D. Jackson - Thieftaker

“There you are!”

He knew the voice. Anna.

She stood in the narrow, dark space behind him, glowing faintly, her expression cross, as if she were a parent and he a wayward child. She ignored Uncle Reg, but the ghost bared his teeth at her. Ethan could almost hear the old man hiss, like a feral cat.

“You shouldn’t have done that last night,” Anna said. “You shouldn’t have hurt me like that. You shouldn’t have killed that poor dog. There are a lot of things you shouldn’t have done.”

Ethan wondered if Diver and the others could hear her. At that moment he would have preferred Yellow-hair and every tough who had ever worked for Sephira Pryce to this little girl and the man who had conjured her.

He opened his mouth to shout for help, but Anna raised a finger to silence him.

Agony. Pain so sudden, so excruciating, that it banished all other thought from his mind. It felt as if someone had driven a spike through his right eye. Clutching his face, Ethan crumpled to the cobblestone. He drew breath, an anguished scream building in his chest.

“Shhh,” Anna whispered from just beside him.

As abruptly as it had come, the pain was gone.

“Don’t make a sound,” the little girl said, bending over him. “I’ll have to kill them all. And while you might want a few of them dead, I know that at least one is your friend.”

Diver. The conjurer knew that Diver was his friend. But far more important, the conjurer couldn’t be Derne. Whoever he was, Ethan had grown pretty sick of him.

The remaining mullein leaves were in the pouch hanging on his belt, and now he racked his brain for a spell to fire back. He could preserve the leaves for two spells, or he could use all the rest of them for one powerful assault.

“When they’re gone,” Anna said, staring down at him, “which should be just another moment or two, you’re going to get up and walk north on this lane.”

“Why not just kill me here?”

Her smile was so innocent, so normal, that Ethan shuddered. “Other plans,” she said, in a singsong voice.

He thought about asking what would happen if he refused, just to keep her talking and perhaps to distract the conjurer so that Ethan’s attack would have a better chance of success. But he knew what would happen if he asked, and he flinched away from the idea of it. He thought that years of forced labor and brutal floggings as a prisoner had inured him to pain. Apparently they hadn’t. At least not the type of pain this man was capable of conjuring.

Anna smiled again. “Smart, Kaille. I thought you would fight me, but you’re learning.”

Pain or no, this was too much.

Ambure ex verbasco evocatum. Scald, conjured from mullein.

At the thrum of power Anna straightened, then vanished. Ethan thought he heard a voice cry out. Not wasting these precious moments, he pulled out his knife and cut himself.

Discuti ex cruore evocatum! Shatter, conjured from blood!

Another pulse, another cry-this time he was certain. But still Ethan didn’t stop. Cutting himself again, he struggled to his feet. Ignis ex cruore evocatus! Fire, conjured from blood! The street felt alive with the power of his spell. Another cut, more blood, which he spread on his face, like some warrior from the realm of the dead.

Tegimen ex cruore evocatum! Warding, conjured from blood!

It was remarkable to him that so few people could feel this spell, that they could be unaware of the power rippling through the city lanes. Never had he cast so many spells in quick succession.

The last conjuring, the warding, continued to tingle along his skin-a shield that covered his entire body.

He left the narrow lane and strode around the north corner of Ship Street, intending to call to Diver. Derne and Sephira be damned. But they were gone. He ran to where they had been standing and scanned the street for any sign of them. Nothing.

“Damn!”

And then he was on the ground again, his body rigid, molten iron in his veins, blades impaling him through the eyes, a taloned claw raking his heart. He couldn’t scream or breathe. He couldn’t even curl up into a ball and die. Torment pinned him to the cobblestone, obliterating all else.

Except her voice-Anna’s voice-which somehow managed to reach him through his suffering. “You are a fool, and you will endure agonies you can scarcely imagine before you die!”

He had managed not to drop his knife, and even as the assault on his mind and body continued, Ethan tried to move his hand, tried to cut his arm one more time.

The conjurer didn’t like that at all. Ethan hadn’t believed that anything could hurt more than what the man had already done to him. He was wrong. He heard a cracking sound. Several of them. Bones. In his hand. The knife fell free. Pain crashed over him like a storm-driven breaker. He rolled onto his side and vomited on the cobblestone lane.

“No more spells!” Anna said severely.

He would die before he would agree to that. Through all that he had suffered, he realized that the conjurer was coming nearer. He was still to the south, but closer, perhaps less than the distance between lanes. Useful information.

Desperation could prompt a man to do strange things, things he had never even considered before. It wouldn’t sustain another fire or a shattering spell, but perhaps something less violent would also prove less expected.

Scabies ex vomitu meo evocata. Itch, conjured from my sick.

The foul mess vanished from beneath his face, and the stone street hummed along the length of his body. He didn’t hear a scream this time, but the image of the little girl vanished again. Ethan assumed that meant his spell had worked. He would have preferred to cause the man pain; he wanted desperately to kill him. But the idea of such a powerful conjurer convulsing at what would have felt like ten thousand flea bites, and scratching his skin raw, gave Ethan a certain amount of satisfaction. And if he could find a man on the street madly scratching himself, he would know at last who this conjurer was.

He picked up his blade and sheathed it. Then he struggled to his feet, cradling his ruined hand against his gut and clenching his teeth against another wave of nausea. He fell against the side of the nearest building, his head spinning, his body aching in every joint and muscle. He felt the way he had after Sephira’s men beat him in his room, except worse. Much worse. He pushed himself away from the wall and staggered across the lane, heading north, away from the conjurer. The man’s abilities went deep-the power he wielded dwarfed that of any other conjurer Ethan had encountered-but he was still subject to the laws governing spellmaking. The greater the distance between them, the less effective his spells would be. The same could be said of Ethan’s spells, of course, but at this point that was a trade Ethan was happy to make.

Each step jarred his aching bones, especially the painful jumble of bone shards in his hand. Still, he forced himself to keep moving. Earlier in the day he had all but sworn that he would kill the conjurer. Now he cared only about getting as far away from him as possible, about living to fight this battle another day.

He hobbled to the next corner, pausing briefly to get his bearings. He had reached North Street. He could head south, toward the residences of the North End, but that would take him too close to the conjurer. His choice, though, was to head north, to Lynn Street, another lane of wharves and warehouses. Beyond them lay the harbor. He had allowed the conjurer to corner him here. He was hurt, weakened, exposed. And he expected at any moment to be attacked again.

He decided to turn south, hoping that the conjurer wouldn’t expect that. He hurried to the next corner-Charter Street-and turned westward.