Thieftaker (16 page)

“She doesn’t want me dead,” Ethan said between mouthfuls. “She as much as said so. She needs me to take jobs she can’t handle.”

“Ones that involve conjuring, you mean.”

“Aye. But it bothers her that this time being a conjurer got me a job on Beacon Street. She considers that her domain, and she wanted me to know it. She made her point and then she left.”

She took his hand. “She belongs in gaol rather than out on the streets.”

“I won’t argue.”

He took another spoonful of soup, and as he did the door to the tavern opened. Several men stepped inside, led by an imposing man with a large hook nose and hard pale eyes. He wore a white wig and a black hat, which he removed upon entering the tavern. Even from his table at the other side of the room, Ethan recognized him immediately; he and Kannice had been speaking of him mere seconds before.

“What now?” she muttered. Her gaze flicked in Diver’s direction.

Ethan, though, had a feeling that Sheriff Stephen Greenleaf hadn’t come looking for Diver. He recognized two of the men with Greenleaf as members of the night watch; he thought it likely that the third man was with the watch as well. The sheriff would have brought them along only if he expected trouble. And since he knew that Ethan was a convicted mutineer, Greenleaf would have wanted men at his back when he came to speak with him.

Ethan laid his spoon on the table and watched as Kannice stood and walked across the tavern to the doorway where the men were standing. She looked like a waif next to them, but that wasn’t likely to bother her.

“What can I do for you boys?” she asked in a cheery voice, stopping in front of the sheriff. “Are you hungry?”

Greenleaf hardly spared her a glance. “We’re looking for Ethan Kaille,” he said. “We know he’s here.”

Even in the dingy light of the tavern, Ethan saw the color drain from Kannice’s face. To her credit, she didn’t immediately glance his way, but neither did she manage to say anything.

“What do you need, Sheriff?” Ethan said, standing.

Greenleaf smiled thinly and stepped past Kannice. His men followed. “Good day, Mister Kaille,” he said, his voice echoing.

The sheriff wasn’t a bad sort. He didn’t like Ethan, and Ethan felt the same way about him. But the man had a nearly impossible job. As sheriff of Suffolk County he was expected to keep the peace throughout Boston and the surrounding countryside. But he had no soldiers, no guards, no militia. Even the men of the watch standing behind him answered to city authorities. He would have had to borrow them for this excursion.

Greenleaf stopped a few feet from the table and nodded in Ethan’s direction.

“He has a knife on his belt,” he said calmly to the men of the watch. “Take it from him.”

One of the men came up behind Ethan, a pistol in hand, while another stepped in front of him, also holding a gun, this one at waist level, so that its barrel pointed at Ethan’s gut. Ethan held up his hands, making it clear that he had no intention of resisting. The man behind him took his knife.

“Is that all you have?” Greenleaf asked.

“Yes, sir.”

The man in front of Ethan lowered his weapon. The one behind Ethan shoved him toward the door hard enough that Ethan stumbled and nearly fell to the floor. Instantly Diver was on his feet, his own blade in hand. Just as quickly, Greenleaf’s men rounded on him, all with their pistols held ready.

“Diver, no!” Ethan said quickly, even as Kannice also hissed a warning.

Seeing that he was outmanned, Diver tossed his knife onto the table and raised his hands as Ethan had done. One of the men knocked the blade out of Diver’s reach. When Diver started to lower his hands, the man hit him hard in the gut with the butt of his weapon. Diver doubled over, and the man drove his face into the table. Blood spurted from Diver’s nose and he dropped to the floor, hands clutched to his face.

“No!” Ethan cried, taking a step toward Diver. Another man blocked his way, his gun raised.

“Enough,” the sheriff said loudly.

Ethan stopped, raising his hands again in surrender. “There’s no need to involve him in this.”

Greenleaf glared down at Diver, a frown on his broad face. Kannice had rushed to Diver’s side with a cloth to stanch the bleeding.

“The pup involved himself,” the sheriff said.

“He’s young, and a fool. He wasn’t thinking. I’m the one you came for, and you’ve got me. Let’s leave it at that.”

Greenleaf eyed Diver for another moment before finally dismissing him with a shake of his head. “Fine,” he said to Ethan. “Come along, then. No more trouble.”

The man behind Ethan pushed him again, though with less force than before. Ethan glanced briefly at Kannice, who looked as frightened as he had ever seen her. He gave her what he hoped was a reassuring smile, but her expression didn’t change.

“Take care of him,” Ethan said. “I’ll come back as soon as they let me go.”

She nodded.

The man at his back pushed him again, not that it was necessary. Ethan reached the door and stepped out into the street.

“This way,” the sheriff said without looking back at him. And they began to march him toward Boston’s prison.

Chapter

N
INE

T
he sheriff and his men were silent as they led him through the lanes. None of the men so much as looked at him, at least not that Ethan could see. They also didn’t shackle his wrists or ankles; he had feared that they might.

He tried to stay calm. He had done nothing wrong. Even if they put him in a prison cell, they couldn’t hold him for long. That’s what he told himself.

But still his limbs trembled, and he had broken out in a cold sweat that had nothing to do with the hot August sun hanging over the city.

The last time men working for the British government had come for him, they had locked him away for more than thirteen years, first in a filthy cell in Charleston, then on a barely seaworthy ship bound for London and in a second filthy cell, and finally on the sugar plantation in Barbados. Just thinking of the island made the scars on his back itch with the memory of too many floggings. He had lived in a hovel with other prisoners: cutthroats, thieves, deserters. He labored in the cane fields from dawn to dusk, under a scorching sun and in air so damp he felt that he was drowning with every breath. At night, he slept on a vermin-infested pile of straw and covered himself with a threadbare, moth-eaten blanket.

He was allowed two meals each day: water, hardtack, and a morsel of cheese at midday, and much the same in the evening, with the occasional bit of rancid meat thrown in. Their one delicacy was a small piece of sweet, red fruit they were given every second or third day to keep scurvy at bay. The fruit was usually half rotted, but it was so much better than everything else they ate that it tasted ambrosial.

But even with this treat, Ethan recalled constantly being hungry. When it became more than he could bear, he ate roaches, beetles, and moths. Once he caught and killed a rat behind the hovel and ate it raw, but it made him violently ill and he never tried that again. He prayed for rainy days, not because they offered a respite from the labor—they didn’t—but because working in the rain was so much less onerous than working under the sun.

Harvests were the worst: backbreaking work, endless days. One year, a stray blow from an old man wielding a cane knife left a bloody gash on Ethan’s left foot. At this time, he had forsworn conjuring the way a reformed drunk rejects spirits. Spells, he decided, had robbed him of his reason, and thus of his freedom and his love. But even had he still been casting, he would not have dared attempt to heal himself while living in such close proximity with his guards and fellow prisoners. Within two days, the wound was infected. Within four, Ethan’s entire leg from the knee down was bloated and hot to the touch. The overseers managed to save the leg, but they had to cut off three of his toes to do it.

Memories of the plantation pounded at him. Ethan didn’t know why Greenleaf had come for him, but he decided in that moment that he would die before he allowed himself to be transported again.

“I’ve done nothing wrong,” he muttered to himself, trying once more to calm his nerves.

One man of the watch walking beside him laughed. Ethan glowered, but the man just stared back at him, obviously enjoying himself, knowing all too well that Ethan could do nothing to wipe the grin from his face.

The people they passed in the streets eyed Ethan with unconcealed curiosity. A few shouted at him, and though he couldn’t make out all they said, he gathered they thought him part of the mob that attacked Hutchinson’s home. Hearing their remarks, Ethan wondered if the sheriff thought this as well.

Leading him from the Dowsing Rod to the Boston prison, the men had to march him down Queen Street, past the ruined home of William Story. Story’s yard had been cleaned up since the day before, and there were fewer gawkers now. Still, as they walked by, the sheriff’s men eyed him keenly. Ethan refused to look directly at any of them.

Boston’s prison stood opposite Story’s home, where Brattle Street intersected Queen. It was an odd spot for a prison, set in the midst of some of the nicer houses in Boston and within hailing distance of the First Church. The prison itself was a simple building, notable only for its ancient, ponderous oak door and the heavily rusted iron hardware that held it in place. Its windows were small, the stonework plain and homely. It was no more or less inviting than any other gaol. Yet, as they approached it, Ethan couldn’t help but quail. Too many memories; too many years lost.

Then they were past that massive door and the shadow of the building itself, still walking eastward on Queen Street. Relief washed over him, followed immediately by a new kind of fear. If they didn’t intend to place him in the prison, what was this about?

“Where are you taking me?” Ethan asked.

Greenleaf glanced back at him, amused. “I was wondering when you would ask.” He waved a hand vaguely in the direction of the prison. “You assumed we were taking you there. A guilty conscience, perhaps?”

Ethan ignored the gibe. “Where are we going?”

“The Town House,” the man said, facing forward again.

Ethan couldn’t have been more surprised if the man had said that he was being taken to the governor’s mansion.

“Why?” he asked.

The sheriff didn’t answer, and they walked the rest of the way in silence.

The people of Boston referred to the brick building on King Street as the Second Town House. The first structure built on the site had burned to the ground at the beginning of the century. The Town House that stood before Ethan now had also burned, back in the 1740s. The brick exterior survived, but everything within its walls was gutted and had to be rebuilt yet again.

Ethan had been in the Town House countless times before. As a thieftaker he was often interested in the proceedings that took place in the courtrooms at the west end of the second floor.

That was where Greenleaf and his men led Ethan now. They entered the building, crossed the great hall to the nearer of two broad stone stairways, and began to make their way up to the second floor. As they climbed the stairs, Ethan thought he saw a shock of bright yellow hair that reminded him strongly of Sephira’s tough. But when he paused on the stairs and tried to get a better look, the man vanished from view.

“Come along, Mister Kaille,” the sheriff said.

Ethan searched for another few seconds, but he didn’t see the man again. He would have liked to go back down and find him. If Sephira’s henchman was here, Ethan wanted to know why. But the men of the watch stood with him, and Greenleaf was waiting. Ethan followed him up to the second floor.

They turned at the top of the stairway and walked to a pair of polished wooden doors: the entrance to the chambers of the Superior Court. The sheriff halted.

“Wait here,” he said.

He opened one of the doors and slipped inside.

For several moments, Ethan and the rest of his escort stood together in the broad corridor, saying nothing. Outside the representatives’ chamber, in the middle of the second floor, men in wigs and suits spoke in groups of three and four, their voices echoing and blending into an incoherent din. None of them took much notice of Ethan and the men with him.

At last, the door to the court opened again and the sheriff peered out into the corridor.

“The chief justice will see you now,” Greenleaf said.

Ethan didn’t move. “The chief justice?”

“He asked to speak with you.”

“What about?”

“Just get in here. He isn’t a man to be kept waiting.” He motioned Ethan into the chamber.

Taking a long, steadying breath, Ethan entered.

The chamber was empty save for the sheriff and a man who sat behind the grand, dark wood court’s bench at the far end of the chamber. Seeing the man, Ethan understood at last, and he chided himself for not reasoning it out sooner. The chief justice of the province also happened to be the lieutenant governor. Thomas Hutchinson.

Ethan walked to the bench and stopped in front of Hutchinson. The man regarded him appraisingly for a moment.

“That’s all, Sheriff,” Hutchinson said. “Thank you.”

Greenleaf let himself out of the chamber, closing the door behind him.

Hutchinson faced Ethan once more, and for what felt like several minutes, as their eyes remained locked, they were like foes in a card game, each taking the measure of the other. Hutchinson was a tall man and he sat forward in his chair, his shoulders thrust back slightly, which gave him a barrel-chested look despite his slender build. He had large, dark eyes, a high forehead, and a long, prominent nose. The curls of his powdered wig framed his face. His clothes were simple, but immaculate: a black suit with a white shirt and cravat. His eyes were bloodshot and there were dark rings under them. He looked to Ethan like he hadn’t slept in days.

“I hope you weren’t inconvenienced much by my summons,” Hutchinson finally said. He didn’t ask Ethan to sit, so Ethan remained as he was and answered.

“No, Your Honor.”