The Complete Trilogy: The Books of Conjury #5 Page 2

  I’d watched the entire murder and exchange without moving, stunned into disbelief. It had taken less than a quarter of a minute and my mind hadn’t caught up to the dire reality. I saw no spirits, no shades, this time—yet there lay Wilkes, as dead as the others.

  The red-bearded man—who wasn’t having a good day—came at me, stepping over Wilkes’ body. I scooted backward, pressing into the corner.

  A figure advanced from the house, a lantern held aloft. “Raining bodies today, lads,” the man said.

  The driver chuckled. I lifted my hands out before me. “No, please,” was all that I squeaked out before my voice disappeared, the muscles of my throat clenching in terror. The driver turned in the bench.

  “No bashing,” he said.

  The club banged when the red-bearded man dropped it to the boards. He pushed through my hands as though they were flowers and lifted me up, leaving me with no argument against his strength.

  No one left for Fate to kill, save me, I thought, with a small, strange measure of relief.

  “Fine. No bashing,” he muttered in that rough voice. He reeked of sour sweat and onions. Turning me as though I was as light as a rag-doll, he fixed my throat in the crook of his right arm, and strangled me.

  2

  The Hand of a Murderer

  My descent into death seemed quick, overwhelming, and final. Angels, gates, brimstone—of those, I saw no sign. No rolling fields of cloud, nor warm embrace of the Creator. I saw neither my dear brothers, nor my parents. None of the seven masters I’d been passed to as they’d, one after another, been killed by the ghost. Not one of the others who’d met their demise due to my proximity over the prior year: not the stable-hand on Little Russell Street, crushed by a dozen hay bales as I’d stood watching; not the coachman who’d lost his head as the chandler Walter Ives—master number six—and I had crossed through the drizzled streets of Covent Garden; not the kindly Widow Bonewhite, whom I’d found drowned in her washtub; nor her husband Alastair Bonewhite—master number five, who ran a dye shop in Whitechapel and was hanged on the violet and indigo stained ropes over the vats of color; a half-dozen other strangers, each as pitiful as the last, whose only crime had been being somehow near me. Not even poor Wilkes, now occupying the end of that dreadful list, having apparently escaped the ghost only to meet the hand of a murderer.

  And yet my own end wasn’t writ indelibly. I suppose that my would-be murderer—if nothing better might be said for him—wasn’t used to strangling young women. An unnoticed spark of life remained, undetected by either the ruffians, the dark spirit, or myself in that grim hour.

  Choked free of my senses, as good as lifeless, I came to at the bottom of unnamed black depths, submerged and confused. My mind drifted upward where dim shapes and muffled sounds announced the shores of life. A buzz and a rattle filled my ears, like a furious pair of wasps attempting to escape a paper cone. I eventually registered that it was my own throttled voice, groaning. Although my cries sounded loud in my ears, they went unheard beneath the rumble of the moving wagon.

  Inches from my nose lay Wilkes’ face, scribed by starlight. His eyes were open and unseeing, a look of dull surprise in them. Thin lines of blood traced his forehead and the bridge of his nose. The crown of his head was misshapen—bashed, if you will. I looked away. A pair of bare feet extended just past Wilkes, bouncing in rhythm with the course of the wheels, blackened and swollen with settled blood. I realized the crushing weight on my back was yet another corpse—and bit back a scream. Afraid to reveal the life in me, I kept still, allowing only my left hand to explore further. My fingers touched the cold hand of another, then bunches of material—a dress—and the curve of a hip beneath, barren of warmth, heavy as a bag of soil. The back of my neck tickled with what I realized was a woman’s hair. I shuddered, the source of the wagon’s horrid stench I’d noticed earlier now all too clear.

  “Bloody unnatural.” The gravelly voice of the red-bearded man, my almost-killer, sent a ripple of dread through me. I clamped my eye shut and froze.

  “We’ve got a load of bodies. Is that natural?” That was the driver. Hand with the trunks? I wondered how I’d missed the sinister lilt of his voice.

  “You know what I mean.”

  “There’s a reason this road is a piece of shite.”

  Another sound registered with me, a sporadic tinkling, delicate and somehow musical. It grew louder and then faded, replaced by another sound that increased in frequency, until it sounded as though the wagon was being pelted by glass beads. In the space between me and Wilkes’ face, starlit diamonds bounced off the boards: hail, stinging my face. I recalled the humid air of Boston, the warmth even at sunset. Where were we? Had I been senseless for weeks? Months?

  The red-bearded man grunted. “Well I don’t like it.”

  “No one’s asking if you like it. Coin’s just the same, either way, and I doubt you’ll be complaining about that, will you?”

  A chill wind whisked the hail and sent tufts of dark hair over my face, from the dead woman on top of me. The wagon turned and the bodies shifted. Wilkes slid toward me until his face touched my own, while the woman rolled halfway from my back. As the wagon slowed, the driver cursed, and I heard the snap of the reins. “Sodding beasts, go!”

  “More frightened than you,” the red-bearded man said.

  “I’m the one that’s frightened now?”

  “White knuckled. Look at your hands.”

  The wagon sped up again.

  “Just keep your mouth shut when we get there,” the driver said. “I’ve dealt with him before.”

  I tried to wriggle free, my neck protesting, my limbs trembling. I needed to get out of the wagon.

  “Imagine living here. Unbelievable.”

  “Not our business.”

  “Except we’re the ones driving up here. Don’t like it.”

  “Oh, good. Let’s have that talk again.” A gust of wind rocked the wagon. “There it is.”

  “He’ll know we’re here?”

  “He always does. Just do what I say. Don’t dawdle.”

  “Not bloody likely. Christ.”

  They fell silent. I paused, hoping I hadn’t been heard beneath the creak and jangle of the wagon, the occasional ‘hah’ the driver directed at the horses. Before I could lift myself farther, the wagon rolled to a stop, falling silent. I lowered my hand and lay motionless.

  “Mr. Swaine,” the driver said.

  “Gentlemen.” The voice was rich and expressive, with an accent I was familiar with from London. “I trust your journey wasn’t overly arduous.”

  “No, sir. Not—arduous. Not at all.”

  “And as discreet as required?”

  The men got off the wagon. “Aye, course. Roads emptied before we even reached the signs.”

  “I meant your departure from Boston,” Swaine said.

  “Waited until full dark. Not much of a—” he paused. “A moon, sir.”

  “Don’t mind my friend by the barn. His duties shall keep him otherwise occupied. But back to the matter at hand if you will—no prying eyes gave your departure a moment’s glance? I’m relying on your acumen.”

  “Just another wagon leaving at nightfall, sir.”

  “I pray you’re right. And am I to be pleased with your cargo?”

  “Hope so, sir. We’ve five.”

  “Marvelous. Somewhat fresher than your last delivery, I hope.”

  “Hours fresh,” my would-be killer said with a hoarse chuckle.

  “Some, sir,” the driver added. “Bit of luck that someone met with their misfortune this very afternoon, sir. Some quick thinking when no one was about, and we nicked them before anyone was the wiser.”

  The disapproval in the silence that followed was pungent.

  “No one saw a thing, sir.”

  “My demand for circumspection above all else is not arbitrary, Mr. Flynn.” An impatient edge entered the man’s voice. Footsteps drew closer, coming around to the back of the wagon. “
Should as much as a hint of an inkling of a rumor catch the ears of various authorities or other persons of influence, I shall be darkly displeased, sir.”

  “Of course, Mr. Swaine. Understood. Fully. And not a one did see.”

  “Yet shall no one miss these hours-fresh, recently misfortuned individuals? I find that rather hard to believe.” The wagon gate banged open with a rattle of chains. “For even in Boston, there are standard procedures for fatal calamity, are there not?”

  “Fresh off a boat, sir. Alone. No one waiting for them.”

  “You know this how?”

  “They came into a tavern there. Atlantic Nag. Heard it from the owner.”

  “I see.”

  Wilkes was pulled toward the end of the wagon.

  “Attacked and done in, not two streets over. Young lad I know ran and told me. Got to them before the constables. Or the crowd. No one saw them.”

  “Save for your vigilant lad.”

  “As I said, sir—rare bit of luck.”

  One could hardly expect a killer to not also be a liar, I supposed. I barely breathed.

  “So it would appear,” Swaine said. “And these others?”

  “That one there was killed by a falling stone during the repairs to the Brattle Street Church after it burned. Lightning.”

  “When?”

  “Late spring.”

  “Not the fire—the stone.”

  “Course. Last week, sir.”

  Swaine shifted the corpses, bringing to mind the market Wilkes and I had passed through. “And this one here?”

  “Potter from Cambridge. Died of pleurisy, is the tale. Ill-fitting clothes, anyhow. Dug him up with him not thirty hours in the grave. Dead of night. We came and left like shadows.”

  “Shadows with pick and shovel.”

  “We wrap blankets around the tools, sir. Muffles the sound of the soil being removed.”

  “How clever. And this?”

  The body atop me slid off, dragged to the gate of the wagon. I remained as still as possible.

  “Ah, woman, sir. Know you’d asked for some. Doxy she was. Strangled by an irate customer. We saved her from a cheap grave,” the driver said. “One beneath her is the other from the ship. Daughter, I’m guessing.”

  “Youth are of little use. I was clear on the point.”

  “She’s not a kiddie, sir. Tall one. Probably fourteen.”

  A poor guess. I’d turned sixteen on the crossing.

  “Adults only, Mr. Flynn.”

  “Half the price, sir.” Flynn grabbed me by the collar of my dress and pulled me toward the gate. I remained limp. “Missing an eye, it looks. But she was fit.” He yanked my torso upward by the arm and shook it as though that might demonstrate anything at all in a lifeless body.

  “What’s that one doing?” The red-bearded man sounded angry.

  “Doyle,” Flynn snapped.

  “Why’s he getting closer like that?”

  “I’m sorry for this, Mr. Swaine.” Flynn released my arm and my head cracked against the floorboards. I managed by the fiercest will not to cry out. A scuffle of footsteps rounded the wagon. Beyond that, pounding thuds—something throwing itself against a wall, or a door—erupted a short distance away.

  “Don’t move!” Swaine called out, his voice sharp and commanding. He spoke words I didn’t understand and the sound filled me with despair. Unable to help myself, I clamped my hands over my ears and opened my eye. No one noticed.

  “Tell him to piss off, or I’ll—” the red-bearded man yelled before half his face erupted in bloody slices. He staggered forward only to have his legs swept out beneath him by nothing visible.

  “Jesus—” Flynn muttered. The horses whinnied.

  “Back!” Swaine called out. “Heold þone biscepdom!”

  The wagon rocked. A wave of frigid air crashed over me, sending my skin to gooseflesh, making my scalp tighten. The sensation of pins and needles crawled over my limbs. I sat up despite my feint of death.

  The wagon stood between a weathered barn and an old manse. My would-be killer stood by the side of the wagon, clawing at the air in a frenzy even as more blood lifted up in fans. Ten paces from him stood an enormous man wearing filthy breeches and nothing else. Half his head was missing. A gurgled moan escaped the man with the red beard and he fell still. In an instant, the enormous man with half a head sprang forward, his hands in claws, his jaw opening and snapping. He strained, leaning forward like a man bracing himself against the fiercest of storms. Flesh tore and muscles rippled. A ghastly shriek peeled from his mouth as he tumbled backward, where he wrestled on the ground with what appeared to be empty air.

  Flynn, the driver, shrank back along the side of the wagon. Shadows swarmed in front of him. Before he could take another step, his head slammed against the side of the wagon, snapping his neck with a gruesome cracking. Flynn’s limbs danced like those of a marionette spun by a wicked child.

  A yard from me stood the man who’d spoken with Flynn. With dark hair of a fashionable length and a trim beard, he wore a well-tailored coat over a white shirt and dark waistcoat. Cravat, breeches, hose, and shoes completed the markings of a gentleman. He held his hands out before him, palms facing the shadows wavering before Flynn. As I watched, he closed his eyes.

  With a bang, the door to the barn opened and an old man staggered out, wearing stained night clothes. His hair flew off in an untamed corona of white behind him as he made straight for the wagon, breaking into a sprint that stunned me coming from a man that old. He leapt onto the back of the huge man, clawing at his face, biting the back of his head. The pair crashed into the wagon, tearing at each other with hideous growls. I fell back, tripping over the legs of the dead woman. With a hiss, the old man clambered over the huge man and pounced into the wagon, bony hands grabbing at my ankles, dragging me forward. The wagon shook as the bare-chested man also reached for me. I tried to wrench myself loose.

  “Se sciphere sigelede wintres ymbutan!” Swaine bellowed. The air before me lit up with glowing lines of blue that tugged at my innards in a frightful manner. Frost spread out around me in an instant, climbing across the wagon, the bodies, my dress. The shadows over Flynn’s body burst into the air, a plague of grackles fleeing into the night. Before me, the old man loosed his grip on me and collapsed, while behind him the man with half a head ceased his attack and fell forward. His arms and torso wedged on the wall, tilting the entire wagon to that side. My heart thudded as I stared at them, both as motionless—and apparently just as dead—as the other corpses strewn around the wagon.

  There I was, surrounded by dead bodies.

  Again.

  3

  Hardly Dead at All

  I tore the hem of my dress loose from the frost that bound it to the boards of the wagon, staring at the enormous man sprawled on the wagon’s edge. One eye showed nothing but a crusted hollow, dried strands of fluid browning in the opening beneath his ruined brow. I felt no kinship in our shared condition. The old man stretched out before me, likewise still. I stared at them with my mouth open. My thoughts crawled, stunned to treacle.

  Swaine faced me, his palms upraised, his gaze as focused as if he were pointing a musket at my head. I flinched. He whispered. The surrounding air whirled, seizing my hair, my dress. Bright lines of blue appeared, thin as gossamer, spiraling around me, causing my stomach to flutter and my balance to go strange. I grabbed the wagon’s side. After a few moments, the light faded, and the air grew calm.

  “Why you’re hardly dead at all,” Swaine said. “Yet another critique I shall make of the services of these two reprobates. Not that I have anyone other than myself to complain to, at this point.” He lowered his hands. “Alive the whole time, were you?”

  “Yes—yes, sir,” I squeaked out in a pained whisper.

  “Broken bones? Cracked skull? Stabbed?”

  I wanted to shake my head, but my neck wasn’t having any of that. “Strangled.”

  “How unpleasant,” he said, sounding mo
re as though he were commenting on a broken shoe buckle. “You’d best get down from there.”

  I struggled to step over Wilkes’ body on the wagon’s gate. After a moment, Swaine stepped forward and offered me a hand. Alongside the wagon, the driver and the red-bearded man—what remained of them—glistened in pools of their own blood and torn flesh.

  Swaine regarded them, his hands now on his hips. “Unfortunate. Ruined, but fresh. What to do, what to do? Are you well enough to help me drag these and the others into that barn?”

  I gaped at him. He stared at me and raised his eyebrows. “Ah, I see. Have no fear—I shall deal with your father on my own. Too painful, clearly.”

  Careful not to shake my head, I raised my hand instead and forced my ragged voice out. “Not my father.”

  “I see. Your uncle? Much older brother, perhaps?”

  “My master.”

  “Better yet. Then you can assist me without tears or grief, I’ll take it. Well done.”

  Tears? Grief? I’d spilled a Nile of the former, and possessed an Atlantic of the latter. It was all I could do to keep from dropping to my knees and weeping, seeing poor Wilkes dead. I touched my throat where the skin was raw from the crook of the red-bearded man’s arm.

  Swaine leaned forward and looked. “Ah. I see. Come.”

  Without waiting, he turned on his heel and started for the manse. Two full stories in height and topped with a Dutch roof, the house wore decades of disrepair. Shutters, most missing slats, hung at imprecise angles at the windows. Paint peeled from the curved cornice above the front door, the design of which reminded me of angel wings carved into a tombstone. Ivy clung to the lower reaches. Blocking out starlight, a wide chimney rose from the haggard shingles in the middle of the roof.

  Beyond the house, light from the heavens showed thick groves of trees, stretches of wild meadow sloping to a dark harbor. I spotted the remains of what looked to be an abandoned town—a hint of moonlight on fractured glass here, the bones of timbers poking through a fallen roof there. Faint ripples of illumination traced the overgrown ghosts of roads and the collapsed skeleton of a bridge over a flowing river. Silence held unbroken save for a mournful wind suspiring through the trees. No song of crickets broke the silence, no call of any wild things making unseen passage through the dark meadows. The manse and its grounds might have existed in another world, a world where August Swaine was the last person alive after the dream of mankind had expired. Unsettled by the thought, I hurried after him. He disappeared through the doorway. I followed. As my eyes adjusted to the interior, I found myself in an entryway of warped boards, the stink of mildew in the air.