

He bit down on the inside of his cheek, drawing blood. “
Corpus alligare ex cruore evocatum!
” Bind body, conjured from blood!

The spell thrummed. Uncle Reg turned to Ramsey, as eager as Ethan to see if the spell had worked.

Ramsey no longer looked so smug; instead his face was a rictus of anger and frustration. But though Ethan could see the muscles in his neck and arms straining, he moved not at all. His fingers still gripped his knife, but he could do nothing with it.

Ethan struggled to get up and balance himself on one leg. He drew his knife and cut his arm. Catching the welling blood on the flat of his blade, he rubbed it on the skin over his broken bone.

“
Remedium ex cruore evocatum.
” Healing, conjured from blood.

The first spell didn’t work, but he cast it a second time, and the bone began to knit itself back together. Initially, the pain increased, and he ground his teeth together. Soon, though, the anguish began to abate. After a few minutes, his leg was strong enough that it could bear some of his weight.

“It seems I have more spells left in me than you thought,” Ethan said.

Ramsey stared daggers at him.

“I understand wanting your father back, Ramsey. You may not believe me, but it’s true. There isn’t a day that goes by when I don’t wish I could see my mother one more time. I lost her while I was in prison. It’s not the same, I know. She wasn’t hounded to her death the way your father was. If she had been … well, I would want vengeance, too. But my point is this: As much as you want him to live once more, you have to know that whatever you bring back from the realm of the dead won’t be him. It will be dark and unnatural and beyond even your control.”

The captain closed his eyes. It was probably the one way the man could think to block out Ethan’s words.

Or so Ethan thought.

Ethan felt a spell growl in the floor and walls of his home.

“What are you doing?”

Ramsey didn’t move. But an instant later, a shade appeared in the room. It was no one Ethan recognized, but he could tell that it was one of the ghosts Ramsey had awakened in recent days. It glowed as white as winter mist and it shuffled toward Ethan wearing a man’s breeches and jacket, its face decayed and ghoulish, its leathery hands hanging at its sides.

Ethan sensed a second spell, and another shade materialized beside the first. Ramsey bared his teeth in his own skeletal grin, though he didn’t appear capable of any other movement.

Two more spells pulsed, one right after the other. Two more shades joined the others.

“That was a good conjuring, Kaille. Better than I thought you could cast, it’s true. But as you can see, I have powers that go far deeper than even you can imagine.”

Ramsey rocked his head from side to side. He hadn’t yet regained motion in his hands or feet, but Ethan guessed that he would soon enough.

“Thank you for the use of the mullein, by the way,” Ramsey said.

Ethan saw him bite down on his own cheek, as Ethan had done moments before. The next spell was more powerful than the previous ones had been. Another pair of ghosts winked into view. Their comrades had forced Ethan to the back corner of his room. He straightened now, refusing to be cowed by the shades.

He reached out, allowing his hand to pass through the head of the nearest ghost. And yanked it back with a gasp. The touch of the fiend was bitingly cold, and left his skin blue.

“I wouldn’t do that again, if I were you,” Ramsey said. He pushed himself up out of the chair, swayed but didn’t fall. He slowly curled and straightened his fingers.

Ethan didn’t understand how the captain could have overcome the binding spell so soon. Whatever Ramsey had done to enhance his power seemed also to make him less vulnerable to the spells of others.

“Hold,” Ramsey said.

The shades halted their shambling advance.

He knew that the captain meant to attack again, and so he cut his forearm with a flick of his blade and cast first. “
Ignis ex cruore evocatus.
” Fire, conjured from blood.

The conjuring thrummed, but no flames appeared.

“A coincidence,” Ramsey said. “I had been thinking of the same spell.” He cut himself, and murmured the conjuring.

A swirling ball of fire burst from Ramsey’s hand, soared across the room and through the insubstantial body of one of the shades, and hammered into Ethan’s chest. The force of the blow lifted Ethan off his feet and sent him sprawling into the wall once more, his shirt and waistcoat ablaze.

He flailed at the flames, and rolled from side to side until he had put them out. The smell of singed hair and burnt flesh hung in the air. Burns throbbed on Ethan’s chest, arms, and hands. He felt like he had been run over by a horse and carriage.

Ramsey walked to where he lay, the shades parting to let him pass.

“It seems to me that we’ve done this before. I’ve already shattered a bone in your leg, so I believe the next spell I cast is supposed to keep you from breathing. Is that how you remember it?” He tipped his head to the side, his brow furrowing. “Or we could try something new. I could burn the building, or just destroy it. No one would be the wiser.” He glanced around, an expression of distaste on his face. “They’d blame inferior workmanship, and who could argue? They would never guess that it was a conjuring that did the damage.”

Ramsey’s knife flashed again.

“
Strangula ex cruore evocatum.
” Strangle, conjured from blood.

Invisible hands squeezed Ethan’s neck, choking him, crushing his throat.

“You won’t kill me,” Ethan said, croaking the words. “You won’t do that to your father.”

“Don’t be so sure,” Ramsey said. “I believe I can reach my father anywhere. My power runs that deep. Still, if you release him, I may spare you. And just so you know, your longing for Mommy is nothing like the suffering he and I have endured. I should kill you for your presumption.”

Ethan grabbed at his neck, trying to prise away fingers that weren’t there.

Dormite ex verbasco evocatum!
He screamed in his mind. Slumber, conjured from mullein! He didn’t know how many leaves he used. He didn’t care. And it didn’t seem to matter. For though the conjuring made the floor tremble, it had no effect on Ramsey.