Consciousness came to him slowly, like an advancing tide.
At first Ethan retreated from it. There was no pain here, no fear. Only rest. He was sleeping. How long had it been since he had slept this deeply, this comfortably? Just a few more hours, he whispered. Did he really? Did he say it out loud?
“It can’t wait. You have to wake up now.”
Anna’s voice. He was really starting to hate her.
He opened his eyes slowly, blinking against the glare of a fire. Night had fallen; except for the gleaming white full moon above him, he could see little beyond the blaze and the glowing little girl. A warm breeze touched his face, smelling faintly of fish and the low tide.
He was manacled at the wrists and ankles, his back pressed against the bark of a large tree, his arms pulled back, leading him to guess that the chain joining the manacles circled around the trunk. He was also gagged. And yet, though his circumstances were dire, he also realized that he was no longer in pain. Carefully he flexed the hand the conjurer had crushed. Then he wiggled his fingers more boldly. The hand was fully healed.
Both legs also felt whole again, although the chains were tight enough that he could barely move them. Yet another chain led to a metal cuff around his neck, to keep him from moving his head more than a few inches. Predictably, all the manacles-those at his wrists and ankles, as well as the one around his neck-were cushioned, wrapped in cloth, from the look and feel of them. He couldn’t chafe his wrists, ankles, or neck on the metal cuffs. The conjurer had left him with no way to draw blood; even the cloth in his mouth kept him from biting his tongue or his cheek.
His coat, which still bore bloodstains from Nigel’s bullet, was gone. The rest of his clothes had nothing on them that he could use to fuel a spell, except the cloth itself, which was too far from its living form to be suitable for a conjuring. He didn’t have to check to know that his knife had been taken.
The tree itself, on the other hand, offered him plenty of material for a spell. Either the conjurer hadn’t thought of this, or he didn’t think that a spell that drew upon anything less than Ethan’s blood would be strong enough to harm him. Ethan had little doubt as to which of these was the case.
He could feel the conjurer; he was near. The power he used to create the illusion of Anna coursed through the ground and the body of the tree like blood through veins. It seemed the night itself was alive with it. Ethan should have been frightened. Chances were, he would be dead in another few moments. But he felt strangely calm. His battle with this conjurer had gone on long enough. For better or worse it would end here, tonight.
“You’re more than I thought you were, Kaille,” Anna said. “You have some talent with conjuring, and more than a bit of courage. I had hoped to find a way to spare you.”
Unable to speak because of the cloth in his mouth, Ethan raised his eyebrows, feigning surprise.
She cocked her head to the side and smiled. “You don’t believe me.” Even now, a long figure in the firelight, she acted and sounded so much like a child that Ethan had to look away. He could have learned something about spelling from this conjurer had they met under different circumstances.
But if he was going to die here, he wouldn’t do so talking to this illusion of a little girl. He wanted to face the conjurer; he wanted to know who had bested him.
“No response, Kaille?”
He shook his head, still refusing to look at her.
“I can make you answer me. You know I can.”
He shrugged, gazing off into the darkness, trying to figure out where exactly he was. Candles shone in the windows of a few distant houses, but he was far from the crowded lanes of Cornhill or the North End.
Ethan could tell that the girl was staring at him; he could imagine the annoyance on her face.
“I think I understand,” she said. “You want to see… him.”
Ethan nodded. Anna glanced to the side. Then she grinned at Ethan once more.
“All right.” A man’s voice, one Ethan thought he recognized.
An instant later, Anna disappeared. Ethan heard the scrape of a boot on cobblestone, and Peter Darrow stepped into the firelight. He was dressed as he had been earlier that day: a dark blue silk suit, an ivory-colored shirt, a tricorn hat nestled on his perfectly groomed and powdered hair. He looked every bit the country gentleman. Even if Ethan managed to get away, there wasn’t a person in Boston who would believe that this handsome, dapper man was in fact a conjurer and a murderer.
Because they wouldn’t be able to see the ghost walking next to him, the guide who made his conjurings possible. Remarkably, it was a little girl who could have been Anna’s twin, except for the golden yellow glow that suffused her form, and the bright yellow eyes that stared back at him, as if she were some otherworldly owl. Seeing her, the calm Ethan had enjoyed only moments before began to give way to despair.
“You should have listened to us, Mister Kaille,” Darrow said. “Samuel, James, and I tried to tell you that Mackintosh was your man. You should have gone along.”
Ethan stared at him, knowing that he shouldn’t have been so surprised. Darrow had looked terrible that morning. His eyes had been bloodshot, and he had been hobbling much the way Ethan did when his leg bothered him. Were these the results of the spells Ethan had used to attack him the night before? The shattering spell and the blindness casting that had cost Pitch his life?
“Because of you, I’ve had to spill a lot of blood for healing spells. On both of us.” He pointed to a red mark on his arm. “This one proved particularly troublesome. That scalding spell was quite effective. I hadn’t faced it before. Well done. And as for your wounds.” He shook his head. “You were a mess. As I say, it took a lot of blood.”
Ethan gave the man a puzzled look. Why heal me if you’re going to kill me?
The lawyer smiled again. “You’re wondering why I would go to all that trouble. Anna already told you: other plans.”
Ethan didn’t like the sound of that at all. He twisted his neck and raised his chin, trying to fight free of the gag. The chain and cuff at his neck restricted his movement too much.
“Now, now, Kaille. None of that. I’ve gone to a great deal of trouble to keep you from conjuring. I won’t have you biting your tongue for blood.” He walked to Ethan and tightened the cloth. While he was there, he also checked the manacles and their cloth linings. Finally, he stepped back, apparently reassured that his prisoner wasn’t going anywhere.
“I really did have some hope that it wouldn’t come to this,” he said. “You impressed me last night with your resourcefulness. A killing spell. I hadn’t expected that.”
Ethan glared back at him.
“This may surprise you, but I think you and I could have worked well together, if only you had proven yourself a bit more malleable. I’m sure I could have convinced the others. Even Sephira Pryce would have had to admit that you would make a valuable ally.”
“Th’ uhthahs?” Ethan managed to say past the gag, hoping the man would understand. “Ah-hams? Oh-his?”
Darrow laughed and shook his head. “No. The others aren’t Adams and Otis. They’re men you don’t know, men who don’t approve of these self-proclaimed Sons of Liberty, or the so-called Loyal Nine.”
Ethan’s eyes went wide.
“You’re surprised. Don’t be. Without me, there might have been more of this. More riots, more lost property, more protests. Adams and Otis and their rabble might not seem like much now. Samuel is always one shilling away from debtor’s prison, and James is half mad. But they have talents as well. Adams is a visionary, and Otis has a silver tongue, and they’re both good with a pen. They’ve drawn the attention of men in London. Powerful men who wish to see these disturbances ended now, before they grow into something more.
“This was why I had some hope that you and I might one day work together. That first day you came to the Dragon, you made it clear that you didn’t approve of what Adams has been up to. And I thought, Here is a man I could work with, a partner perhaps. You and I have a lot in common. Not just conjuring. Like you, I was born in England and served in the British navy. And like you, I find Adams and Otis and the rest of their ilk worthy of contempt.”
He shook his head. “But you refused to accept that Mackintosh was responsible for Jennifer Berson’s death. And somehow you fixed on Derne as her killer. We couldn’t have that.”
Darrow started to say more, but then stopped, staring intently into the darkness, like a hawk when he spots his next meal. Ethan gazed in the same direction and strained his ears, but he neither saw nor heard anything. It occurred to him that even now, while speaking to Ethan, Darrow might be using Anna as a lookout.
“He’s coming,” Darrow said crisply, facing Ethan again. “Finally.” He grinned. “Not much longer now.” He threw another log onto the fire.
“Whoh?” Ethan asked through the cloth in his mouth.
The lawyer raised an eyebrow with obvious amusement. “Did you just ask me who it is that’s coming?”
Ethan nodded.
Darrow frowned. “Come now, Kaille. With all you’ve learned in the past several days, you can piece this together yourself. I’ve come to respect you as a foe. Please don’t tell me that respect has been misplaced.”
He was right. Ethan knew who was on his way here. Ebenezer Mackintosh. But he still didn’t understand what Darrow hoped to accomplish. And he would have done just about anything to keep him talking. He had no idea how he might win his freedom, but as long as Darrow was speaking to him, he had a chance.
He wasn’t about to try saying “Mackintosh” with a gag in his mouth. Instead, he nodded.
“You know?” Darrow said.
He nodded again. “Buh whyh?”
Darrow’s eyes narrowed. “All right. I suppose you deserve to know that much. What is it that makes Adams so effective?” He didn’t pause for an answer. “I assure you it’s nothing he does himself. The man is naive to a fault, and Otis is worse. But somehow they have managed to win the trust of laborers, men in the street. Just the sort of fools who would follow ‘Captain’ Mackintosh into the flames of Hell. Together, Adams and Mackintosh are formidable, or at least they could be in time.” His eyes glittered in the firelight. “So I found a way to drive them apart, to make certain that the men in the street, and the sort that keep their hands clean while drinking ales in the Green Dragon, never trust each other again. You heard Adams in the Green Dragon the other day. Already he had come to regret this alliance with Mackintosh. He could see that it was harming his precious cause. That was just what I wanted.”
Ethan shook his head. “Whyh?” he asked again, more stridently.
Darrow pressed his lips thin, his patience apparently on the wane. “Why, what? Why wouldn’t they trust each other?”
Ethan shook his head, holding the man’s gaze.
Darrow’s bearing changed; he understood what Ethan wanted to know. He walked back to where Ethan leaned against the tree and drew a knife from his belt. Ethan’s knife.
Darrow laid the tip of the blade beside Ethan’s eye, pressing it lightly against the skin. “I would prefer you whole,” the man said quietly, his breath on Ethan’s cheek. “But you understand that if you do anything to anger me-anything at all-I’ll take out your eye.”
“Yesh.”
Darrow reached up and tugged the gag away from Ethan’s mouth.
Ethan opened his mouth wide, then closed it and swallowed. His jaw hurt and his throat was parched.
“What is it you want to know?” Darrow demanded, still pressing the knife against Ethan’s flesh.
“Why kill Jennifer Berson?” Ethan asked, sounding hoarse.
“I thought that was what you were asking,” Darrow said. “You might say that the Berson girl was my one mistake, except that in the end she won’t matter very much. The truth is I didn’t know it was her until after I had killed her. I needed someone for the spell, and I found her. She was dressed plainly, wandering the streets near Mackintosh’s mob. She had no business being there, and I simply didn’t recognize her.” He shrugged. “I realized who she was only after she was dead and the spell was cast.”
“And that’s when you stole the brooch,” Ethan said.
“I needed to make her murder into something that her family would understand. If there were questions, I would have trouble. Make it about their riches, and they would grieve, they would want their jewel back, but they would blame the brutish rabble. It would be a terrible loss, of course, but it would make sense in their view of the world.” He opened his hands, as if the logic of all he had done was beyond question. “And it would fit perfectly with what I wanted to do. I just didn’t count on you being so damned inquisitive.”
“What was the spell for?”
“What do you think?”
Ethan considered this, and as he did, he remembered something Adams had told him in the Green Dragon. “The attack on Hutchinson’s house,” he said, meeting Darrow’s gaze. “The Sons of Liberty approved of the rest of what Mackintosh did. They probably put him up to it. But not that.”
“Well done, Kaille.”
“And the girl you killed this morning-you used her death to compel Sheriff Greenleaf to release Mackintosh.”
Darrow’s expression darkened. “That was your fault. Ideally, I would have left him in prison. Adams and Otis would have left him there, too, and that would have angered Mackintosh’s followers. But now Mackintosh has another murder to commit.”
Comprehension hit Ethan like a fist to the gut. He leaned his head back against the tree and stared up at the moon through a tangle of leaves and branches. He had kept Darrow from using Holin’s death to control him, but now, very likely, he would be used for a casting that would control Mackintosh.
“I’ll use your death to convince poor Ebenezer that he killed you. You were an agent of the Sons of Liberty, you see. And you were intent on seeing him punished for the Berson murder. It all fits together rather nicely, don’t you think?” After a brief pause, he added, “Don’t worry, Kaille. It’s not a bad way to go, actually. You’ll hardly feel a thing. Given how much I’ve wanted to hurt you at various times over the past several days, you could have come to a much worse end.”
“You’re working for the Crown?” Ethan asked, facing him again. “The king’s men know what you’re doing?”
“I serve His Majesty,” Darrow said. Ethan thought he heard a note of defensiveness in his voice. “His men don’t have to know all that I do. They trust me. They know that I’ll do all in my power to guard the empire.”
Ethan wasn’t sure he believed this, but he didn’t dare challenge the man. “So Jennifer Berson was a mistake,” he said. “What about the others?”
“What others?” But Ethan could tell that he knew.
“The boy on Pope’s Day,” Ethan said. “And whoever it was you killed the day the Richardsons swung.”
Darrow regarded him for several moments. “I am impressed.”
Before Ethan could respond, Darrow sheathed the knife and retied Ethan’s gag, making it even tighter than it had been. Still leaning close to him, Darrow whispered. “I needed the boy in November for the same reason I needed the girl this morning. As to the other…” He opened his hands. “Adams already told you: Mackintosh and his counterpart in the North End were speaking of a truce, of ending their Pope’s Day feud in order to strengthen the non-importation agreements against the Grenville Acts. We couldn’t have that.” Darrow smiled. “And as it happens, no one died that day who wasn’t going to die anyway.” He stepped back. “And now, I really must go greet Ebenezer. But don’t worry, we’ll be back shortly.”
He checked Ethan one last time. Then he walked away, his shoes scraping on cobblestone as his form was swallowed by the night.
As soon as Ethan could no longer hear Darrow’s footsteps, he turned his attention to escaping, or at least finding a way to draw blood. Biting his tongue or cheek would have been ideal, since Darrow wouldn’t have noticed that he bled. But the lawyer had made that impossible when he retied the gag so tightly.
The bark of the tree-an elm from the look of it-was rough enough to have scraped his skin, but his chains didn’t allow him enough freedom of movement to do much more than rub his coat sleeve until it was threadbare.
The manacles, however, might be another matter. If he could remove some of the cloth covering the metal at his wrist or ankle he could cut his skin on its edge. Pulling his hand as far out of the cuff as he could, so that the ring pressed into his flesh, and then bracing the cuff and hand against the tree, Ethan was able to reach the cloth covering with his fingers. He couldn’t grip it well, but this covering hadn’t been firmly attached to the metal.
He worked it methodically with his fingers, rubbing at it again and again. The cloth came away slowly, bunching beneath his fingers, until at last he could feel cold iron. The manacle was smoother than he had hoped it would be. Worse, its edge had been rounded, so that it offered him little chance to cut his skin. Still he tried. Shifting his hand again, bracing the cuff differently, this time against the tension of the chain, he was able to push that exposed edge against his skin, just below his thumb.
He began to scrape his wrist against the edge, working as quickly as he could, knowing that Darrow would be back before long. But though his hand grew sore and began to redden, nothing he did scraped away any skin. He would eventually have a bruise, if he lived long enough, but this wasn’t going to draw blood.
As far as he could tell, there was no way he could use the cuffs and chains at his ankles. But toying once more with the chains that held his arms, Ethan realized that by lifting his arm a little and keeping it close to the trunk he could create enough slack in the chain to get his fingers into the links.
It wasn’t something he wanted to do. Pell and Kannice might have challenged him on this after the week he’d had, but Ethan really didn’t enjoy pain. But there would be blood, and in this circumstance nothing else mattered. The trick would be concealing the wound from Darrow.
He heard footsteps, then distant voices approaching.
“… Hurt me?”
“He’s a thieftaker, Ebenezer. A mercenary. He was hired to do this. What he wants or doesn’t want is beside the point.”
“Bu’ who hired him?”
“That is the most difficult part of this, at least for me. I suppose I bear some of the blame for not anticipating where all of this would lead. But it was Adams and Otis.”
The footsteps ceased.
“Mister Adams an’ Mister Otis hired him so tha’ he could bloody me an’ then send me back t’ th’ prison?”
“I’m afraid so.”
Ethan placed the pointing finger of his right hand into a chain link and then tried to wrench it out. It didn’t work the first time, or the next. And with the second attempt, the chain rattled against the tree with a chiming sound.
Darrow and Mackintosh had started walking again, but they halted a second time at a sharp “shhh!” from the lawyer.
Ethan had one last chance. He placed his finger back in the link and twisted it out again. This time it did what he had hoped it would. It tore the nail away from his finger.
He inhaled sharply through his teeth, hoping that Darrow wouldn’t hear. He felt warm blood pour from the finger and he cupped his hand around it, catching the blood. At the same time, he lowered his arm as carefully and as quickly as he could, this time doing his best to keep the chain silent.
There was enough blood flowing that he feared it would drip and catch Darrow’s eye, so he wiped his hand on the tree bark as close to his body as possible. He then shifted his feet enough so that he could at least partially block the stain from Darrow’s view.
All of this took him but a few seconds, which was fortunate because just as he lowered his hand and assumed as casual a stance as he could manage, Darrow and Mackintosh stepped into the firelight. The cordwainer had been speaking again, but now he fell silent, halting at the edge of the fire glow and eyeing Ethan warily.
Ethan gazed back at them both, trying to keep his expression neutral. He had blood for a conjuring. Now he needed to find the right spell.