Thieftaker (37 page)

Halfway to Derne’s office he stopped, realizing once more that he had been foolish. He didn’t have to risk venturing farther out onto the wharf. Derne would take care of that for him. The merchant wouldn’t remain in his warehouse forever, and if he had dealings in the city that he wanted to keep from Ethan, chances were he wouldn’t want many others knowing about them, either. Eventually he would leave the building and abandon his escort. There was nothing for Ethan to do but wait.

He wondered if he might be best off waiting back at the street, where he could pick up Derne’s trail on the cobblestone rather than on this treacherous fill. He had even gone so far as to turn back when he spotted a familiar face coming in his direction. Diver.

Ethan frowned at the sight of him, wondering whether he would be better off letting his friend pass by, or enlisting Diver’s aid. Diver could go where Ethan could not. He could find out what Derne was doing and who was with him. Except that Diver shouldn’t have been here at all. What business did he have on Derne’s Wharf? He usually worked Greenough’s Shipyard or Thornton’s. If he had been working for Derne he would have told Ethan as much several nights before, when Ethan told him about Jennifer Berson.

What was more, his friend was behaving oddly. He walked slowly, repeatedly glancing back toward the street, and warily eyeing the hired men ahead of him.

The memory hit him like Yellow-hair’s fist. The last time Ethan had seen Diver, they had been here, at Derne’s Wharf, or at least on the street just beside it. Ethan had come to question Derne; Diver, he assumed at the time, was merely passing by on his way home from work.

Diver had acted strangely then, too. At the time, Ethan had been too preoccupied with Jennifer Berson’s murder and his conversation with Derne to give Diver’s behavior much thought, but now it all came back to him: how uncomfortable Diver had been at seeing Ethan there, how reluctant he had been to go to the Dowser, even how interested he had been in Ethan’s conversation with Derne. Was it possible that Diver had business with the merchant?

He watched as his friend strode past him, and then he set out after him, moving with as much stealth as possible. When Diver reached Derne’s warehouse, he slowed. But then he squared his shoulders, took a breath, and approached the building’s entrance. The men there stopped him and said something Ethan couldn’t hear. Ethan thought for certain that they would keep Diver out. He was dressed in his usual work clothes and he looked far more like a South End tough than he did a merchant.

After a brief discussion, though, Derne’s men let him pass, and Diver entered the warehouse.

Ethan was so overcome with curiosity that he started forward to follow his friend inside. What business could Diver—Diver!—have with one of the most influential merchants in Boston? It actually took his glowing ghost throwing out a hand in front of him to keep Ethan from giving himself away.

“Right,” he whispered. “My thanks.”

Moments later, his interest in Diver’s affairs took on a far darker urgency. His friend emerged onto the wharf once more, accompanied by none other than Cyrus Derne. The two of them headed back toward the street and several of Derne’s guards fell in behind them. They walked this way for a short distance, but then Derne halted and spoke to one of the men. Their conversation lasted only a few seconds, and when Derne and Diver started away again, none of the others followed.

Ethan trailed them, walking with some care, but unwilling to risk losing sight of the pair. A few heads turned at the sound of his footsteps, but of course no one could see him. As they came to the end of the wharf, Ethan spotted Derne’s chaise, and he had to bite his tongue to keep from cursing aloud. If they traveled somewhere by carriage, he would have little chance of keeping up.

But Derne and Diver turned northward onto Ship Street and walked past the chaise. Relieved, Ethan followed. Now that they were back on paved lanes, he could get closer to them. But though he thought he was near enough to hear anything the two men said, they exchanged no words. Ethan had the distinct impression that Derne barely tolerated Diver’s company.

At the north end of Ship Street, they headed west on another lane. Though his bad leg was starting to ache, Ethan walked quickly to the corner. Carefully he peered around the side of a wheelwright’s shop. Derne and Diver were several strides ahead of him, still unaware of his pursuit. Waiting until they had gone some distance up this new street, Ethan continued after them.

They hadn’t gone far when two more people turned onto the street some distance ahead of them and started walking in their direction. Ethan slowed, then halted. Uncle Reg stopped as well, watching him, his expression wary. Ethan’s pulse suddenly was racing. Fear, rage, confusion—his emotions were as roiled as a stormy sea. One of the people approaching Derne and Diver was dressed as a merchant, though Ethan didn’t recognize him. He looked a little older than Derne, and he wore a black suit and a tricorn hat. Ethan should have been curious about this man; learning his name or trade might have helped him with his inquiry. But he barely spared the merchant a glance. His eyes were drawn to his companion. Sephira Pryce.

Diver and Derne had halted. When Pryce and her companion reached them, they stopped as well, and the four of them stood speaking, their voices low enough that Ethan couldn’t hear any of what they said.

He knew there were spells that allowed conjurers to see in the dark and hear far beyond their normal abilities, but he hadn’t learned them. He didn’t even know if they could be cast with blood or if they needed some other source. But at that moment he would have given everything he owned to know how to cast such a spell.

What was Diver doing with these people? What business did Derne have with Sephira? He reached for his blade, thinking that he might try that spell after all. If it failed, no one would be the wiser.

And that was when he felt the pulse of a conjuring radiating up through the stones of the lane. A spell that was directed at him.

He braced himself, expecting an attack. But there was no pain, at least not yet. The spell gently coiled itself around him, like a vine climbing the trunk of a tree. He couldn’t be certain, but forced to guess he would have said that this was a finding spell. And he felt certain that if he were to cast a revealing spell he would see that golden yellow light he had glimpsed in the King’s Chapel crypt. The conjurer had found him.

Knowing that he hadn’t much time, he ducked back around the corner, away from Diver and the others, and then found a narrow byway. If the conjurer struck at him with the right spell, it would overmaster his concealment charm. The last thing he needed was for Sephira and the conjurer to attack him at the same time.

Once he was out of sight, he pulled his knife from his belt and pushed up his sleeve. Before he cut himself, though, he remembered the mullein leaves that Janna had given him. Pulling out the pouch he quickly counted out how many remained. Eleven. Three spells, if the castings were to amount to anything. After that he would have nothing but blood to use as a source for his conjurings. He pulled three leaves from the pouch.

“
Tegimen ex verbasco evocatum.
” Warding, conjured from mullein.

He felt the stone tremble, and he knew that the conjurer had felt it, too. But immediately that ethereal vine released him. Not that it mattered. If the finding spell hadn’t told the conjurer where he was, Ethan’s own spell had.

For his part, Ethan had some idea of the conjurer’s location. That finding spell had been double-edged. The conjurer had used it to locate him, but in doing so had revealed his whereabouts to Ethan. He was close, no more than a city block or two away. To the west and south. If Sephira hadn’t been on the street, and if Ethan hadn’t been so sure that her men were close by, he would have run. But whether by design or sheer coincidence, his two most dangerous enemies had him trapped. One might have thought that Diver and Derne had lured him here. He didn’t want to believe that Diver would have any part of such a plan, but at that moment he didn’t know what to think.

“There you are!”

He knew the voice. Anna.

She stood in the narrow, dark space behind him, glowing faintly, her expression cross, as if she were a parent and he a wayward child. She ignored Uncle Reg, but the ghost bared his teeth at her. Ethan could almost hear the old man hiss, like a feral cat.

“You shouldn’t have done that last night,” Anna said. “You shouldn’t have hurt me like that. You shouldn’t have killed that poor dog. There are a lot of things you shouldn’t have done.”

Ethan wondered if Diver and the others could hear her. At that moment he would have preferred Yellow-hair and every tough who had ever worked for Sephira Pryce to this little girl and the man who had conjured her.

He opened his mouth to shout for help, but Anna raised a finger to silence him.

Agony.
Pain so sudden, so excruciating, that it banished all other thought from his mind. It felt as if someone had driven a spike through his right eye. Clutching his face, Ethan crumpled to the cobblestone. He drew breath, an anguished scream building in his chest.

“Shhh,” Anna whispered from just beside him.

As abruptly as it had come, the pain was gone.

“Don’t make a sound,” the little girl said, bending over him. “I’ll have to kill them all. And while you might want a few of them dead, I know that at least one is your friend.”

Diver. The conjurer knew that Diver was his friend. But far more important, the conjurer couldn’t be Derne. Whoever he was, Ethan had grown pretty sick of him.

The remaining mullein leaves were in the pouch hanging on his belt, and now he racked his brain for a spell to fire back. He could preserve the leaves for two spells, or he could use all the rest of them for one powerful assault.

“When they’re gone,” Anna said, staring down at him, “which should be just another moment or two, you’re going to get up and walk north on this lane.”

“Why not just kill me here?”

Her smile was so innocent, so normal, that Ethan shuddered. “Other plans,” she said, in a singsong voice.

He thought about asking what would happen if he refused, just to keep her talking and perhaps to distract the conjurer so that Ethan’s attack would have a better chance of success. But he knew what would happen if he asked, and he flinched away from the idea of it. He thought that years of forced labor and brutal floggings as a prisoner had inured him to pain. Apparently they hadn’t. At least not the type of pain this man was capable of conjuring.

Anna smiled again. “Smart, Kaille. I thought you would fight me, but you’re learning.”

Pain or no, this was too much.

Ambure ex verbasco evocatum.
Scald, conjured from mullein.

At the thrum of power Anna straightened, then vanished. Ethan thought he heard a voice cry out. Not wasting these precious moments, he pulled out his knife and cut himself.

Discuti ex cruore evocatum!
Shatter, conjured from blood!

Another pulse, another cry—this time he was certain. But still Ethan didn’t stop. Cutting himself again, he struggled to his feet.
Ignis ex cruore evocatus!
Fire, conjured from blood! The street felt alive with the power of his spell. Another cut, more blood, which he spread on his face, like some warrior from the realm of the dead.

Tegimen ex cruore evocatum!
Warding, conjured from blood!

It was remarkable to him that so few people could feel this spell, that they could be unaware of the power rippling through the city lanes. Never had he cast so many spells in quick succession.

The last conjuring, the warding, continued to tingle along his skin—a shield that covered his entire body.

He left the narrow lane and strode around the north corner of Ship Street, intending to call to Diver. Derne and Sephira be damned. But they were gone. He ran to where they had been standing and scanned the street for any sign of them. Nothing.

“Damn!”

And then he was on the ground again, his body rigid, molten iron in his veins, blades impaling him through the eyes, a taloned claw raking his heart. He couldn’t scream or breathe. He couldn’t even curl up into a ball and die. Torment pinned him to the cobblestone, obliterating all else.

Except her voice—Anna’s voice—which somehow managed to reach him through his suffering. “You are a fool, and you will endure agonies you can scarcely imagine before you die!”

He had managed not to drop his knife, and even as the assault on his mind and body continued, Ethan tried to move his hand, tried to cut his arm one more time.

The conjurer didn’t like that at all. Ethan hadn’t believed that anything could hurt more than what the man had already done to him. He was wrong. He heard a cracking sound. Several of them. Bones. In his hand. The knife fell free. Pain crashed over him like a storm-driven breaker. He rolled onto his side and vomited on the cobblestone lane.

“No more spells!” Anna said severely.

He would die before he would agree to that. Through all that he had suffered, he realized that the conjurer was coming nearer. He was still to the south, but closer, perhaps less than the distance between lanes. Useful information.

Desperation could prompt a man to do strange things, things he had never even considered before. It wouldn’t sustain another fire or a shattering spell, but perhaps something less violent would also prove less expected.

Scabies ex vomitu meo evocata.
Itch, conjured from my sick.

The foul mess vanished from beneath his face, and the stone street hummed along the length of his body. He didn’t hear a scream this time, but the image of the little girl vanished again. Ethan assumed that meant his spell had worked. He would have preferred to cause the man pain; he wanted desperately to kill him. But the idea of such a powerful conjurer convulsing at what would have felt like ten thousand flea bites, and scratching his skin raw, gave Ethan a certain amount of satisfaction. And if he could find a man on the street madly scratching himself, he would know at last who this conjurer was.