Thieves' Quarry (The Thieftaker Chronicles) (9 page)

His decision to take the posting aboard the
Blade
turned out to be the most fateful of his life. The captain of the ship, Rayne Selker, and his first mate, Allen Foster, were at odds from the moment their voyage began. When the ship’s takings proved meager the mate began to challenge the captain’s commands. In private, Foster spoke of mutiny. By some stroke of ill luck—Ethan never learned how—the first mate had learned that Ethan was a conjurer. He convinced Ethan to use his powers on behalf of the mutineers and for a brief time they took control of the vessel.

Within just a day or two, Ethan came to regret the choice he had made. Foster was ill-suited to command; his treatment of the captain was brutal and cruel. When Selker’s supporters launched an assault on the mutineers, Ethan aided their efforts and so helped them regain control of the
Blade.

Ethan’s involvement in the mutiny—and the spells he cast in support of the mutineers’ cause—earned him a court-martial. His willingness to help the captain retake the ship saved his neck. He sailed aboard the
Silver Tassel
, which carried him from Charleston, South Carolina, where the
Blade
landed after the mutineers had been defeated, to London, where Ethan and the others were tried and convicted. Another ship—Ethan never learned her name and never spent more than a few precious moments every third or fourth day above decks—carried him back across the Atlantic to Barbados, where he served his sentence laboring on a sugar plantation under the scorching tropical sun.

The next time he boarded a ship, fourteen years later, the vessel carried him from the Caribbean back to the mainland—Charleston again—this time as a free man. It might have been the happiest of all the many voyages he had taken over the course of his life.

Looking at the
Launceston
and her sister ships, it occurred to Ethan that but for any one of a host of events—Cooper’s court-martial, perhaps, or Ethan’s subsequent decision to leave the royal navy—he might now be an officer in this small fleet menacing the city. Elli had once urged him to reenlist and no doubt his father would have leaped at the chance to smooth the way for him.

He found it surprisingly easy to imagine a different life for himself—one in which he never set foot on the
Blade
, never allowed himself to be drawn into the mutineers’ scheming, never lost years of his life to prison; one in which he was a British naval officer posted in Boston and married to Elli; one in which both of his legs were whole. He could see this other life dispassionately, without regret or longing. It was like standing in front of a shopwindow and imagining himself in clothes he could no longer afford.

A lone cloud passed in front of the sun, casting a dark shadow on the pinnace and rousing Ethan from his musings. Their small boat was drawing near the sloop-of-war. The cockswain’s calls had hardly varied since their departure from Long Wharf, and the oarsmen had maintained a steady beat with their sweeps. But despite Geoffrey’s efforts to hide from the men whatever had happened, these soldiers weren’t fools. They knew something was wrong. Their expressions had turned grim as they approached the sloop, and the color had fled their cheeks. Ethan could almost smell their fear, like the faint scent of a coming storm in a freshening wind.

And as he eyed the sloop—HMS
Graystone
out of Bristol, according to the gilt lettering on the escutcheon—he felt his own apprehension growing. The sails had been struck the day before, when the ship entered the harbor, and the sloop’s crew had long since dropped anchor. That the ship looked idle should have come as no surprise. But he saw no one on its decks; he heard no voices, no laughter, no sound whatsoever save for the slap of water against the ship’s hull and the gentle rustle of gathered sailcloth in the breeze.

The oarsmen steered the boat to the sloop’s rope ladder amidships. The two regulars who had been sitting with Senhouse stood, stepped to the center of the pinnace, and reached for the lowest ratline.

“We’ll go up alone,” Senhouse said, stopping the men.

They looked back at him, puzzlement on their young faces.

“But Lieutenant—” one of them said.

“Leave us here,” the officer went on. “Go back to the
Launceston.
We’ll signal you when we’re ready to return.”

The regulars still looked doubtful, but after a few seconds they remembered themselves and saluted.

“Yes, Lieutenant,” the soldier said.

“Mister Kaille, Mister Brower.” Senhouse gestured toward the ladder. “After you.”

Ethan wanted to refuse, to demand an explanation before he followed any more of the lieutenant’s instructions. But every man aboard the small boat was watching him, and he didn’t think it wise to disobey a British navel officer in front of so many sailors.

He moved to the ladder, and while the oarsman on the ship side of the pinnace held the smaller vessel steady, he began to climb.

Years had passed since he last had been on a rope ladder, and his leg had grown worse in that time. But as he pulled himself up the ratlines, he felt the years slipping away. He reached the top of the ladder and swung himself over the gunwale and onto the sloop’s deck.

Turning, he froze. What he saw made his breath catch in his throat.

From what little Geoffrey and Senhouse had said, and from all that they had refused to tell him, Ethan had assumed that some terrible tragedy had befallen the
Graystone.
Yet how could he possibly prepare himself for this?

The deck was littered with dead soldiers in the red and white of the British army. He spotted two naval officers in blue on the quarterdeck; they were also dead. There must have been thirty corpses above decks. They looked like toy figures strewn on the vessel and forgotten by some bored child. They weren’t bloodied or bruised. Their bodies didn’t appear to be broken; on the contrary, it appeared that they had dropped into a deep slumber just where they stood.

A small knot of crewmen lay at the sloop’s stern, dressed in loose-fitting breeches and tunics of brown and gray, pale blue and dingy white. He was too far from them to see much, but he could tell that again there was no blood, no sign of sickness or violence.

This was why they had brought him here. Geoffrey, at least, knew that Ethan was a speller. And these men had been killed by some sort of conjuring. That was the only explanation for what Ethan saw. No doubt Geoffrey hoped that he could tell them how the soldiers had died and who was responsible. Ethan wondered though how much Brower had said about his powers to Senhouse and others who served the Crown.

He heard a noise behind him and turned. Geoffrey was just stepping onto the ship. He straightened and surveyed the deck.

“You see now why I didn’t wish to speak of this before?”

Ethan nodded.

Senhouse swung himself nimbly over the gunwale and joined them on the deck.

“When did this happen?” Ethan asked.

“We don’t know,” Geoffrey said, staring down at the nearest of the soldiers. “Last night perhaps. Or early this morning.”

“Which one?”

As soon as the question crossed his lips, he knew that he had spoken with too much urgency. Geoffrey looked at him, as did Senhouse.

“We’re not certain,” the lieutenant said. “Why does it matter?”

Ethan hesitation lasted but an instant. “I don’t know that it does. I just find it hard to believe that with so many British ships nearby you can’t be more specific about the time.”

Senhouse squinted up at the sun, seeming to gauge the current time. “There are men on the
Senegal
—that sloop there,” he added, pointing to a ship just south of the
Graystone
, “who claim to have seen men moving about on this deck as late as first light this morning. But when pressed they weren’t certain.” He pointed to the vessel lying to the north. “No one on the
Bonetta
saw any movement after sundown last night. Hence our uncertainty.” Senhouse paused, still watching Ethan. “Now, please answer my question. Why does it matter so much to you?”

“First answer a question for me,” Ethan said. “Why have you brought me here?”

The lieutenant cast a look Geoffrey’s way. Brower kept his eyes fixed on the dead soldiers.

“Mister Brower thought you might be able to help us determine what happened to these men,” Senhouse told him. “He hasn’t told me much about you. Just that you’re a thieftaker, and that you have some experience with … well, I suppose with gruesome mysteries of this sort.”

“He’s right,” Ethan said. “I do.”

“Good. Perhaps you can tell us what happened here.”

“May I look around? See the hold?”

“All you’ll find below is more of the dead.”

“Still,” Ethan said, “I’d like to take a look.”

Senhouse shrugged. “Of course. Take as much time as you need.”

Ethan caught Geoffrey’s eye and held his gaze for a moment. He and Brower had spent little time in each other’s company, but the man appeared to understand the meaning behind Ethan’s look. He said, “We’ll wait for you up here.”

“Thank you.”

Ethan began by walking to the stern and examining the dead crewmen. Like the soldiers, they appeared to have died suddenly, without pain or warning. Their facial expressions were natural; their bodies looked relaxed. Once more, Ethan couldn’t help thinking that they appeared to be sleeping. He bent and felt for a pulse on one of them, and then another. Nothing. There could be no doubt that they were dead.

Steeling himself, he walked to the ladder that led down into the hold, and lowered himself into the belly of the ship. The air belowdecks was warm and stale, and heavy with the stink of sweat and urine. A single oil lamp burned several paces from the hatch, but even in the dim light Ethan could see bodies scattered throughout the space. Most were soldiers, though here and there he saw a crewman. Two men lay on the floor, another was hunched over a table, and a fourth seemed to be dozing on a barrel, his head leaning back against a wooden beam. But the vast majority of the men were in hammocks, still lying much as they probably had before they died.

Ethan moved among the bodies, searching for anything that might tell him what kind of spell had killed the men, but the soldiers and crewmen below were as unmarked as those on the deck. Looking at them, he was reminded of Jennifer Berson, the young girl whose murder he had investigated three years before. She, too, had died without a mark on her, robbed of her life by a skilled and ruthless conjurer.

Had the powerful pulse of power he and Janna sensed that morning taken every life on this ship? All that Ethan saw, and much of what he had heard from Geoffrey and Senhouse, seemed to point to that conclusion. Why else would so many men still be abed?

He glanced back toward the hatch to make certain that he was still alone in the hold. Choosing the corpse of a young regular, he pulled out his knife and cut himself. He dabbed blood across the young man’s forehead and traced a bloody line down from the bridge of his nose, over his lips and chin to his breastbone. Drawing on the blood that still welled from the wound on his arm, he cast his spell.

“
Revela potestatem ex cruore evocatam.
” Reveal power, conjured from blood.

Belowdecks, in such a closed space, it seemed to Ethan that he was surrounded by the puissance of his casting. It hummed in the wood of the ship, it seemed to make the dead air of the hold come alive, so that Ethan’s nose and mouth tickled as he inhaled. Too late he remembered that conjurings at sea worked more powerfully than those directed at people or objects on land. It was something he had taken for granted during his time as a sailor, but had forgotten in the intervening years.

Ethan glanced at Uncle Reg, who had appeared beside him, before looking back at the regular.

A spot of light appeared on the young man’s chest, dim at first, but growing brighter by the moment. It was vivid orange and it blossomed like the pleurisy root growing in the Common, spreading over the soldier’s body. In fact, similar glows had suffused the bodies of several of the men lying nearby; Ethan’s spell, amplified because he was out on the harbor, had spread to others.

Regardless, there could be no doubt. A spell had killed the lad and his companions. And though the conjurer who had cast it—who, Ethan assumed, had killed all these men—had to be both powerful and skilled, he or she hadn’t known how to conceal the casting. Or hadn’t bothered.

Ethan heard footsteps on the deck above him. Geoffrey and the lieutenant were walking toward the rear hatch.

“Ethan?” Geoffrey called. The two men started down the ladder.

He cut himself again.

“
Vela potestatem!
” he said, keeping his voice low. “
Ex cruore evocatam!
” Conceal power! Conjured from blood!

The spell pulsed like a war drum and began right away to take effect. But the orange glow on the men was bright, and this casting didn’t work instantaneously.

Ethan strode back to the hatch. Hoping that he could keep Senhouse distracted until that orange glow faded.

“Yes!” he said, meeting the men at the base of the ladder.

“We called for you twice before you responded,” Senhouse said, regarding Ethan through narrowed eyes.

“I’m sorry, sir. I didn’t hear you.”

“What exactly…?” The lieutenant broke off, his eyes fixed on the part of the hold where lay the young regular, the glow on his chest and those of the others dimming like the dying embers of a fire. “What in the name of God?”

He started forward, Brower and Ethan following close behind.

“What is it, Lieutenant?” Geoffrey asked.

Senhouse said nothing, but continued to wind his way past bodies to the cluster of dead soldiers on whom Ethan’s spell had acted. “Do you see that?”

Geoffrey glanced sidelong at Ethan, then peered over Senhouse’s shoulder, trying to see what the officer was talking about.

The light from Ethan’s revealing spell had nearly vanished; Ethan wasn’t sure that he would have spotted it had he not known to look for it.