As he neared Long Wharf, which jutted out into the waters of the harbor more than a third of a mile, Ethan saw a group of men standing on the wharf, speaking among themselves, their gestures animated. All of them were well dressed in matching coats, breeches, and waistcoats—ditto suits, as they were known. Several of them wore tricorn hats and all wore powdered wigs. These were men of means. Still, Ethan might not have taken note of them had he not spotted a familiar face in their midst.
Geoffrey Brower, the husband of his sister Bett, and to hear her speak of him, a customs agent of some importance, stood among the men. He was taller and leaner than the others, with a high forehead and a supercilious expression on his lean face. Ethan didn’t recognize any of Geoffrey’s companions, but given how similarly all of them were dressed, he assumed that they were customs men as well. He stopped where he was and watched them.
Every few seconds as they spoke, the men looked out toward the British fleet, particularly those ships at its north end. Looking that way himself, Ethan noticed that a pinnace holding several British regulars in their bright red coats and white breeches was approaching one of the ships, a sloop-of-war. The sloop had its sails struck, as did the other vessels, but Ethan could see no one on its decks. Not a soul.
Several more regulars in another rowboat made their way toward the sloop from the northern end of the island. And not long after, a second pinnace from one of the larger ships closest to the city’s waterfront approached Long Wharf and the dock near where Geoffrey and his colleagues stood. The boat drew alongside the pier and two of the soldiers on board held her steady while Geoffrey and two other men stepped onto the vessel. Once the agents were settled, the oarsmen began to row the boat out into the harbor. Within a few minutes it became clear to Ethan that they too were headed toward the sloop.
Something had happened to the warship, something serious enough to worry the fleet’s commanders as well as Crown officials here in the city. Still watching the rowboats, and glancing now and then toward the sloop-of-war, Ethan started toward the wharf. Three of Geoffrey’s friends had remained behind, and he considered casting another concealment spell, like the one he had used the night before to follow Tanner, so that he could eavesdrop on their conversation.
He reached for his blade, only pausing long enough to look around and make certain he wasn’t being watched.
His caution might have saved his life.
Perhaps twenty yards ahead of him, partially hidden in a narrow alley, stood none other than the bespectacled man and his companion. They hadn’t yet noticed Ethan, although they would have had he spoken his spell. They were gazing out over the harbor, as he had been. Spectacles held a brass spyglass, which he raised now to his eye. It seemed to Ethan that he had it trained on the sloop.
Rather than halt again and thus draw attention to himself, Ethan kept his head down and walked past the men. But his pulse raced. Whatever had happened to the British sloop-of-war had drawn the attention of Sephira’s conjurer friend.
Or perhaps the man had done something to the ship. Something that demanded a spell powerful enough to wake all of Boston’s conjurers from their early-morning slumber.
Chapter
FOUR
Ethan went only far enough to find a spot much like the one where Spectacles and his friend were hiding—a narrow alley between a pair of old wooden warehouses—and watched the men from there. They were in the Cornhill section of the city, less than a block from the Bunch of Grapes Tavern. The streets of Cornhill were always busy, in particular at midmorning, and few of those making their way to and from the wharves would take notice of a lone man standing at a corner, much less pause to wonder what he did there.
Every few minutes, the brute standing with Spectacles scanned the street, and each time he did, Ethan managed to duck back out of sight before the man saw him. But Spectacles kept his gaze fixed on the British ships. Ethan had the sense that he too was waiting for some sort of signal or command.
They remained on the street for the better part of an hour, until at last the two men appeared to give up on spotting whatever it was they were looking for. They left the alley in which they had been standing and headed south, back the way Ethan had come. He waited, allowing the men to walk some distance ahead of him before following, but he already had an idea of where they were headed. As he anticipated, they soon cut away from the shoreline, crossed Water Street, and took Joliffe’s Lane toward Bishop’s Alley. They were walking toward Summer Street, where Sephira Pryce lived.
Convinced that he would be able to find the men there, Ethan retreated to his home on Cooper’s Alley and cast a new concealment spell. He felt the thrum of power from the casting and knew that Spectacles would sense it also. But he hoped that the conjuring would be far enough away that it wouldn’t unduly alarm the man. As Ethan spoke the spell Uncle Reg appeared, his eyes bright and eager in the dim light of Ethan’s room.
“You can’t come along,” Ethan told the ghost. “Spectacles will see you, even if he can’t see me. I can’t take the risk.”
Uncle Reg shook his head.
“I’m sorry. Dimitto te.” I release you.
The ghost glowered at him, even as he faded from view.
Sheathing his knife once more, Ethan left the room and descended the stairs, taking each step with care. He couldn’t be seen, but he could still be heard, and he didn’t want to frighten Henry, the cooper who rented him his room.
Shelly waited for him at the base of the stairway leading from his room down to the alley behind Henry’s shop, her tail wagging. For some reason Ethan had never understood, dogs could see him even when he was concealed with a conjuring. He squatted down beside her, glancing around as he did to make certain that no one was watching.
“You have to stay here, Shelly,” he whispered, scratching her head. “Or else you’re likely to get me killed.”
She licked his hand, but when he stood once more and walked away, she remained by Henry’s cooperage.
Ethan followed Milk Street to Long Lane, stepping around people, placing his feet with care, and when possible using the rattle of passing carriages to mask his footsteps. Halfway along the lane Ethan cut between two houses and into d’Acosta’s Pasture, an open expanse of grazing land sparsely occupied by cows and horses. After crossing the southern corner of the field and slipping between another pair of yards, he reached Summer Street and Sephira’s house.
It was a large, white marble structure with a cobblestone path winding to the front door past tasteful well-kept gardens. It looked nothing like the house one might have expected Boston’s most notorious thieftaker to own. Then again, Sephira had never been one to conform to expectations.
Nigel and Nap stood out front watching the street. They couldn’t see Ethan, of course, but he took extra care to make certain that they wouldn’t notice his footsteps. After passing the front entryway, he crept along the north side of the house to the first window. From previous visits to Sephira’s home he felt reasonably sure that this window looked in on her sitting room, where he guessed she would be speaking to Spectacles.
Ethan knew better than to risk another listening spell. Still keeping to the shadows, he pressed himself against the marble exterior of the house and held his ear as close to the window as he dared. Closing his eyes, he tried to shut out all other sounds—the twitter of finches and sparrows, the whisper of the wind in the elms surrounding Sephira’s home, the occasional whinnying of a distant horse—and he listened. After a moment, he began to catch snatches of the conversation taking place within.
He thought that the first voice he heard was that of the bespectacled man. “… Might not have been on any of them. Your information might have been wrong.”
“It wasn’t.” Sephira’s voice. “I pay a good deal for the information that comes my way, and that money buys reliability as well as discretion. He’s out there. Or he’s already in the city, and you’ve failed.”
Silence. Ethan strained his ears, but hea
rd nothing for several seconds.
“Come away from there,” Sephira said eventually. “We have matters to discuss and I want your undivided attention.”
“I told you, I felt a spell.”
“Yes, I remember,” she said, sounding impatient. “You also told me that it was some distance away. Back in Cornhill probably. And as I told you, that’s where Kaille lives. I’m sure he conjures all the time. It had nothing to do with us.”
“Well, what about the—?”
“That is enough, Afton,” Spectacles said, cutting off the other man. Ethan wondered if Afton was the brute he had seen with the bespectacled man.
“What is he talking about?” Sephira asked.
“It is not important.”
If Ethan needed confirmation that Spectacles hadn’t known Sephira for long, this was it. He would realize soon enough that she couldn’t be put off so easily.
“If you plan to remain in Boston for any length of time, Mariz, you’ll need to learn that I tell you what’s important, and what is not. Not the other way around.”
“Of course, Senhora. Forgive me.” Ethan heard little contrition in the man’s voice. “But you and I have more urgent business. We both stand to lose a good deal if the man we seek escapes us. That is where we should concentrate our energies.”
“Agreed,” Sephira said. “But if you’ve lost him—”
“I do not believe we have. You say that your information is correct and that he was on one of the ships. I take you at your word. In which case, I expect that he remains out there on the water even now, and will wait until the soldiers disembark before making his attempt.”
“You expect so, but you don’t know it for certain.”
“I know him,” Spectacles said. “He is not always the smartest of men, but he is cautious. Waiting is the safest way, and so he will wait.”
“There are hundreds of men on those ships,” Sephira said.
“Yes. You see my point.”
“He can hide among them, and escape when he’s ready.”
“Exactly. So rather than watching the ships, we should be looking for the items he has hidden. He will go to them eventually. He will not leave Boston without them. So if we can find them, we will find him.”
“But we’ve been through this,” Sephira said. “We don’t know where to look and we don’t know who else might be able to tell us. We have nothing.”
“I cannot help you in that regard. I know him. I do not know this city.”
“Right. So you should continue to watch the ships, and we will continue to search the city, just as I told you two days ago.”
Spectacles didn’t respond right away. Ethan thought he heard footsteps, and when next the man spoke, his voice seemed to come from right beside the window.
“Very well, Senhora. We will return to the waterfront.”
“Good. First though, I still want to know what your friend here was going to say.”
Another pause.
“I assure you, it was nothing. I felt a spell just a short time ago, as I told you. But I felt another pulse of conjuring power as well.”
Ethan leaned closer to the window, thinking that perhaps the man might reveal something about the powerful casting he had felt early that morning. He should have known better.
“When?” Sephira asked.
“Last night. Afton and I were in a tavern at the other end of your city, and I felt a spell, right there in the room.”
“What tavern?” Sephira demanded, biting off the words.
“I believe it was called the Dowsing Rod.”
“The Dowser,” Sephira said, her voice low. “You idiots! That’s Kaille’s tavern!”
“He owns it?”
“No, his woman does. But he’s there all the time. That was his witchery you felt. Damn it!” A pause, and then she asked, “Did you see him?”
“I would not know him if I had.”
“Well, he saw you. I’m sure of it. You felt witchcraft just a short while ago?”
“I have been telling you so.”
“Damn it!” she said again. “Nigel! Nap! Get in here!”
Boots scraped on the stone outside the entrance to the house, and the door opened.
Ethan had heard enough. Sephira was too smart not to put it all together. He hurried back across Summer Street and into the pasture. His conjuring still kept Sephira and the others—even Spectacles—from being able to see him, but he didn’t think he could rely on the spell for much longer.
He hadn’t gone far when Sephira’s voice reached him again. “… Him found!”
Ethan chanced a quick glance over his shoulder. Sephira stood at the entrance of her home, hands on her hips. Nigel, Nap, Gordon, Afton, and two other men had fanned out through her yard and the street in front of her house. Nap and Nigel carried pistols; the others held knives.
But Ethan was most interested in Spectacles. He stood with Sephira, but he had drawn his blade as well, and had it poised over his arm, looking like he was trying to decide what spell to cast. He would probably go with a finding spell first, followed by an attack of some sort. That was what Ethan would have done had he been in the other man’s position.
Ethan had little choice. He couldn’t make himself invisible to a finding spell—that level of craft was beyond him. Which meant that he needed to protect himself. Pulling his own knife from his belt, and still striding across the pasture, he cut his arm and whispered, “Teqimen ex cruore evocatum.” Warding, conjured from blood.
The ground pulsed, as he had known it would. Uncle Reg appeared beside him, ethereal in the bright sunlight. He had expected that, too. The thrum of the casting, and the shimmering appearance of Uncle Reg, would allow a conjurer to find him, even if he wasn’t visible to the naked eye. So he wasn’t at all surprised when he heard Spectacles—Mariz—shout, “There!”
The report of a pistol echoed across the pasture, and a bullet whistled overhead, a wild, blind shot.
Sephira shouted something that Ethan couldn’t hear. She sounded angry, though whether because the shot had been fired or because it had missed, Ethan couldn’t be sure.
He guessed that Nap had fired, although he didn’t look back to make certain. Nigel would know better than to make the attempt. Sephira’s toughs still couldn’t see him, and Uncle Reg was invisible to anyone who wasn’t a conjurer.
But an instant later, he felt power vibrate again in the ground, and he braced himself for Mariz’s assault. It reached him in mere seconds, like a sudden wave rolling over calm waters. A powerful spell, though one he didn’t recognize. It crashed into his legs, causing him to stumble momentarily. But his warding held; he felt the wave of power breaking, dissipating, retreating. Ethan kept his balance, and ran on.
Another conjuring rumbled through the earth. Ethan felt the spell approaching, and once more he tensed, wondering what Mariz had thrown at him this time. It caught up with him just a second or two later and fell over him like a cold mist. Once more he heard cries from behind him, not just from Spectacles, but from all of Sephira’s men.
Looking down at his body and limbs, Ethan realized that Mariz had found a way to overcome his concealment spell. Or rather, to outwit it. It looked like someone had poured tar over him. In the time it took him to take but a single stride, he had gone from being invisible to the men searching for him to standing out like a red-coated British soldier in a crowd of clergymen.
Ethan spat a curse and tried to run faster, despite the agony in his bad leg. He dodged to the right and headed for a pair of country estates. Another shot rang out, but even the newest pistols of the day were too unreliable over great distances. Again the bullet soared past harmlessly.
By now though, Nap would have had enough time to reload, and the men could track him. Ethan still held his knife and he cut himself once more without slowing. He hesitated, wondering what spell might remove Mariz’s conjuring.
“Purqa, ex cruore evocatum.” Clean, conjured from blood. Power made th
e ground beneath his feet vibrate, but nothing else happened. He was still covered with whatever it was Mariz had thrown at him, an ebon figure amid the pale grasses.
He cut himself again. “Aufer carmen ex cruore evocatum.” Remove spell, conjured from blood.
It was a more powerful spell. It hummed in the ground and in the marble of the homes he had reached. Ethan knew immediately that it had worked. Too well, in fact.
He no longer looked like he was covered in pitch, but he also could feel that he had removed his own concealment spell. Anyone could see him.
Dashing between the estates, Ethan turned on to Long Lane and made his way back toward Milk Street.
At that next corner, though, instead of turning east toward Henry’s cooperage, he went straight, again slipping between two houses into a small lot behind them. He soon reached Water Street. Here he turned west before heading north again onto Pudding Lane, where Diver lived. He was in the heart of Cornhill now, on a street crowded with working men, and people making their way from storefront to storefront. He slowed.
His leg screamed, and his breath came in great gasps, but he seemed to have lost Nigel and the others, at least for the moment. He had cast enough spells that Spectacles wouldn’t have much trouble locating him again; the man might not even have to resort to a finding spell.
Ethan had feared this day for years. Sephira Pryce had long been a formidable rival. Ruthless and clever, as deadly with her bare hands as she was with a blade or gun, she commanded a small army of men and had managed to ally herself with some of Boston’s most powerful leaders. Ethan had but one weapon at his disposal that she couldn’t match: spellmaking. The threat of a conjuring had stayed her hand in countless confrontations that might otherwise have ended in his death. And his ability to cast spells had allowed him to overcome her other advantages as they raced each other to find one stolen treasure or another. For so long, solely by dint of Ethan’s skills as a conjurer, they had battled each other to a stalemate.
Thieves' Quarry (The Thieftaker Chronicles) Page 5