D. Jackson - Thieves' Quarry

She considered him for another few seconds, drained her cup, and stood. “This way,” she said.

He followed her into the common room. She paused, looking down at her men and giving a small shake of her head. Stepping over them, she walked to the broad, curving stairway they had used the other day, when he and her men brought Mariz back to her house from New Boston. Reaching the top of the stairs she led him down the same corridor, and into that same small bedchamber.

Mariz lay in the bed; as far as Ethan could tell, he hadn’t moved at all since the last time he had been there. His color was better, but in all other ways he was unchanged.

“He still hasn’t woken,” Ethan said in a whisper.

“No. The doctor seems confident that he will, but he doesn’t know when. It could be any day now.”

Blood continued to flow from the fresh cut on Ethan’s arm, but he barely noticed. He sat in a chair near the bed and stared at Mariz.

“Perhaps you should leave now, Ethan. Like the fire on my food, your sleeping spells won’t last forever, and when Nigel and the others wake, they’re not going to be very happy with you.”

“Tell me about Gant and Osborne,” he said.

She laughed. “I’ve told you before-”

“Please,” he said, turning to look up at her.

The first quirk of her mouth he recognized-the beginning of her usual mocking smile. But she didn’t answer him right away, and when at last she did it was with a question rather than another refusal.

“Who’s after you?”

“Thomas Hutchinson,” Ethan said. “He’s threatened to put to death every conjurer in the city if I can’t give him the information he wants by tomorrow morning.”

She blinked. “You’re serious.”

“Yes. I don’t expect you to tell me everything. I know better, and I won’t believe half of what you do tell me.” He held up his bloodied forearm again. “But I need answers, and I’m not feeling particularly patient.”

Sephira stood unmoving; once more, as the last time he had spoken with her, he could almost see her weighing the risks and rewards of helping him. At last, though, she gave a small shake of her head and a breathless laugh. “You’re mad,” she muttered. “There’ll be a price for this. You understand that, don’t you? I can strike at you any time I want, and I don’t have to come near you to do it. You have friends, and I know who they are.”

He didn’t say a word, although the Latin for several painful spells leaped to mind.

“Fine,” she said. “Have your fun. Gant and Osborne worked together for years. They were with me for a time, as inseparable as Nigel and Nap. But they both claimed to be conjurers. As you know, I’m not an expert in such things, but it seemed to me that Osborne was the more talented of the two. I’m sure he was the more clever.”

“At some point they turned on you?” Ethan asked.

“That was Gant’s idea, or so I’m told. They secreted away a few items for themselves. Small things at first-worth a few pounds; no more. But with time they grew more ambitious.”

“And that’s when they stole the pearls?”

He knew from Sephira’s tight smile that whatever impulse led to her candor had passed.

“I won’t discuss that with you,” she said.

“I understand. Tell me this, though: Did you or your men kill Simon Gant?”

This time he didn’t expect her to answer. He merely wanted to see how she reacted to the question. But even looking for her response, he was surprised by what he saw in the scintilla of time before she managed to fix another defiant smile on her lovely face.

“Of course we didn’t,” she told him.

But her expression had said, Gant is dead? Not only had she not ordered the man killed, she hadn’t yet known of his murder.

Ethan stood, his knife still in hand, the blood on his arm beginning to dry. Reg hovered in the corner by Mariz, unseen by Sephira.

“I think it’s time I was leaving,” Ethan said.

“Yes, I agree. I’ll be waking my men, and I don’t think you want to be near here when I do.”

Still, neither of them moved.

“Thank you for telling me what you did,” Ethan said. “Why did you answer at all?”

“You mean aside from the fact that you were threatening me with your damned witchcraft?”

“Yes, aside from that.”

“A moment of weakness,” she said, sounding far more like herself. “Not one I’m likely to repeat.”

“Why, Sephira?”

She shrugged. “You said that Hutchinson intends to put you and the rest of your kind to death. I want that pleasure for myself. Now, go.”

Ethan grinned; so did she.

He descended the stairs and let himself out of the house, cutting over to the waterfront and winding through the heart of the South End, where he would be harder to find. Ethan knew that Sephira would send her men after him at the earliest opportunity. A few seconds of honesty and a shared grin couldn’t unmake years of hostility. He had forced his way into her home; she would have to punish him for that. He doubted that she would allow her men to kill him-she had told him in the past that she needed him around to conduct inquiries that lay beyond her talents-but Nigel, Nap, and the others would be none too gentle in conveying Sephira’s displeasure.

Ethan expected Sephira and her men to begin their search for him at Henry’s cooperage; he would have been well advised to stay as far from Cooper’s Alley as possible. But the rank smell of Boston’s prison clung to his clothes and hair, like the stink of ale on a drunkard, and Ethan had no desire to have it following him around the city all day. He hurried up to his room, retrieved a pitcher, and took it down to the nearby street pump. Returning to his room with the icy water, he stripped down to his undergarments and put on a fresh pair of breeches. He didn’t dare take the time to pour the water into a cooking pot and start a fire, nor did he think it wise to conjure. Instead, before putting on a shirt, he stepped outside onto the landing at the top of the old wooden stairway and scrubbed his scalp and torso with the frigid water, his teeth chattering in the cold air. It was bracing to say the least, and it left him feeling more alert and ready to face what remained of the day.

He put on a fresh linen shirt and his other waistcoat. He didn’t have a second coat, but with everything else clean, including himself, the outer garment didn’t feel as grimy or smell quite so bad.

Taking care to see that his knife was on his belt and that the two remaining mullein leaves were in his pocket, Ethan left the room and started to pull the door shut. It was then he noticed the folded piece of parchment on the floor just inside the doorway. He stooped, snatched it up, and unfolded it. He recognized Diver’s hand right away, but it took him longer to decipher the scrawled words.

Have been contacted by buyer. Wants to meet. Need more instructions. Staying with D. Find me at Dowser.

— Derrey

Ethan crumpled the note in his hand and tossed it into the room, where it skittered across his table and fell to the floor. With all that had happened in the past day-Gant’s murder, his own arrest, his encounters with Hutchinson and Greenleaf and Sephira-he had forgotten about Diver and the task he had left to his friend. And he had failed to tell him that the pearls might not be in New Boston after all. He was glad to see that Diver had taken his warnings to heart and had chosen to stay with Deborah, and he couldn’t deny that he was excited to hear that their ruse had worked, that someone had contacted Diver. But he had wanted to keep a closer watch on his friend, and he feared that his negligence might have placed Diver in greater danger. For all he knew, this “buyer” was the conjurer who had killed Gant and the king’s soldiers.