D. Jackson - Thieftaker

There were perhaps thirty other active conjurers in Boston. No doubt there were far more than that who had conjurers’ blood in their veins, but many of his kind did all they could to avoid notice. People were still burned and hanged as witches throughout New England; fear of discovery ran deep among conjurers, and those who didn’t have access to power tended to shun those who did. Because of his profession and because of the Ruby Blade mutiny, Ethan might well have been the second-best-known conjurer in Boston. The most famous of the city’s spellers was an old woman named Tarijanna Windcatcher, who made her living as a tavernkeeper and a self-described marriage smith.

She ran a bar that catered to the few sorcerers who openly roamed the streets of Boston, and she found matches for men and women who despaired of ever finding love on their own. Janna made no secret of the fact that she was a conjurer, and those who paid for her services assumed that she used her powers to find matches for them. Ethan had once asked her if this was in fact true. Janna refused to answer.

She came from one of the islands of the Caribbean-Ethan didn’t know which one. She was orphaned at sea as a small girl and rescued by a ship that had sailed from Newport. Janna was African, and Ethan didn’t know how she managed to avoid being taken as a slave. He had heard rumors of a romance, years before, between Janna and a wealthy Newport shipbuilder who couldn’t marry her because of her race, but did provide for her so as to secure her freedom for the rest of her life. He didn’t know how much of this was true, but she had managed to remain free and eventually, after finding her way to Boston, to buy herself the tavern, such as it was. At some point, having no memory of her family name, she took the name Windcatcher. She claimed there was no significance to it; she just liked the way it sounded.

She sold the usual drinks in her tavern, as well as stews, meat, and bread-nothing compared with Kannice’s fare, but passable. But she also sold herbs and oils, rare stones and talismans, ancient texts about spellmaking and blades, incense, and spirits used in rituals. In short, anything that sorcerers might find useful for conjuring. Ethan usually fueled his spells with blood or leaves found here in the city. But on those few occasions when he needed something different, he always went to Janna.

Ethan followed Orange Street out past the pastures and fields, and overgrown paddocks that seemed to have been neglected for years. None of the houses out this way looked particularly sturdy, though few looked as fragile as Janna’s. Gulls sat atop the town gate in the distance, ghostly forms in the silvery mist, their cries echoing off stone and wood.

Janna’s tavern, the Fat Spider, stood at the corner of Orange and Castle Streets, within sight of Amory’s Stillhouse, and not far from where Anna had taken him the night before. The building always appeared to Ethan to be one strong gust of wind away from toppling over. It leaned heavily to one side and its roof sagged dangerously in the middle. The placard on her door read, “T. Windcatcher, Marriage Smith. Love is Magick.” Ethan laughed every time he saw it. Janna might as well have climbed on to the roof of her tavern and screamed “I’m a conjurer!” as loud as she could.

The Spider was warm within, and it smelled of woodsmoke and roasted fowl, clove and cinnamon. The stub of a single candle burned on the bar, but the place was empty. Ethan walked to the middle of the room and called Janna’s name. After a moment, he heard the scrape of a chair on the floor overhead, and slow footsteps leading to the top of the stairway.

“Who that?” a woman’s voice called.

“It’s Ethan Kaille, Janna.”

The woman muttered something that he couldn’t hear, though he could tell from her voice that she wasn’t happy he had come. Still, she descended the stairs, which creaked loudly with each step she took.

She wore a simple linen dress of ivory and a brown woolen shawl wrapped around her bony shoulders. Her skin was the color of dark rum; her hair, which she wore so short that it barely concealed her scalp, was as white as the moon on a winter night. She had a thin, wrinkled face, and dark eyes that were as alert and fierce as a hawk’s. As always, she carried a cup of Madeira wine; Ethan had never seen her without one.

“Kaille,” she said, scowling at the sight of him. “Thought you was a customer.”

“Sorry, Janna.”

Her expression didn’t change but she waved him toward the bar. “Well, you here, so you might as well sit an’ drink with me.”

She poured him a cup of Madeira, and then he followed her to the hearth, where a fire burned. They sat at a small table and Ethan sipped his wine, which Janna had watered quite a bit. He shouldn’t have been surprised. Given how much she drank, undiluted Madeira would have left her broke and soused.

“You come for a healin’ tonic?” she asked, sitting forward in her chair and eyeing his battered face.

Ethan chuckled, though once more he wished that he could have healed himself without raising the suspicions of Henry, Derne, and others. “No.”

“Who did that t’ you?”

“Who do you think?”

Her expression turned stony. “Sephira Pryce.”

Janna didn’t really like anybody. She tolerated Ethan because he was a conjurer, and she could be charming at times when her work demanded it. But she treated strangers with contempt, and wasn’t much nicer to people she knew. Aside from a scrawny black dog that occasionally came by her place, she had no friends that Ethan knew of. Still, there was no one in the world she hated more than Sephira Pryce. That she and Ethan shared this probably explained why she helped him with his work, despite knowing there was little profit in it for her.

Ethan wasn’t sure why she hated the Empress of the South End so much. He had no reason to think that the two had ever met, much less had dealings. A year or two before, Janna mentioned that Sephira had once cost her a substantial amount of money. Ethan never learned exactly what happened, but he knew that if he managed to convince Janna that she could hurt Pryce by helping him, she would tell him whatever he wanted to know, regardless of whether he paid her.

“She’s a wicked woman,” Janna said, shaking her head and sounding so bitter one might have thought that Sephira had beaten her.

“You’ll get no argument from me.”

Janna shook her head a second time and leaned back in her chair. “So, no healin’ tonic. You finally gonna let me fix you a love tonic for that woman o’ yours?”

Ethan shook his head, knowing that she meant Elli. “No, thank you.”

“Wouldn’ take much. Where there’s a past, th’ love is easier t’ coax back.”

“What I need is information, Janna.”

She dismissed him with a wave of her thin hand. “You always need information. There’s no coin in that for me.”

Usually this was where Ethan pulled out a few shillings and put them on Janna’s table. Already she was casting furtive looks his way. Ethan took another sip of wine and returned her stare.

“You’re right,” he said. “This time there’s no money. Maybe there will be if you’re able to help me, but I haven’t got any right now. Sephira took every coin I had.”

“Why she so mad at you all o’ sudden?”

“A rich man hired me, and she wanted the job for herself.”

Janna laughed delightedly, exposing sharp yellow teeth. “Good for you, Kaille!” She laughed some more, shaking her head slowly.

“I need your help, Janna. There’s a conjurer in the lanes who’s killed twice now: a young woman a few nights ago, and a little boy last fall.”

Her expression grew serious. “I heard talk o’ this.”