Thieves' Quarry (The Thieftaker Chronicles) (35 page)

“Did he tell you anything else? Anything at all?”

She shook her head, her expression pained. “Very little.”

Of course. He had insisted on Diver’s discretion, and this one time his friend had done as he instructed.

“Did he say anything about someone he was supposed to meet? Aside from me, I mean.”

“He did say he had to meet someone—that he was doing it for you—but he told me nothing about her, either.”

Ethan felt a sudden tightness in his chest. “Her? It was a woman?”

“Yes, I think so.”

He had to resist the impulse to go back to Sephira’s home and smash it to pieces. What had she said to him just a short while before?
You have friends, and I know who they are.
Had she taken Diver as a prisoner before he even got there? Had she already killed him?

“Did he say it was Sephira Pryce?” Ethan asked, afraid to hear the woman’s answer.

“Miss Pryce?” Deborah repeated, sounding like that had been the last name she expected to hear. “Oh, no. He didn’t mention her at all.”

That stopped him short. “You’re sure?”

“I would have remembered if he had mentioned her. She’s a very important lady.”

How could he argue? “But who—?”

It came to him in a rush, stealing his breath. He had been staggeringly stupid for so long. And it was possible that his foolishness had cost Diver his life.
I’ll be keeping an eye on you,
he had told him.
I won’t let anything happen to you.
How could he have failed his friend so miserably?

“Mister Kaille?” Deborah said, leaning toward him, her forehead creasing with concern. “Are you all right?”

“Go upstairs,” Ethan said. “Don’t open your door for anyone other than Diver or me.”

“All right,” she said, wide-eyed and puzzled. “Do you know where he’s gone?”

“I have an idea, yes.”

He started away, heading toward Dock Square and the North End.

“Do you think he’s all right?” the woman called after him.

“I hope so,” he said without breaking stride.

*   *   *

The home of the sisters Osborne wasn’t far from Pierce’s Alley, but even running, his leg and knee aching, Ethan felt like it took hours to cover the distance. If Caleb Osborne was still alive, his daughters would know. They might well have been sheltering him. From the first day Ethan spoke to them, they had struck him as odd. Perhaps they had been hiding the truth from him all this time. Perhaps they had been working with their father to gain the riches he stole from Sephira. That would explain why they had been so reluctant to speak of Simon Gant. Not only did they fear the man, they also knew that their father intended to steal the pearls from him. They might even have known that he intended to kill his old associate.

As he approached the worn wheelwright’s shop on Wood Lane, Ethan pulled his knife free and pushed up the sleeve of his coat. He wanted to be ready if Osborne was there. Pausing at the base of the dilapidated stairway, he cut himself, then faltered once more. He wanted to try a listening spell, but any conjurer in the North End would sense the power of it. A conjurer in the room above him might well determine from the casting just how close Ethan was. He started up the stairs, taking each step with painstaking care and wincing at every creak and crack of the ancient wood. When at last he reached the door, he half expected to see it crash open, revealing Caleb Osborne, knife in hand, blood welling from a fresh wound.

But nothing happened, and when Ethan pressed his ear to the side of the building, he heard not a sound within.

He tried the door handle. Locked. Knowing that he was taking a risk, he spoke the unlocking spell again, and at the sound of the lock tumbling, let himself into the Osborne sisters’ room. As before, the floor and furniture were littered with colorful cushions. Molly Osborne had been working her fingers to the bone. The faint aroma of cooked meat hung in the air, but otherwise Ethan saw nothing to suggest that anyone had been there for hours.

He would have liked to search the place—for the pearls, for any sign that Diver had been there, for evidence proving that Caleb Osborne was still alive. But he didn’t dare take the time. Now heedless of whatever noise he made, he slammed the door shut and charged back down the stairs, stumbling halfway down. He stopped in the middle of Wood Lane, unsure where he should go next, panic rising in his chest like a river in flood.

And in that instant it came to him. Hull Street. Gant’s old house. If Osborne had worked with Gant, he would know of the place, and so might his daughters.

He broke into a run once more, ignoring the pain in his leg and the cold sweat on his back. Cutting across the heart of the North End, he dodged carriages and chaises and sprinted past clusters of British regulars, on one occasion ignoring their calls for him to stop, and wondering if he was about to be shot in the back.

When at last he reached the coppersmith’s shop, he slowed and readied himself: knife out; sleeve up. He wanted to summon Uncle Reg, but even that small spell would attract notice. He stole around the building into the enclosure in back, and upon seeing the run-down house, knew that at last he had guessed correctly. The tall grass surrounding the old shack had been trampled down, and the building’s lone window glowed with the warm light of a candle or oil lamp. The broken shutter had been repaired since the last time he had been here. He saw as well that the cart standing near the house had also been fixed. Had the repairs been done with conjurings?

Ethan slipped through the grass until he reached the pair of worn wooden steps that led to the door, which had been repaired as well. It hung straighter on its hinges, and something told Ethan that it would swing open easily, without scraping the floor.

He put his foot on the first step, and as soon as he did he felt the weblike touch of yet another detection spell. A keening sound, like an ocean wind whistling in a seawall, pierced the silence.

Ethan cut himself. “
Teqimen! Ex cruore evocatum!
” Warding, conjured from blood! Power from his spell pulsed, and was answered an instant later by a second pulse that emanated from within the house. He had time to think,
Fire spell!

And then he was on his back, lying in the grass. The warding had held against the flames, but the sheer power of the attack had been like the kick of a mule. Reg, who had materialized as soon as he conjured, looked down at him, disapproval twisting his mouth.

The door flew open—as smoothly as Ethan had imagined—and Hester Osborne stepped onto the front porch, her mouth set in a thin hard line, her hair down. Seeing Ethan and the glowing ghost, she narrowed her eyes.

“Mister Kaille! What are you doing here?”

Ethan climbed to his feet.

“I could ask you the same thing,” he said. He had managed to hold on to his knife and he tightened his grip on it, weighing whether or not to cut himself again.

“This was Simon Gant’s home,” she said. “But I assume you knew that. My sister and I didn’t feel safe in our home, so we came here.”

“And where’s your father?” Ethan asked.

Her face seemed to turn to stone. “That’s not funny.”

“It wasn’t intended to be. I know that his body vanished from Castle William. For the the past day I’ve assumed that it was Gant who awoke him from whatever spell took his life. But I realize now that I should have known better. You’re a conjurer. I’d wager that your sister is, too, and that you’re both more skilled with your castings than Simon Gant. One of you woke your father, didn’t you?”

“You should leave.”

He shook his head. “I don’t think so. I need to know where your father is. I believe he has a friend of mine with him.”

She regarded him, a shrewd look in her eyes. “What friend?”

“Where is he?”

Hester stared at him for another moment before shaking her head. “You should leave now,” she said, her voice wavering. “It’s not safe for you here, and … you should just go. Quickly.”

Ethan stepped closer to the house, and even put one foot on the bottom stair. “He’s here, isn’t he? Your father is inside.”

“Please—”

“Hester?”

The woman turned, and Ethan looked past her. Molly Osborne stood in the doorway, the candlelight within the house shrouding her in shadow.

“It’s all right, Molly. Go back inside.”

“But it’s not all right.”

The two women gazed at each other for several seconds. Ethan couldn’t see either of their faces, but he sensed their tension, their fear.

Hester looked down at him again. “Go, Mister Kaille! Now!”

He shook his head with grim purpose and stepped up onto the front porch of the shack. “I can’t.”

Before he could shoulder his way past her, a knife flashed in her hand and she cut the back of her own wrist.

“
Corpus alligare! Ex cruore evocatum!
” Bind body! Conjured from blood!

The thrum of her conjuring seemed to rattle the house, and the glowing red ghost of a young man appeared beside her. Ethan had warded himself, but hers was a powerful casting. Without the warding it would have incapacitated him; as it was, he had to struggle to move his limbs, as though he had been snared in a heavy net. He lurched forward, but managed not to fall on his face.

“You can’t go in there,” she said.

“What the hell was that?” a man bellowed from the back of the house. He sounded drunk or sleepy, or both.

Ethan glared at Hester before pushing past her again. This time she let him go.

Molly stood just inside the door, her fists clenched, her jaw set in defiance. “You should have listened to her!” she said.

But he stepped around her as well, starting toward the small back room of the ramshackle house.

Before he reached it, though, a man blocked his way. The boyish face and round cheeks were familiar, as were the flecks of gray in his straight brown hair. Unlike the last time Ethan had seen him, though, Caleb Osborne now looked very much alive.

He held a pistol in one hand and in the other he grasped the arm of a second man, whom he had dragged from the back room. Giving this figure a hard yank, he pulled the man into view and then let the slack arm drop to the floor.

Ethan needed no more than a cursory look to know who this second man was. The black curls, the square handsome face, marred now by dark bruises around both eyes, and a good deal of dried blood around his nose and mouth. Diver. There was a deep gash under one of his friend’s eyes and another high on the side of his head. His hair was matted with blood. He appeared still to be alive, but Ethan didn’t know how long he could keep his friend that way.

Osborne laughed at what he saw on Ethan’s face. He shoved the toe of his shoe under Diver’s shoulder and pushed hard, rolling the young man onto his back, so that his head lolled to the side and struck the doorframe with a dull thud.

“This who you’re lookin’ for?” Osborne asked.

Chapter

T
WENTY
-
ONE

Osborne planted his foot on Diver’s chest and aimed his pistol, full-cocked and ready to fire, at the center of the unconscious man’s forehead. Looking over at Ethan, he grinned, revealing a large gap where his bottom front teeth should have been.

“I see by your glowin’ friend there”—he tipped his head in Reg’s direction—“that you know somethin’ of conjurin’. And you obviously care ’bout this one. So I’m gonna keep my flintlock just like this, and you’re gonna answer some questions for me. Get it?”

“What do you want to know?” Ethan asked.

“Let’s start with your name.”

“I’m Ethan Kaille.”

“And what the hell are you doin’ in my house, talkin’ to my girls, and pokin’ your nose in my business?”

Ethan glanced at Hester, who had closed the door and was watching him and her father.

“Don’t look at her!” Osborne said, his voice suddenly so loud that both women started. “It’s me as asked you the question!”

“I’m a thieftaker,” Ethan said.

“Ah,” the man said, nodding. “I figured as much, or somethin’ like it. You’re after what’s mine.”

“I’m not the only one. You’re playing a dangerous game with Sephira Pryce.”

“You let me worry ’bout her. The Empress of the South End don’t scare me.” He looked Ethan up and down, seeming to take stock of what he saw. “You know what you’re chasin’ or are you just lookin’ for the first coin that comes your way?”

“I’m looking for the pearls that you and Simon Gant stole from Sephira.”

Osborne had been grinning all this time, but now the grin faded. He waved the pistol at Diver. “So that’s where this one comes in, eh? He’s workin’ with you, or for you.”

“He’s no one: a lad I hired to do a little work. That’s all. Let him go. You have me now. I’m a lot more important than he is.”

“I don’t think so. He’s important to
you
, and that makes him valuable to me.” He narrowed his eyes, much as Hester had done. Up until that moment, Ethan hadn’t noticed the resemblance between Osborne and his daughters. But it struck him as obvious now that he was looking for it. “But tell me, Kaille. What makes a thieftaker so important?”

When Ethan didn’t answer, Osborne pressed the barrel of his pistol against Diver’s forehead and looked Ethan’s way.

What could he do but answer? “I’m working for the Crown.”

“The Crown?”

Ethan laughed, breathless and desperate. “You didn’t think you could attack a British ship that way and not attract the notice of the king’s men, did you? Are you that much a fool?”

The muscles in Osborne’s jaw bunched. “Have a care, man,” he said. “I’ll kill him, and then I’ll kill you, and I’ll sleep fine tonight havin’ done it.”

Ethan swallowed the retort that leaped to mind.

“What is it the Crown has you doin’?” he asked, his tone mocking, his pronunciation of the word “Crown” exaggerated.

“Looking for you, as it turns out.”

“Well, that’s too bad for you, Kaille. ’Cause they’ll never know that you found me.” Osborne looked past Ethan. “I want him bound, girls.”

Neither Hester nor Molly moved.