The Complete Trilogy: The Books of Conjury #5 Page 3

  “Ignis,” Swaine muttered, a flick of his fingers accompanying the word. Six fat tallow candles in pewter holders sprouted flames. I gasped. He lifted one. “Now, now. As simple a conjuring as there is—anyone with half a wit can achieve it. Ridiculous that what amounts to a parlor trick could ever become the concern of kings and courts, laws and men. Emptying towns and valleys. But there we are, the world is full of wrong thinking, isn’t it? Don’t step on any of these lines.”

  What appeared to be a perfect circle filled the hallway floor, comprised of metal filings that glinted in the candlelight. We passed into a study. A writing desk stood along one wall, stacked with papers, books marked with placeholders, inkwells, quills, and more candles. Along the other wall stood a workbench where Swaine set the candle. Tinctures and bottles, tin boxes, ivory-lidded containers, carved wooden boxes and drawers lined the rows of shelves built into the back of the bench.

  I froze. “Are you going to kill me?”

  “Kill you? Do I look like a killer?” he said, looming over me. Believe me, that’s not a comfortable question when you’re standing alone with a tall man, having just left behind eight corpses. Worse, with his shadow stretching up onto the wall behind him like a wraith, I have to say he did look like a killer—or, at least, he looked like a killer from a story. Yet I recalled Flynn and Doyle, actual killers: the sideways glances; the way in which they looked at me as though I were no more than a stray cat; their unkempt appearance.

  “No, sir,” I whispered.

  “How reassuring. Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way”—he motioned for me to stand within yet another circle of filings on the floor. “Let’s have a look at you. Your eye—is that recent?”

  “No, sir. Kicked by a mule when I was two, sir.”

  “Resentful beasts. I never cared for them.”

  “Nor I, sir.”

  “Indeed. May I?” He motioned to the cloth I wore as a patch. I’d grown self-conscious of my missing eye as I’d grown older but whatever remaining pride I’d clung to throughout my troubles of the past year had apparently been strangled straight out of me. I nodded. He lifted the cloth. “Interesting.” He lowered the cloth again and lifted the candle. “And now for this throat of yours. Can you tilt your head up?”

  I did, with pain. He examined my neck, prodding it with his fingers here and there, his touch delicate.

  “You can swallow?”

  I did, though it hurt.

  “Breathing isn’t constricted?”

  I shook my head gently. He put the candle back on the bench and searched through several drawers.

  “You may sit,” he said, motioning to a stool within the circle.

  I did as he suggested, my knees trembling.

  He scraped two powders into a mortar, measuring them with a flat knife. Dried leaves from a bottle. A few drops of a rust-colored elixir that smelled of sulfur. He ground it together with a marble pestle. “Not quite what any of le nez—as the perfumers of Paris rather pretentiously title themselves—might favor, but this will help keep the swelling down, and help your skin to heal.”

  When it was ready, he spread it over the front and sides of my throat. The mixture was cold and made my skin tingle even as the stench of it made my eye water.

  “Wait here,” he said when he’d used up the paste. “And don’t step from that circle, whatever you do.”

  He left me alone for but a minute. The shadows in the corners of his study came alive, shifting as the candle flame wavered. A creaking sounded from overhead, and I raised my gaze. Tattered cobwebs dangled from the ceiling. As I scanned further, I saw a film of dust on the windows, and in the musty nooks. Swaine’s work areas looked organized and clean, yet his need for dusting evidently began and ended with his work. The creaking grew louder, reminding me of the sounds from the ship that had carried poor Wilkes and me from London. Cracks marked the plaster of the ceiling, along with stains where the weather had seeped in. As I watched, one crack grew, marked by a fall of plaster dust. What might have terrified me a day earlier seemed barely worth noting after having seen a man’s face torn off. A loud thud shook the ceiling, and a patch of plaster loosed and crashed to the floor.

  Swaine returned, a pleated linen neck-cloth in hand. In his other hand he held a silver pendant on a thin chain, both tarnished. He showed me the pendant. “This is for your protection. You must never take it off. Never, ever. If you do, I can in no way guarantee your safety. Do you understand?”

  I can’t say I did, but after what I’d seen, I nodded.

  “Excellent. Let’s get this over your head, and we’ll cover both it and your neck up with this cloth, and you should be more than able to assist me with the bodies, no?” He wrapped the cloth around my neck, securing it with a loose knot. “And let’s hope you never run into the one who wrung your neck again.”

  “The man, sir,” I croaked.

  “Pardon?”

  “It was the man on the wagon. The bearded one, sir.”

  Swaine frowned. “I see. And your master, as well, I take it?”

  I nodded.

  “Mr. Flynn knew of this?”

  I nodded again.

  Swaine swept up the candle and turned, not waiting for me to follow. I scurried after him, sparing one last glance at the ceiling.

  “Careful,” he said in the entryway, pointing again at the circle on the floor. I stepped over the circle and followed him. The sight of the bodies stretched out by the wagon had lost none of its power to disturb me.

  “In Boston, or out of it?” Swaine said, not slowing.

  “In, sir. I believe.”

  “And was it also in broad daylight? Did they gather a crowd, put out a tin cup for pence?”

  “At a burned house, sir. It’d grown dark.”

  “They waited until dark? Remarkable discretion. And no one noticed you in their company?”

  “Tavern, sir. Fishermen. Dock lads. Near the market.”

  “Well at least there was nothing noteworthy about a one-eyed young woman leaving in the company of a large bald thug with a bright red beard.” He came to a stop before the wagon, holding the candle out. “As ever, disappointed, yet not surprised. Words are vaporous things, floating pointlessly out of mouths, dissipating the moment they’re uttered. Tell me—would you think the word ‘discreet’ ought have much to do with other words such as ‘murder’ or ‘kidnapping’ or ‘tavern’?”

  I wasn’t sure he expected an answer from me. “No—no, sir,” I said.

  “Ah, verity from the mouth of babes. You are correct and possessing more in the way of common sense than this pair of dunderheads. Well, if nothing else, you might help yourself to having the last laugh as you lend me a hand dragging them to the barn. You take that leg, I’ll take this—and here we go.”

  4

  No Curse On You, Miss Finch of London

  On that first night August Swaine taught me one of the great lessons of life: how easily one can step into the unthinkable if someone else treats it as ordinary.

  Drag eight corpses across into a barn, one after another? It was as simple as following Swaine’s cues. Watch the head. Fetch that missing ear if you would. We might have been moving pieces of furniture for the utter lack of solemnity. As I struggled to keep the red-bearded man’s fat ankle in my grip while I tugged him through the barn door, I guessed that it was likely the same with killers and murder. Aim for the crown of the head. Put your weight into it. Make sure you get an artery. Yes, even a child—same principles, lad. Otherwise, who would do such a thing? Or start a war, knowing the suffering and brutality to come? Or tamper with the unseen forces of magic? Thoughts were one thing—we all have them—but the doing was another altogether, and the key that unlocked that reality was someone else leading the way, saying Yes, come along. You’re doing fine, yes, like so.

  I found the barn a frightful place, encouragement notwithstanding. Starlight fell in through rotted boards and joists to decorate the bodies in their deathly repose. A
nasty odor lingered in the corners. We dragged the two final corpses—the enormous man and the horrid old man who’d grabbed my ankles—within the confines of a curious pen: four iron rods hammered into the earth, each with a thick loop of metal on top strung through with heavy chains. The air around said chains crackled with a strange energy, the restless shifting in the moments before a lightning storm. Swaine cautioned me not to touch the metal.

  Once we’d gotten the corpses settled, Swaine closed the barn door and lit two lanterns hung from the wood columns that held up the loft. No magic this time—a tinderbox did the trick. I eyed Wilkes, sprawled out next to a pair of chests. My seventh master to die. Had the murderous ghosts lifted the hand of his killer? Had they brought down the club? I hadn’t seen them, not the way I’d glimpsed the shades and ethereal forms that had laid low the others—but who could say? Wasn’t Massachusetts riven with the infernal? Might the spirits have been at play, seeing to it that Wilkes and I might fall in with such dreadful company?

  Instead of fear, I felt anger—at myself. I should have fled more artfully, more convincingly. I also felt profound pity. It wasn’t only that Wilkes’ life ended, that his heart had ceased its beating—no, his dreams had been murdered, along with his satisfactions, his joys, his victories, and all future paths he might have taken. Those who knew him, or might ever have shared a fruitful moment with him—they’d been robbed, perhaps just as dearly. I glanced at his killer, not willing to believe the same of him, but confronted with the possibility.

  Swaine stood at yet another large workbench, a lantern before him, tracing a finger along a line of text in a book he’d opened. He appeared to have forgotten about me. I spied a bucket of well-water hung on a hook attached to one of the thick wooden beams of the barn.

  “Sir? May I?”

  Swaine kept reading and spared me the barest of glances. He nodded. I went over to the bucket and dipped a tin ladle, drinking the cool water. Swaine said nothing. After watching him read for several moments, I wandered over to the barn door and, curious, scanned the packed earth. While I saw bits of detritus—crumbled oak leaves, a broken quill mashed into the dirt—I couldn’t spot any sign of a circle of metal filings, as I’d seen in the manse. Yet I felt something. My gaze stopped at the post next to the splintered door, where a trio of symbols was carved into the wood, one atop the next. Each contained a thin silver spike embedded in the center. I held my hand before them. My skin tingled.

  “I wouldn’t touch that.”

  I jumped at the sound of Swaine’s voice, pulling my hand back. He’d turned from his bench.

  “I’m sorry, sir.”

  “Do you know what that is?”

  “Is this like that circle, sir? In your house?”

  “Very much like it, albeit a more potent example of a glamour. You know what a glamour is?”

  I shook my head.

  “Not even a guess?” he said.

  “Like—a spell?”

  “Like a spell. Yet different. Any conjecture how?”

  I stared at the symbols, chewing on the corner of my mouth. “You don’t cast it. It’s already cast, sir.”

  “And the key element?”

  I looked back at the symbols, recalling what I’d seen at the house. “The metal, sir?”

  “I’m afraid that metal is just metal, isn’t it? A spoon is metal. A silver pendant is metal. A coin is metal. I doubt very much, then, that it’s the metal.”

  As my family had fashioned metal into all manner of weapons, I was familiar with the utility of steel, of iron, of copper. I recalled what my beloved father, rest his soul, had told me of metal several years prior, standing beside a glowing forge, draped in his heavy leather apron, sweat clinging to his brow: the connection between the will of the maker, and the materials at hand.

  “It’s the intention captured within the metal, sir?” I offered.

  Swaine straightened up, a look of unexpected satisfaction on his face. “You just now constructed that concept?”

  “It’s something my father once said. But I think it right, sir—given what you asked.”

  “I should agree. Bravo. And your father is whom?”

  “Eldridge Finch, sir. He’s dead, sir.”

  “Pity. Of Boston?”

  “London.”

  “And his profession was what?”

  “Weapon smith, sir. To the Crown.” I paused. “Ghosts killed him.”

  “Ghosts?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Ghosts don’t exist.”

  “But—well. I saw them. Sir.”

  “You can’t have. The notion that there are souls who for lack of proper directions are doomed to wander some dark corner of the world, rattling their chains, moaning to be released to some farther stop along the route of the divine is nothing but fancy. Misinterpreted noises. Overheated imaginations. Wishful thinking.”

  “They dragged him through his workshop, sir.” The memory brought back the chill that wracked me on that awful evening. “Dark, like smudges. In the air. And they clawed at him. I watched the blood fly. They—broke his neck against the wall. Sir. Just as—well, just as what happened to the men outside, sir. I’m telling the truth.”

  “I didn’t say I doubted you. I only said ghosts don’t exist. Demons, however, do. Do you know what a demon is?”

  “A—spirit, sir?” I wasn’t sure the distinction mattered. Every waking minute since my father’s death had deepened my life into nightmare, no matter what they were called.

  “Entities. Infernal entities from other, unseen realms. Beings who prowl. Who hunt. Who kill, and worse. Might that be what you sensed?”

  Sensed? Did he think I was making it up? That I was a meek little girl, head filled with tufts of nonsense, feathery words carrying no weight at all, only requiring a proper man to explain the world to me? Did he expect me to stare at the packed earth of the barn floor and nod along as he revealed I’d been carried away by my own overheated imaginings? I raised my eye to Swaine.

  “They killed my father, sir. Then they killed my brothers. Thaddeus, with a knife while he slept. Willie and Roger choked on coal at the same time, in the cellar. Georgie was pushed from the window and broke his neck. Benjamin and Harry burned. Along with the house, sir.”

  He watched me carefully. “And your mother?”

  “She died when I was six. Of yellow fever.”

  “But the rest of your family perished at the hands, if you will, of these entities.”

  “Yes. But that wasn’t all, sir. An associate of my father took me in. Cyrus Beeden. A scythe flew across the stable and cut his head off. His neighbor put me to work in his shop, sanding staves for barrels. Virgil Pyke. Shoved down a flight of stairs, cracked his head and died ten hours later. Derrick Shepley was next, sir—he slit his own throat, even as he fought off the hand that held the knife. Right in front of me, sir. Newton Hutch put me in his print shop. Two weeks later, he was crushed in one of his presses. After him was Mr. Ives, strangled by a shadow. Alastair Bonewhite was hung, and his widow drowned in her wash. And others, sir.”

  Swaine took up a lantern and approached me. “All that would make you quite a fatal little companion, wouldn’t it?”

  “You ought to send me away, sir.”

  “Whatever for?”

  “Well—because—”

  “I’m not frightened of demons. Certainly not the sort you describe: crude, blunt, obvious.”

  “But they’ve killed everyone. Sir.”

  “They haven’t killed me. Nor will they. Furthermore, as long as you wear that pendant, they shan’t kill you—though it is somewhat curious they haven’t already.”

  I’d thought the same thing a thousand times, if I’d thought it once. “Am I cursed, sir?”

  “Only in the figurative sense, I’d wager.” He returned to his workbench. “In the literal sense, doubtful. While I’m no expert in curses, neither is anyone else within a thousand miles of London—and what you describe would be a curse of
a high order. Therefore, unlikely. Not that we oughtn’t check, if only to eliminate the possibility. Step over here.”

  He returned to his bench and located a vial containing a powdery concoction, turning and motioning to the glamour on the floor at the far side of his bench. I stepped over and into the circle.

  “I’m more worried that you’re under the influence of a demon, in some fashion.” He approached me, sprinkled a few shakes of the powder into his palm, and spoke a quick enchantment. “Close your eye.”

  I did so. He blew on the powder. When I opened my eye, a glowing gust of brilliant blue enveloped me, as if I’d stepped into a miniature blizzard of crushed sapphire. After a few moments, the color faded. Swaine motioned for me to brush the excess powder from my chest, my face, my hands. “Well, you’re not under demonic possession, always cause for celebration. No stray demon is lurking near your person. Also good.” He slid the cork back into the vial and rubbed his chin. “William Easterbrook.”

  I swept the last of the powder from my sleeves. “Sir?”

  “Easterbrook. A most paranoid practitioner of the unseen arts. Spent his life worrying over a curse allegedly cast upon him by the wife of his great-uncle. He wouldn’t lift a spoon if he hadn’t tested it for curse magic. Sip from a glass. Step over a root. Clearly not a fellow to bring along if you were in a hurry. But he did leave behind the most comprehensive collection of curse detection in all of English magic—before he died, ironically, of syphilis. Wait here.”