A Plunder of Souls (The Thieftaker Chronicles) (7 page)

“Ethan, wait.”

“You needn’t be concerned about me, Mister Pell,” he said, facing the man.

“I’m not sure I believe you.”

Ethan’s amusement was fleeting. “Will you accept that, while unnerved, I am all the more resolved to complete my inquiry?”

“Aye. I just hope that you’ll exercise some caution. More than you usually do.”

“I’m always cautious,” Ethan said, frowning.

“If that’s so, why is it that every time you conduct an inquiry, you wind up beaten, or thrown in gaol, or at the wrong end of a pistol or blade?”

“I wouldn’t say that happens every time.”

Pell raised an eyebrow.

“I’ll have a care,” Ethan said.

“Good. If you require help of any sort, let me know.”

Ethan gripped the minister’s shoulder briefly and left him there.

He walked to Marlborough Street, and turned southward to journey back out to the Neck. He could admit to himself that he shared Pell’s concerns. But he wasn’t about to hide in his room on Cooper’s Alley, or in the back of Kannice’s tavern. The best thing he could do was find the resurrectionists, whoever they were. And the truth was, intentionally or not, they had helped him narrow his list of suspects to those who knew him, or at least of him.

Speaking to Pell, he had referred to Janna as a friend; the truth was he had never been certain that she thought of him that way. Or anyone else, for that matter. Janna could be generous and kind, she could be as witty as anyone he knew. But most of the time, she was cantankerous to the point of rudeness.

She was also defiantly proud of her conjuring abilities, and acted as though she had never given a thought to the possibility that church leaders or representatives of the Crown might decide someday to hang her for a witch. She had long ago proclaimed herself a “marriage smith.” Indeed, the sign on her tavern read “T. Windcatcher, Marriage Smith. Love is Magick.” Short of writing “I am a conjurer” across her brow, she could not have been less subtle about her talents.

Reaching her tavern, the Fat Spider, Ethan knocked on the door. Early as it was, he couldn’t be certain that Janna would be awake. But at his knock, he heard a voice call for him to enter. Ethan opened the door and walked inside, hat in hand.

It took his eyes a moment to adjust to the darkness. Before he could see properly, he heard Janna say, “Kaille,” drawing out his name as if it were a curse. “I shoulda known it would be you. No one else bothers me before noon.”

“Good morning, Janna,” Ethan said, walking to where she sat.

It was cooler in the tavern than it had been on the street, but it was still warm in the building. Nevertheless, Janna sat with a shawl wrapped around her bony shoulders, a cup of what was probably watered Madeira wine resting on the table beside her. Janna claimed to come from somewhere in the Indies, and it seemed to Ethan that she had never adjusted to life away from the tropical clime. She was always cold, even on the hottest days of the Boston summer.

He had heard some say that she was an escaped slave, and she herself admitted that it was possible she had been born to servitude. But she was orphaned at sea as a young girl, and rescued by the crew of a ship out of Newport. To this day, Ethan wasn’t sure how she had managed to avoid being sold into slavery, but according to one account a wealthy man took her in and over time a romance developed between them. She chose the name Windcatcher for herself, having no recollection of her family name. Windcatcher had no particular meaning; she once told Ethan that she simply liked the sound of it.

Whatever the truth of her past, today Janna was one of the few free Africans in Boston. Her skin was a deep, rich nut brown, and her hair was white and shorn so short that one could see her scalp peeking through the tight curls. She was thin, almost frail, with a wizened face. But her dark eyes were fierce like a hawk’s.

“What do you want?” she asked, as Ethan took the seat across from hers. “As if I don’t already know.”

Ethan often came to Janna for information, because she knew more about spellmaking than anyone else he had ever met. More often than not, she helped him, though only after complaining that he never paid her for anything. Today, he thought to surprise her.

“I need to make a purchase or two.”

Janna sat forward, the expression on her face conveying such surprise that Ethan nearly laughed out loud. “You came to buy somethin’?” she said.

“Yes. I’m out of mullein, and I always prefer to have some on hand.”

“You should,” she said, nodding with enthusiasm. “You should. There ain’t a better herb for protection spells. And I have some in fresh, as good as you’ll find in Boston. How much do you want?”

“How much will three shillings buy me?”

Janna considered this briefly before holding up her fist. “A pouch ’bout like this, packed full.”

“All right.” He pulled out three shillings and handed them to her.

She eyed the money, pocketed it, and stood. “I’ll be right back.”

“I’ll take a cup of Madeira, too,” Ethan said, following her to the bar. She went around the bar and disappeared into a room in back, adjacent to her kitchen.

“You steal somebody’s coin purse, or somethin’?” she called.

Ethan laughed. “No. But I got paid yesterday, and I managed to dupe Sephira Pryce long enough to keep her from stealing the money from me.”

He heard Janna cackle. “Good for you, Kaille.”

In all of Boston, Janna might have been the one person who disliked Sephira more than Ethan did. To this day, he wasn’t certain why. Janna remained closemouthed about whatever had passed between her and the Empress of the South End. When asked, she said only that Sephira had once cost her a good deal of coin.

Janna emerged from the back room bearing a small leather pouch that was filled near to overflowing with leaves. She handed it to Ethan.

He drew it open and held it to his nose. Right away, the air around him was redolent of the pungent, subtly bitter fragrance of fresh mullein.

“Don’t that smell good?” Janna asked.

“It does,” he said, as he slipped the pouch into his pocket. “My thanks.” He placed a half shilling on the bar.

Janna took it and poured him a cup of Madeira. “Watered?” she asked.

“Just a little, thank you.”

Janna watered her own Madeira so much that it had little flavor. Given how much of it she drank, this was wise; if she drank it undiluted she would have put herself out of business, and been too drunk to notice.

She added some water to his wine—more than he would have put in, but less than she added to her own—and slid the cup to him.

“Were you conjuring last night?” he asked her.

“When?”

“Late.”

“I was sleepin’ last night, late. Why?”

He shook his head. “It’s not important.” He took a sip of wine. “Do you have any bone to sell, Janna?”

Her expression grew guarded. “Since when do you conjure with bone?”

“I don’t,” Ethan said. “But you have some, don’t you?”

“O’ course. I always have some. But I don’t like sellin’ it. Don’t like where it comes from.”

“And where is that?”

She stared at him briefly before motioning with her head toward the table at which she had been sitting when he came in. Ethan picked up his wine and followed her.

She lowered herself into her chair and gathered her shawl around her shoulders once more. Ethan sat opposite her.

“Why are you sudd’nly so interested in bone?”

“Work,” Ethan said. “I need some information.”

“Yeah, I figured as much.” Her expression had soured, but her voice remained mild. “You come in here throwin’ money around like that, an’ I knew you’d want knowledge from me. You always do.”

Ethan said nothing, but watched her, awaiting some sign that he could ask his questions.

“Well, go on!” she said. “You spent your coin. Might as well make the most of it.”

He smiled. “Thank you, Janna.”

She scowled and waved away his gratitude.

“What did you mean before, when you said that you didn’t like selling bone because of where it comes from?”

“What do you think I meant? I can make money sellin’ bone. People pay a lot for it. But I don’t like thinkin’ ’bout graves bein’ dug up, and dead people bein’ riled.” She shook her head. “Wrathful dead ain’t good for any of us.”

“Are there resurrectionists here in Boston?”

“O’ course there are. Have been for as long as I can remember. We didn’ always call them that. For a while they was just grave robbers, like the rest. But, yeah, they’re here.”

“Can you tell me who they are?”

Janna shook her head. “I may not like what they do, but I’ve still got to do business with them. I can’ risk makin’ them angry.”

“I understand. Tell me this: Are certain bones more powerful than others?”

“You mean for spells?”

Ethan nodded.

Janna sipped her wine. “I suppose. Skulls are the most powerful. No doubt about that. Ribs are said to be powerful, too. I’m not sure I believe it. Most of what I sell is ground anyway, and there’s no tellin’ what’s in that. I know it’s human,” she added, anticipating his next question, “because if it wasn’ the spells wouldn’ be as strong.”

“What about a foot?” Ethan asked.

“A foot?” Janna repeated. She shook her head. “No, there ain’t nothin’ particularly strong about the bone from people’s feet.” She regarded him, her eyes shining in the lamp light. “What’s this about, Kaille?”

“I’m not sure yet. There have been a series a grave robberies at King’s Chapel. Skulls and hands taken from all of them. And a few other parts as well.”

“Like feet,” she said, her expression shrewd.

“That’s right. And from what you’re telling me, I gather that any bone can be used for conjuring.” He regretted mentioning the feet. He didn’t want every conjurer in Boston to know that the dead were being mutilated to look more like him.

“Yeah,” she said. “Animal bone will work, too. Not as well, o’ course. Human is better, and skulls is best. After that, a foot is probably as good a source for a livin’ spell as anythin’ else. Thing is, though, if it was conjurers stealin’ bone to sell, they’d take everything. Takin’ parts is a lot of trouble for not much goods, if you know what I mean.”

Ethan gazed down into his cup, mulling what she had said. Conjurers spoke of three types of spells. Elemental spells, the simplest of all conjurings, drew upon one of the elements—earth, water, air, or fire—as the source of “fuel,” for lack of a better word, for the spell. These tended to be weak conjurings, illusions mostly; visions conjured to mislead the unsuspecting. Living spells, those Janna had just mentioned, were more powerful, and therefore demanded more substantive sources. Such castings drew upon blood or bone or flesh, leaves like mullein, the stems of plants, or the bark or wood of a living tree. The resulting conjurings could change the shape of matter. They could break wood or metal, set objects afire, heal wounds, or slice through flesh and shatter bones. Most of the conjurers Ethan knew relied on elemental or living conjurings. These two groupings accounted for every spell Ethan had ever cast save one.

That one spell had been what was called a killing spell. Killing spells were far and away the most powerful conjurings a spellmaker could cast. They could be used to murder at will, to control the minds and actions of others, to wreak havoc and destruction on a scale most people who knew nothing of conjuring could scarcely fathom. They were, to Ethan’s mind, inherently dark, but he knew that some conjurers would argue the point.

He could perceive spells cast by others, just as he did his own. They felt like the thrumming of a bowstring, or the deep rumble of distant thunder. And he liked to think he would have known if within the past few days someone had cast a killing spell here in Boston. But he couldn’t be certain, and once more he thought back to the conjurings that had disturbed his sleep the previous night.

The raiding of the King’s Chapel graves and the mutilation of the corpses struck him as too odd, too sinister, to be nothing more than the work of a thief with odd predilections. And yet Janna raised a legitimate question. With other sources for living spells available, why would a conjurer go to such great lengths to steal bone? Perhaps he hadn’t needed to come to Janna after all.

“You don’t think that these thefts were committed by a sorcerer,” he said.

She shook her head. “I never said that.”

Ethan’s apprehension had begun to abate. Now it returned in a rush.

“I can’t imagine anyone who wasn’t a conjurer stealin’ specific body parts like that,” she said. “But it wasn’t done to sell the bone.”

He reached for his wine, but thought better of drinking it. “There’s more,” he said. He didn’t want to tell her, but Janna was the one person who might help him judge what sort of threat he faced. “I said that the robbers took feet. That’s not quite right. They took part of the left foot on each body. And that part corresponds to the part I lost when I was a prisoner.”

Janna gaped at him and pulled her shawl tighter. “I don’t like the sound of that, Kaille. Not one bit.”

“Also, there was a symbol carved into the chest of each corpse. Do you have something I can use to write?”

Usually Janna would have told him where he could find a quill, ink, and parchment. Not this time. She got up herself, walked behind the bar, and came back seconds later with what he needed.

“This was cut into the men,” he said, drawing the triangle with straight lines within. “And this was cut into the women.” He drew the second symbol. “Do those mean anything to you?”

She shook her head, her jaw muscles tightening.

“Do you have any idea what kind of conjuring the people behind this might have it in mind to do?”

“No. I don’t know for sure that it’s for spells. But I don’t like it. It just seems … wrong.”

Ethan couldn’t argue. He stood.

“My thanks, Janna.”

“For what? I didn’t tell you anythin’.”

His smile was rueful. “No. But you confirmed everything that I was already thinking. There’s something wicked at work here.”

“Yeah,” she said. “And it’s aimed at you.”