Thieftaker (41 page)

Darrow shook his head, his eyes narrowing. “No. You’re up to something else.”

They were out of time. Ethan knew what was coming and knew as well that he needed to be precise in what he did next. The timing of the spells was crucial. He was exhausted; never had he cast so many spells in so little time. Never had he been tortured like this. But he could give in to his weariness, or he could survive the night. He couldn’t do both.

He closed his eyes again, drew on the fire, but also on the air, and on the fine mist forming over the nearby fields. And he succeeded in creating an illusion that was more real than any he had conjured before. His image of the sheriff and men of the watch rushed into the firelight, their footsteps scraping on the road, their pistols glinting in the glow of the blaze as they leveled them at Darrow. But he felt his own spell, and so did Darrow. Otis and Adams jumped out of the way of the illusions. Darrow laughed at them.

“They’re not real,” he said, contempt in his voice. Glancing at Ethan he added, “Really, Kaille, is that the best you can do?”

Ethan’s conjurings waved their weapons at the lawyer, making the same motions over and over. They looked pathetic really, as Ethan had known they would.

But he needed them to mask yet another spell.

Discuti ex foliis evocatum!
Shatter, conjured from leaves!

Power coursed through the ground. Darrow’s eyes snapped to Ethan’s. A second conjuring made the earth hum, so that the two spells skirled discordantly, like strings on a poorly tuned violin.

Except that Darrow’s spell was a warding against Ethan’s assault. And Ethan hadn’t aimed his spell at the conjurer. He aimed it at the shackles that bound his arms.

The chain snapped at the last link before the cuff on his left hand, and immediately Ethan grabbed hold of the chain with this right, and swung it hard so that the links whipped toward Darrow. No doubt the conjurer’s warding would have worked perfectly against a spell, but it wasn’t intended to guard against a physical assault, and he didn’t have time to cast again.

The end of the chain lashed Darrow across the side of his face, knocking him to the ground.

Mackintosh dove forward and grabbed the knife that had fallen near the fire. At the same time, Ethan cast a second spell to free his legs, and ripped the gag from his mouth.

Adams and Otis started toward their guns, but they couldn’t reach them in time.

Still lying on his back, Darrow roared something in Latin that Ethan didn’t understand. There could be no mistaking the effect, though. It seemed that a keg of gunpowder exploded in their midst. The spell threw Adams, Otis, and Mackintosh to the ground, leaving all three men addled. It also hammered Ethan back against the tree. The breath was knocked from his body, and he collapsed, landing hard on his wounded shoulder and knee.

Darrow stood slowly. Blood flowed from his nose and the corner of his mouth, and his cheek had already started to darken. He didn’t speak. He didn’t have to. Ethan knew what was coming. He saw the blood vanish from his face, felt the ground tingle. Still, how did one prepare for such agony?

He felt as though his skin was being flayed. Molten steel coursed through his veins again. The spike had impaled his head once more. This was torment beyond anything the man had done to him before. He couldn’t escape it, and it went on and on. He thought Darrow would kill him with the pain. Ethan didn’t even know if that was possible. He could hear himself howling like a wounded animal, but he couldn’t make himself stop.

“Beg me to kill you.” Darrow’s voice, even and calm, so close that the man could have been whispering in his ear. “Ask me for death, and I can end this. The others are lost anyway. You can’t save them. Beg me.”

Through a haze of agony, Ethan drew upon the leaves overhead to cast a warding spell. He might as well have tried to block a cannonball with a sheet of parchment. Still, Ethan refused to surrender. He tried to attack Darrow with fire, with scalding, with another shatter spell, and with the blindness casting he had used two nights before. He felt the conjurings tremble in the ground beneath him, and he knew that the spells had worked. But he could do nothing to breach the man’s wardings. Darrow was too strong. Even Pell and the sheriff and the men they had brought wouldn’t be able to help. All of them would die. Already Ethan felt his life ebbing away. His heart was being seared; he could barely draw breath. He couldn’t fight it. He wasn’t even sure anymore that he wanted to.

And yet, in the next instant, the pain ceased. Ethan took a deep breath—he could breathe without feeling that his lungs were on fire. A warm breeze touched his face. He wanted to savor the sensation. He wanted to rest.

He forced his eyes open. Darrow loomed over him, but he was staring over his shoulder at Mackintosh. The cordwainer backed away from the man, terror in his eyes, his chest rising and falling rapidly. Darrow turned slowly, and Ethan saw that the knife Mackintosh had retrieved jutted from the conjurer’s back, just below his shoulder blade. Blood darkened the man’s coat, but only for a few seconds.

Ethan had time to shout a warning to Mackintosh, but it did little good. The blood disappeared, and Mackintosh’s coat burst into flames. The cordwainer dropped to the ground and began to roll from side to side. Adams and Otis leaped to his aid, batting at the flames with their hands.

Darrow reached back and pulled out the knife. The blood on the blade caught the firelight, and then it, too, was gone. Ethan braced himself for another assault, but it didn’t come. Darrow, he realized, had used the blood to heal the wound on his back.

Ethan drew on the fire for another illusion spell. Two, actually. With the first he sent Anna down the road. With the second, he conjured again the image of Greenleaf and the men of the watch.

The illusions advanced on Darrow with raised weapons.

“Enough of this, Ethan,” Darrow said.

He kicked Ethan’s shattered knee, and Ethan cried out. But still, Ethan held the image of the men for a moment longer, until at last he heard what he had been waiting for.

Through gritted teeth he said, “You’re right. Enough.”

Looking toward the road, he let his illusion die away. And there, to take the place of his conjured images, stood the real sheriff and his men with Mr. Pell.

“Now, Pell!” he shouted.

He heard Pell say something, saw Darrow slash at his own arm with the knife. The conjurer’s voice rang through the night and then was drowned out by the rapid blasts of four flintlock pistols.

For a second, no one spoke. No one even moved. The report of the guns echoed across the pastureland.

And then Darrow laughed. He opened his fist and held it out for all of them to see. Resting in the palm of his hand were the four lead balls fired at him by Greenleaf and the men of the watch.

“Do you understand now?” he asked of no one in particular. “Do you see at last what you’re dealing with?”

Ethan glanced at Adams and saw despair in his eyes. He let his gaze drop to the pistol lying on the ground before the man. Adams nodded.

Conflare ex ligno evocatum.
Heat, conjured from wood.

It was a more difficult spell, fueled as it was by the wood of a branch rather than by mere leaves. But it made for a more powerful casting. His conjuring rumbled in the ground like thunder.

Darrow cast as well. Another warding, of course. But again, Ethan’s spell wasn’t intended for the conjurer, at least not directly.

Darrow cried out, jerking his hand back. The bullets fell to the ground, now a mass of molten lead. And at the same moment, Adams dove to the ground, grabbed his pistol, and fired.

As before, no one moved. Darrow let out another laugh, breathless with surprise. But then he fell to his knees, blood blossoming over his heart.

The stain on his coat vanished as quickly as it appeared. Even now, his face ashen, his hand shaking, the man was attempting to save himself. But a healing spell for such a wound was no trifle, and even the most skilled conjurer couldn’t maintain a warding as well.

I need blood,
Ethan said silently, staring hard at Uncle Reg. The old ghost nodded and planted himself in front of Pell. At first, the minister took a step back, fear in his pale eyes. But then Reg raised a finger and made a quick slashing motion over his forearm. Pell looked past the ghost to Ethan, who nodded once.

“A knife!” the minister said.

Darrow turned his head slowly to face Ethan. Then he began to climb to his feet.

“Quickly!” Pell shouted.

Otis pulled a blade from his belt and handed it to the minister. Without a moment’s hesitation, Pell cut his forearm.

The instant he saw blood, Ethan said, “
Frange! Ex cruore evocatum!
” Break! Conjured from blood!

The earth shook once more. There was a sound of cracking bone—as clear as a church bell. Darrow’s head leaned to one side, his neck broken; he swayed and toppled to the ground.

The golden girl—the ghost Anna—looked at Uncle Reg and at Ethan, her eyes wide and bright. For an instant, she was merely a child: scared, alone. And then she was gone.

Chapter

T
WENTY-THREE

F
or a moment, no one moved. Adams and Otis, Mackintosh and Pell, Greenleaf and the men of the watch—all of them stared at Darrow. Adams was the first to look away. He gazed down at the pistol in his hand, and took a long, shuddering breath. Finally, as one, they turned to Ethan.

Pell hurried forward and knelt beside him.

“Where are you hurt?” the minister asked.

“It would take less time to tell you where I’m
not
hurt.”

Pell laughed breathlessly, sounding more relieved than amused. “Can you…?” he hesitated, glancing at the others. “Can you take care of it yourself?”

“I haven’t the strength,” Ethan said quietly, his thoughts clouded by the throbbing pain in his shoulder and knee. “And I’d rather not put on a display for the sheriff.” He looked around. “I don’t know where we are. How far are we from my home?”

“Did you just say that you don’t know where you are?” Adams said, coming forward.

“That’s right.”

Adams gestured at the tree to which Ethan had been chained. “This is the Liberty Tree, Mister Kaille. You’re on Orange Street, at Essex.”

The Liberty Tree. He had heard talk of the place. This was where Andrew Oliver had been hung in effigy, and where the first of the riots on August 14 had begun. More important, they were only a short distance from Janna’s tavern.

“There’s someone who can help me,” Ethan told Pell. “Her name is Tarijanna Windcatcher, and she owns the Fat Spider. It’s a tavern down the road toward the town gate.”

Pell started to stand. “I’ll get her.”

“No,” Ethan said, stopping him. “Send one of Greenleaf’s men. She doesn’t like ministers. She doesn’t like anyone. But she’ll help me. Tell him to use my name.”

The minister walked back to Greenleaf and his men and spoke to them in low tones. After a moment, one of the men started off down the road toward Janna’s tavern.

“Thank you,” Ethan said to Adams. “That was a fine shot. I thought you were palsied.”

“I am,” Adams said. “My penmanship is atrocious. Shooting is another matter.” He looked down at Darrow and shook his head. “Peter was a friend. I didn’t want to kill him.”

“You didn’t,” Ethan said, his voice low. “I did.” He had taken lives before, and perhaps he would again. But it would never be easy, not even when the man he killed was intent on murdering him. “And you should know that Darrow wasn’t your friend. He was a spy for supporters of Parliament and the Crown. He sought to undermine everything that you’re working for.”

Greenleaf came forward as Ethan spoke, plainly interested in what he was saying. Ethan paid no attention to him.

“He killed Jennifer Berson and three others,” he went on. “And he was perfectly willing to kill Mackintosh here, or me. Or both of you,” he said to Adams and Otis, “if it served his purposes.”

“Why did he kill them?” Pell asked.

“He was casting control spells—using his conjurings to make others do his bidding. He killed Jennifer Berson so that Mackintosh would take his mob and destroy Thomas Hutchinson’s home. He killed the girl who was found this morning to make Sheriff Greenleaf release Mackintosh from gaol. Same with the boy who died on Pope’s Day. He won Ebenezer’s release, and so won his trust.”

“That’s preposterous!” Greenleaf said, but there was uncertainty in his eyes.

“Is it, Sheriff?” Ethan asked. “Did you have any intention of releasing Ebenezer before this morning?”

“I…” He shook his head, his gaze falling to Darrow’s corpse. “I don’t recall,” he said at last.

“I wouldn’t expect you to,” Ethan said without rancor. Facing Adams again, he said, “The alliance between you and Mackintosh was a threat to him and to those he worked for. Everything he did was intended to drive the two of you apart, to break the bonds between Mackintosh’s followers and the Sons of Liberty.”

Mackintosh stared down at Darrow’s body, murder in his eyes. “You said there were four who died. Who was th’ last?”

Ethan considered this briefly. What was it Darrow had told him?
No one died that day who wasn’t going to die anyway.
He thought back to his conversation with Holin about the Richardson hanging—about how one of them had kicked violently when the other merely went limp.

“Ann Richardson,” he said.

Mackintosh frowned. “But—”

“She was to be executed anyway, I know. But he used her death to keep you and Swift, your North End rival, from declaring a truce. He needed the fighting to go on a while longer so that he could win you over on Pope’s Day.”

The cordwainer shook his head and glowered down at Darrow. “Bastard. He made me int’ a puppet. A toy.”

“We didn’t know, Ebenezer,” Otis said, his voice gentle. “You have my word on that.”

Mackintosh nodded, but he wouldn’t look at him.

Before Ethan could say more, the man of the watch stepped back into the ring of light, leading Janna, who had a shawl wrapped around her shoulders, despite the warm night air.