D. Jackson - Thieftaker

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.”