D. Jackson: Thieves' Quarry

“Where are you going?” Kannice asked, her voice husky with sleep. She smiled up at him. “It’s early still.”

“I can’t sleep.”

“I wasn’t suggesting sleep.”

He sat on the bed beside her. “I’m not sure I’m in the mood for that, either.”

Her expression grew serious. “What’s the matter?”

“I thought I felt something. A spell. That’s what woke me.”

“Nearby?”

He shook his head. “No. Maybe. It was so powerful it was hard to tell. Somewhere here in Boston, but I can’t be sure of much beyond that. The truth is, I’m not even sure it was real.”

She frowned. “I don’t understand.”

“I might have dreamt it. It felt real enough, but I can’t think of anyone in this city with the strength or skill needed to cast such a spell.”

“You said last night that there was a man in the tavern. A conjurer.”

“I don’t think it was him,” Ethan said. He stood again and reached for his shirt. “But I should go. Something about this isn’t right.” He wanted to know more about the bespectacled man, and eventually he would speak with Janna. She might not have been responsible for the spell that woke him, but at least she would be able to tell him whether or not he had imagined it.

He finished dressing and leaned over to kiss Kannice.

“A spell as big as what you felt,” she whispered. “Could you have cast it?”

Ethan hesitated, nodded. “Aye. But only by taking a life.”

She didn’t blanch, or give any other indication that his answer had scared her. She merely said, “Watch yourself,” and reached up to touch his cheek.

He wrapped his hand around hers for a moment. “Always.”

He left her room, descended the stairs, and walked out of the Dowser into the street. The sun still hung low in the east, but the sky above was cloudless and a deep shade of azure. Vapor from his breath billowed into the morning air and was swept away by a cool breeze. A perfect autumn morning. No doubt October would bring gray skies and cold rains. But for today, at least, September maintained its gentle hold on the province.

Ethan set out toward Cornhill and the South End, where he leased a room from Henry Dall, a cooper. He had food there and he liked to check in with Henry periodically, just to let the old man know that he was well. Henry might have been his landlord, but he treated Ethan as he would a son. Knowing that Ethan was a thieftaker, he worried when he didn’t hear from him for more than a day or two.

As Ethan walked toward his home, he considered again Kannice’s question and his answer to it.

The spells cast by conjurers fell into three broad categories. Elemental spells were by far the simplest, and also the least powerful. Using one of the basic elements-air, water, earth, or fire-a conjurer could summon phantom sounds or visual illusions to confuse a foe or deceive the unsuspecting. When Ethan’s mother first began to teach him and his sisters how to conjure, these were the spells she showed them.

Living spells were more potent and more difficult to cast. As the name implied, a living spell drew its power from some part of a living thing: blood or flesh, hair, feathers, or fish scales, grass, leaves, or tree bark … Such spellmaking went far beyond mere illusion. Using living spells, a conjurer could heal with blood, as Ethan had done the night before, or he could could kill with it. A powerful conjurer might raise a wind or a storm; he might conjure fire or draw water from the earth.

And yet, as powerful as living spells could be, they were nothing compared to killing spells. These conjurings required the taking of a life, and there were almost no limits to what they could do. A conjurer who was willing to kill for his spellmaking could reduce Boston to a pile of rubble or boil away the waters of Boston Harbor. He could rob others of their free will and force them to do his bidding, no matter how heinous.

In all his years, Ethan had cast only one killing spell, and though he’d had little choice at the time, he was still haunted by the memory. But he had encountered conjurers who had no qualms about taking lives in order to enhance their power. The spell he had felt this morning was almost certainly a killing spell. That would explain not only the potency of the casting, but also the unsettled feeling that had plagued him since he woke.

And once more, a voice in his head echoed, If it was real.

Breakfast could wait, and so could Henry. He needed to know more about this spell.

Under most circumstances he never would have gone to Tarijanna so early in the morning. On the best of days she was difficult, even ill-tempered. She had few friends and though she tolerated Ethan because he was a speller and also because they shared a deep and abiding hatred of Sephira Pryce, she probably didn’t like him any more than she did anyone else. But he had to know if he had dreamt that spell or truly felt it.

Making his way to Janna’s home, Ethan passed the old Granary Burying Ground and King’s Chapel, where his friend Trevor Pell served as a minister under the authority of the rector, the Reverend Henry Caner. Once beyond the chapel, Ethan cut south to Newbury Street, where homes and shops gave way to open pastures and wooded country estates. Sugar maples and white-barked birch trees lined the road and grew in clusters along the edges of fields and grazing tracts, their leaves, shading toward orange and bright yellow, rustling in the wind.

Tarijanna lived at the southern edge of Boston, near the town gate, on a narrow strip of land known as the Neck. She owned a run-down tavern called the Fat Spider, and lived in a small room on the second floor of the building. Most of those who frequented the Spider were themselves conjurers or people who came to Janna seeking her services as a spellmaker. She served food and drink in her tavern, just like the proprietor of any other publick house. But she also sold herbs, oils, and talismans. And she peddled her services as a conjurer. She specialized in love spells, which she used to find love matches for her clients. The sign outside her tavern read “T. Windcatcher, Marriage Smith. Love is magick.” It might as well have said, “A speller lives here!”

Spellers were feared, even hated. Most people mistakenly equated conjuring with witchcraft, and though it had been the better part of a century since witch trials led to the execution of twenty men and women in nearby Salem, Massachusetts, suspected witches were still put to death throughout the province. Janna didn’t seem to care.

Reaching the Fat Spider, Ethan knocked on the tavern door, expecting that he would have to rap on the gray, weathered wood for several minutes before hearing any response. He was wrong.

At the first knock, he heard a strong voice call out, “It’s unlocked!”

Ethan pushed the door open and stepped into the dark tavern. As always, the air within smelled strongly of cinnamon, clove, roasting meat, and ale. Janna sat in a low chair by the fire, a cup in her hand, filled no doubt with watered Madeira wine.

Janna hailed from one of the Caribbean islands, though because she was orphaned at sea as a young girl, she didn’t know which one. She also didn’t know her exact age, or her family name-she chose Windcatcher because she liked the sound of it.

Her skin was a rich nut brown, and her hair, which she wore shorn almost to her scalp, was as white as bone. But though her thin, wrinkled face made her appear ancient, her dark eyes were as bright and alert as those of a child. If she had asked Ethan how old he thought she was, he wouldn’t have known what to say.

“Kaille,” she said upon seeing him, her mouth turned down in a scowl. “I shoulda known it was you. First person to come through that door, and you ain’t gonna spend one pence. You like a bad omen comin’ at this hour.”