D. Jackson - Dead Man's reach

She could do better than him. Ethan had known that for some time. She was smart and strong and beautiful and as kind as anyone he had ever known. He knew that any man in his right mind would want her. This might finally have occurred to her, as well.

“Maybe you could work for Adams and the rest,” Diver said, after several minutes.

Ethan glanced up at him, not bothering to mask his skepticism.

“I’m serious. Maybe they have jobs that you could do, and then you wouldn’t-”

Deborah laid a hand on his arm. “Have done, Derrey,” she said softly. “It’s enough.”

He pressed his lips thin and sat back in his chair. “Anyway,” he said after a brief pause. “It’s getting late. We should probably go.”

It couldn’t have been much past eight in the evening, which had never been late for Diver before. But Ethan didn’t try to stop them.

Diver stood, and Deborah did as well, her brow creased with concern.

“Good night, Ethan.”

“Diver.”

Ethan’s friend began to wend his way to the door. Deborah lingered at the table.

“He really is frightened for you. You’re like an older brother to him.”

“I know.”

“Mister Kaille-” She broke off, appearing to think better of whatever she had meant to say. “Good night.”

“Good night, Deborah.”

She offered a sad smile and hurried after Diver.

Ethan watched them go before turning his attention back to his food. He ate a bit of his chowder and a few bites of bread. He chewed slowly, making himself eat, oblivious of taste. He couldn’t even bring himself to finish his ale.

Kannice still stood near the bar. The man with whom she had been speaking was nowhere to be seen, but she continued to avoid Ethan’s gaze. Once he had given Diver and Deborah time enough to put good distance between themselves and the tavern, he stood and left as well. He was sure that Kannice saw him leave; he felt her watching him as he crossed to the door. But she made no effort to stop him, and Ethan gave her no indication that he wished to stay.

Ethan slept poorly. His room was cold, and he spent much of the night bundled in his blankets, hovering at the edge of sleep and drifting in and out of dreams in which he argued once more with Diver and Kannice. He awoke tired and hungry and chilled to his very core.

He dressed with haste, donning his heaviest woolen stockings and shirt, a waistcoat and coat, and pulling on an old woolen greatcoat over all of that. He would be hard-pressed to push up his sleeve for blood should he need to conjure, but he had not yet had to rely on spells for this job, and he didn’t expect that he would today, either. Still, before leaving his room, he slipped into his pocket a full pouch of mullein, a powerful conjuring herb, and he strapped on his blade. Last, he set his tricorn hat on his head and slipped his hands into fingerless woolen gloves.

He had thought his room cold, but when he stepped outside onto the wooden stairway that led from his room down to the street, he shuddered. The sky had clouded over as he slept, leaving it as white as the snowy rooftops. The air remained bitterly cold, and even the gentle breeze blowing off the harbor was enough to make Ethan’s cheeks ache and his eyes tear.

A large gray and white dog waited for him at the bottom of the stairs, seemingly unaffected by winter’s grip on the city. She wagged her tail as Ethan approached, her tongue lolling. Henry Dall, the cooper, had adopted Shelly years before, along with her mate, Pitch, a beautiful black dog with long, silken fur. Pitch had died several years ago. More accurately, Ethan had killed him, using the poor dog for what conjurers called a killing spell, a casting that drew upon the life of another for its power. The conjuring saved Ethan’s life and that of a boy, the son of Elli, his former betrothed. But to this day, he wasn’t sure that these ends excused what he had done. Of all the dark deeds Ethan had committed in his life, including those that led to his imprisonment, casting that spell was the one he regretted most. It had been nigh on five years, but still, upon seeing Shelly, Ethan had to resist the urge to apologize to her for taking her companion.

“Well met, Shelly,” Ethan said, squatting down to scratch her head.

She licked his hands.

“I’ve no food for you,” he said. “Nor for me, for that matter. My apologies.”

He straightened and started toward the North End. Shelly trotted alongside him, perhaps hoping that he would buy them both a bit of breakfast if she stayed with him long enough. As he neared the Town Dock, she seemed to decide that Ethan would be providing no meals; she turned and started back toward the cooperage.

The closer Ethan drew to the North End, the heavier his steps grew. The truth was, in all his years as a thieftaker, he had never harbored greater misgivings about taking on a job. His words to Kannice and Diver notwithstanding, he wasn’t entirely convinced that the merchants who violated the nonimportation agreements deserved protection. Those who argued that the Townshend Duties helped to pay for the ongoing occupation of Boston by British soldiers, an occupation of which Ethan disapproved, made a compelling case. But Ethan did need the money, and jobs were as hard to come by now as he could remember.

Making matters worse, Theophilus Lillie, the merchant who had hired him, was among the most outspoken of the importers, and, as a result, one of the most despised men in all of Boston. He owned a dry goods shop on Middle Street, a short distance north of Mill Creek, where the North End began. In person, he was quiet, polite, and unassuming. But on those occasions when he chose to write in defense of his stand against the nonimportation agreements, as he had most recently the month before in the Boston News-Letter , he could be every bit as acerbic as the most talented Whig writers. To Ethan’s mind, much of the abuse directed at his shop was well deserved. Of course, he kept this opinion to himself.

When Ethan reached Middle Street, he found Lillie outside in the lane, surveying the latest indignities heaped upon his establishment. The windows of the shop had been smeared with tar and feathers, and a large wooden sign in the shape of a hand had been attached to one of the iron posts in front of the building. The sign, which appeared to be pointing toward Lillie’s door, read, “A very inoffensive man, except in the offense of importation.”

A second sign, this one bearing effigies of four noncomplying merchants, including Lillie, had been erected nearby.

The signboards were annoyances; the tar on the windows could be removed eventually, although probably not until the air turned warmer.

Ethan was far more alarmed by the presence in the street of several dozen young men. They stood together a short distance from the shop, their hands in their pockets, their shoulders hunched against the cold. A few of them glanced toward the shop and Lillie, but mostly they talked among themselves, punctuating their conversations with occasional bursts of laughter. Ethan feared, however, that they would not be content for long to mind their own affairs.

Ethan halted a few feet from the merchant, his eyes on the mob.

“I suppose I should be flattered that they think me otherwise inoffensive,” Lillie said, frowning at the damage done to his windows. He leaned in closer, peering at the besmeared glass over the rims of his spectacles. “That tar won’t come off easily.”

“No, sir, at least not today with it being so cold. For now, I think you should go back inside.”

Lillie glanced at Ethan and then toward the crowd of young men. “Yes, you’re probably right.” He heaved a breath. “Could you have prevented this?” he asked.