A Plunder of Souls (The Thieftaker Chronicles)

by D. B. Jackson

  Ethan shrugged, and glanced toward his doorway. The shade of Nathaniel Ramsey stood on the threshold, with Reg at his shoulder, watching the ghost’s every move.

  “Before this is over, it may come to that,” Ethan said. “But I wasn’t ready to make such a choice tonight.”

  “The senhora would say that you have delayed what is inevitable, and you have put other lives at risk. It is a dangerous choice.”

  Ethan could think of nothing to say. Mariz was right: Sephira would see the matter just that way. He wondered if his refusal to do so was a weakness. Sephira would have said it was; so might Ramsey, though it was his life Ethan had spared.

  “You need healing,” Mariz said.

  “How did you know to come?” Ethan asked, ignoring his comment for the moment.

  “I sensed the spells—his and yours. The more I felt, the more concerned I grew.”

  “I’m grateful to you.”

  Mariz inclined his head, acknowledging Ethan’s thanks. “Your injuries?”

  “The burns are the worst of it. But I can heal myself.”

  “You may have to. I do not know if my spells will work. But allow me to try.”

  Mariz cut himself, put blood on Ethan’s burns, and cast a healing spell. The first conjuring failed, but not the second, and for several minutes Mariz and Ethan did not speak.

  Another spell thrummed, and an image of Ramsey materialized before them, hanging in midair. “I’m on the Muirenn, Kaille,” the vision said. “Release him.”

  Ethan nodded. To the two ghosts—Reg and the elder Ramsey—he said, “Dimitto vos ambos.” I release you both. He watched the old captain, but the shade refused to return his gaze, even as he faded into the night.

  Mariz finished the healing conjuring a short while after. He removed his spectacles and rubbed the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger.

  “My thanks,” Ethan said. “I assume that this squares things between us.”

  “Squares things?” Mariz repeated with a frown. He replaced his spectacles.

  “Makes us even. I saved your life last year, you saved mine tonight. You don’t owe me your friendship anymore.”

  Mariz chuckled and shook his head. “Your mind works strangely, Kaille. Friendship is not owed, it is given. That is something that the senhora would have said. I thought you and she were most dissimilar; perhaps I was mistaken, and you are more alike than you seem.”

  That stung.

  “No,” Ethan said, “we’re not. Forgive me. It’s been a long and difficult night. I’m grateful to you, and I would like very much to go on being your friend.”

  “Then you shall.” Mariz sheathed his knife. “But you are right: It has been a long night, and the senhora expects me to be at her home early in the morning. Good night.”

  “Good night, Mariz. Again, I’m grateful to you.”

  The man flashed a quick grin and descended the stairs. As the click of his boots on the cobblestone street receded, Ethan heard someone else call his name.

  “Henry,” Ethan said under his breath. He went back into his room, threw on a shirt—one that was whole—and buttoned it as he hurried down the stairs.

  Henry lived in a small, one-room house behind the cooperage. He stood in his doorway, peering out into the night and holding a candle in one hand and a hammer in the other. Shelly stood next to him, her ears pricked up. When she saw Ethan, she wagged her tail and bounded forward.

  The cooper wore a loose nightshirt, and his hair stuck up at odd angles. Ethan assumed he had been asleep and would want an explanation. Ethan wasn’t sure what to tell him. He prided himself on being a good tenant; he usually paid his rent on time, he took good care of his room, and for the most part he made little noise. But he had been late with June’s rent, and tonight he had not only wakened Henry from a sound sleep, he had also broken his door and window. It didn’t matter that Ramsey was responsible for the actual damage; it was Ethan’s fault. And on top of everything else, he needed to explain what had happened without revealing to the cooper that he was a conjurer.

  “I’m sorry to have woken you, Henry,” Ethan said, scratching Shelly behind the ears, not yet able to look the man in the eye.

  “I’m not worried about that. Are you all right?”

  Ethan stood and walked to where the cooper waited. “Aye, thank you. I’m fine.”

  “It didn’t thound very good,” Henry said, lisping. He stared up at the broken window. “It sounded like a fight.”

  “I’ll pay you for the window, Henry. And for the other damage, too.”

  “What other damage?”

  Ethan glanced down at Shelly, who had followed him and was nudging his hand with her snout. “The door is broken.”

  The cooper’s eyebrows went up. “I put that door on there myself. It was solid. That must have been some strong magicking.”

  Ethan was sure that his jaw dropped to the ground. He gaped at Henry, eyes so wide they hurt. The cooper couldn’t have surprised him more if he had cast a spell of his own. It occurred to him that Henry could have seen that floating image of Ramsey from this vantage point.

  “Aye, it was,” Ethan said, trying to mask his astonishment. “This inquiry I’m working on now—there’s a … a witch who’s causing all sorts of mischief. As their kind always do.”

  Henry chuckled at that, exposing the gap in his teeth. “‘As their kind do’? Come now, Ethan. I might not be as smart as some folk, but I’m not a fool.”

  Ethan stared at him for another moment before starting to laugh himself. “No, Henry. You’re not a fool at all. You might be the smartest man I’ve ever met.” He rubbed a hand over his mouth. “How long have you known?”

  “That you’re a speller?” He said it like “thpeller” and Ethan laughed again. “Oh, I guess I’ve known for six or seven years now.”

  “Why didn’t you say anything?”

  The cooper shrugged. “It wasn’t any of my business. And you always were trying to hide it from me, so I figured you were ashamed of it or something.”

  “No. I was afraid you wouldn’t approve. A lot of people think conjurers are witches, and I figured you wouldn’t want me living here if you knew the truth.”

  “You’re welcome to live here as long as you want, Ethan. I don’t care about the rest. I always figured it would be handy to have a speller around. I would have asked you to do stuff for me, if I hadn’t been sure that it would make you feel bad.”

  “I’ll cast for you any time, Henry.” He chuckled and shook his head again. For years he had congratulated himself on keeping his secret from the cooper despite living over the man’s shop. Now it turned out that he had done a poor job of hiding his abilities, while Henry had been superb at keeping the truth from Ethan. “All right,” he said, still tickled, “I have to sleep. This has been quite a day.” He put out a hand, which Henry gripped. “Thank you, Henry.”

  “For what?”

  “For being a good friend. I’ll help you with the repairs, and I’ll pay you back for all the cost.”

  “Sure, all right,” Henry said. “Just be careful, though. That speller who broke your door—he sounds dangerous.”

  Ethan couldn’t argue.

  Chapter

  EIGHTEEN

  If there was a bright side to having his window shattered and his door broken into pieces, it was that Ramsey had returned to Boston in midsummer, rather than in the dead of winter. With the breeze that flowed through his room, Ethan actually enjoyed the most comfortable night’s sleep he’d had in several weeks. The new day, however, brought complications. He didn’t wish to leave his room unattended with no door in place. He possessed few valuables, but with Ramsey loose in the city, and Sephira a constant menace, he preferred to know that what little he had was safe.

  Henry had work to do and couldn’t watch his room all day, and though Shelly might have guarded his door for a time, Ethan feared that the first thief with a tasty piece of mutton or fowl would have little trouble
slipping past her.

  He had never cast a detection spell, but he had fallen victim to more than his share. He decided that the time had come to use one himself. After considering the matter for but a moment, he elected to cast two; he could easily imagine Diver or Pell coming to his room, seeing that the door had been destroyed, and rushing in out of concern for Ethan’s well-being. He didn’t wish to subject them to an incapacitating spell. Thus, his first casting would rely on an illusion spell, an image of himself that would warn away those who approached his door. A second conjuring would deal with anyone who ignored his warning and entered the room.

  He didn’t know how to create a spell that he himself would not trigger, so he hoped that upon seeing the damaged doorway, he would remember to remove the conjuring. He also thought that he should warn Henry about the spells, lest the cooper take it upon himself to begin the repairs on his own.

  These were difficult conjurings; each had to be constructed in two parts, one to create the detection web, and the second to set in place the spell that the breaking of the web would trigger. He worked on the spells for the better part of an hour, figuring out the exact wording and then casting the spells in the correct order. Even after he finished, he could not be entirely sure that the spells had worked.

  Without any other means of determining if they had, Ethan had no choice but to disrupt one of the detection webs himself. The first several times he did this nothing happened. Finally, on his fourth try, the spell took hold. He cast the second spell—the sleep spell—four times, hoping that at least one of them would work. He dared not test this one. When at last he was done, his arm was raw and tender.

  His next task was far more serious. He needed to speak with Ramsey again, and he guessed that doing so would be next to impossible. But his memory of the captain’s illusion conjuring the night before gave him an idea. He removed his last leaves of mullein from the pouch—six of them in all—and held them in the palm of his hand.

  “Videre et audire, per mea imagine, ex verbasco evocatum.” Sight and hearing, through my illusion, conjured from mullein.

  He felt this conjuring in the wood of the stairway landing, and knew that Ramsey would feel it, too. In this one instance, that mattered not at all. Ethan closed his eyes and pictured in his mind the deck of the Muirenn, which he assumed he would find once more at Tileston’s Wharf. Within just a few seconds, he knew that the illusion of himself had materialized on the ship, for the vision he had summoned from memory gave way to a view that included members of Ramsey’s crew. He heard their voices, knew that they fell silent at the sight of him.

  “I wish to speak with your captain,” he made the image say.

  The men gave no indication that they were alarmed by Ethan’s conjuring; clearly they were used to spells.

  After a few seconds one of the men said, “What if he don’t wish to speak with you?”

  He and his friends laughed.

  “He can tell me so himself. But I want to hear it in his words, not yours. And I don’t imagine he would want you making that choice for him.”

  The sailor sobered. He whispered something to one of his comrades, who went belowdecks.

  Moments later Ramsey emerged onto the deck with the second sailor in tow.

  “What the hell do you want?” he asked. He surveyed his ship and the wharf before returning his glower to Ethan’s conjured image.

  “I want to speak with you,” Ethan said through the illusion. “Not like this. Face-to-face. I’m asking for your permission to approach your vessel.”

  “What is it you think we have to say to each other? You’re alive because you dared summon the shade of my father, and because your friend happened to arrive when he did. He still lives because he managed to produce his pistol while I was occupied with you. We’re at war, you and I. And our next battle will be our last. I promise you that.”

  “Fine, Ramsey. We’re at war. Grant me a truce for one last parley.”

  Ethan was certain that Ramsey would refuse and demand he remove the conjured image of himself from his ship. But he didn’t, at least not right away. “To what end?” he asked after some time. “What are you playing at?”

  “I’m not playing. I’m trying to save lives: yours, mine, and those of anyone unfortunate enough to wind up between us when next we meet. And I’m trying to save the souls of the dead you have disturbed. I have a proposal for you.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “I should never have said what I did about your intent to bring back your father. That is your choice and his. It’s no business of mine. As I told you, I understood why you want him alive again.”

  The look in Ramsey’s eyes had turned flinty. “Is there a point to this?”

  “Use the power you’ve gathered to bring him back. If you need me to help you do it, I will.”

  “What kind of help can you offer?”

  “I don’t know,” Ethan admitted. He was growing weary. Illusion spells were not difficult, but speaking, hearing, and seeing through the image of himself made the conjuring that much more taxing. He couldn’t maintain the spell indefinitely, and he was all too aware of how little time he had to convince Ramsey of his sincerity. “I assume that bringing the dead back fully to the living world takes a good deal of power. I’m offering to let you use what power I possess to that end.”

  “In exchange for what?”

  “Once your father is back, you release the shades, return that which you stole from the graves, and leave Boston.”

  The captain laughed. “You don’t ask for much, do you?”

  “You’d have your father back. Between your last visit to Boston and what you’ve done in the past few days, you’ve avenged him. Forrs and Keller are dead. The families of Alexander Rowan and Bertram Flagg have been terrified by the shades of their dead. You even managed to desecrate the three burying grounds in this city where the men responsible for the persecution of Salem’s ‘witches’ are interred. You’ve done well, Ramsey.”

  The captain’s grin appeared genuine.

  “You have nothing more to prove,” Ethan said, pressing the small advantage he seemed to have gained. “Let us bring back your father, and the two of you can set sail again. You can leave behind the tragedies inflicted upon you by this town.”

  Ramsey narrowed his eyes. “Why would you help me?”

  Ethan saw no point in denying the truth. “Because I fear you and the damage you could do here. Because I enjoy being a conjurer, and don’t want to have my power taken from me. Because even if I manage to kill you, I’ll be dooming the souls that you control. And because, as you have said before, if we had first met under different circumstances we might well have become friends.”

  “How do you know that I won’t accept your aid, and then refuse to uphold my end of our bargain?”

  “I don’t. I’m offering you my trust. Mariz could have killed you last night. I told him not to. I’m hoping that small mercy might have earned me a modicum of goodwill.”

  Ramsey regarded the conjured image of Ethan. On the wooden stairway above Henry’s cooperage, Ethan held his breath.

  “You’re an odd man, Kaille. You’re stubborn to a fault, and your devotion to duty is foolhardy, at best. And yet, you can also be quite pragmatic, and even compassionate. I don’t know if that last is a weakness or an asset, but in this case it serves you well.” He hesitated for another few seconds before nodding. “Very well. I’ll accept your help, and when my father and I are together, we’ll sail.”

  “You’ll forswear further acts of vengeance?”

  “To be away from this city? With my father? Aye.”

  Ethan smiled, and knew that his image mirrored his relief. “Good.”

  “When do you wish to do this?” Ramsey asked.

  “I’ll make my way down to the wharf shortly,” Ethan said. “If all goes as it should, you’ll be putting out to sea by this evening.”

  “Very well.”

  Ethan allowed the conjuring to en
d. Opening his eyes, he endured a wave of dizziness, and braced himself on the wooden railing outside his door.

  Once he had his bearings again, he descended the stairs and walked out to Milk Street. He didn’t wish to keep Ramsey waiting, but he also knew better than to place all his faith in the captain’s word. Rather than face the man with no way to conjure except through blood spells, he hastened to Janna’s tavern, walking so quickly that his bad leg, which was still tender from having been broken by Ramsey the previous night, soon ached even more than usual.

  Still, he begrudged every minute, knowing that Ramsey would already be questioning the choice he had made.

  Upon reaching the Fat Spider, Ethan entered and crossed to Janna’s bar.

  “Kaille,” she said, her tone sour. “What you want now?”

  “I just need to buy more mullein from you, Janna.” He placed three shillings on the polished wood.

  “That’s all?” She sounded suspicious. “No questions?”

  Previously, she had offered to help him, but Ethan didn’t wish to put her life in peril if he didn’t absolutely have to.

  “Not right now,” he said. “I’m in a bit of a hurry.”

  She nodded, her lower lip protruding. “Well, all right then.” She took the money and walked into her back room. “You know any more ’bout what’s happenin’ to our spells?” she called to him.

  “I’ve learned a few things. In another day or two, I should have answers for you.” He could have told her more. Lord knew that with all she had told him over the years, he owed her as many answers as she wanted. But he didn’t wish to risk any additional delays.

  After what seemed like an eternity, she emerged once more, carrying a pouch filled near to overflowing with the herb. “Here you go,” she said. “You went through that last bit awfully fast. You don’t need to use a lot. Not that I mind the sales.”

  Ethan forced a smile, and had to keep himself from saying that if Ramsey hadn’t been using his mullein as well, and if he hadn’t needed to speak with so many dead conjurers, his last purchase would have lasted longer.