Faith Hunter - Water Witch Read online

  “Just as does every other merchant captain from London, I’d wager. I find it hard to imagine that this is why our fae came to Boston.”

  “Are they going to drop the agreements?” Hannah asked. For well more than a year now, Samuel Adams and others had insisted that non-importation of British goods would end only when all the Townshend Acts were repealed by Parliament. In the aftermath of the bloody massacre this past March, many of them had been, but not all. The duty on tea remained in place. Still, radicals in Albany, Providence, and Newport had given up nonimportation.

  Aunt Emma spoke highly of Mister Adams, and some of the young men Hannah knew, including Joseph Foulke, who worked for a peddler in Faneuil Hall, and sometimes gave her sweets when his employer wasn’t watching, had joined the Sons of Liberty. There were, however, certain cuts of cloth that Hannah longed to buy but couldn’t without violating the boycott of those merchants who refused to abide by nonimportation. It would have been easier if Boston’s radicals followed the lead of those in other cities.

  “Samuel Adams will not surrender on this issue, or any other, unless he has no choice,” Kaille told her. “I doubt very much that they’ll drop the agreements. But that is of less interest to me than the matter of your fae. Why would he care in the least about nonimportation? Unless that’s merely an excuse for his being here. Did they speak of anything else?”

  “Well, he did inquire about the trial of Captain Preston and the other soldiers involved in the massacre.”

  “Do you remember what he asked?”

  “Merely when it would begin; the merchant had no answer.”

  “No,” Kaille said, his brow furrowing, “I don’t imagine he did.”

  “Do you know what any of this means?”

  He shook his head. “Any captain arriving in Boston might ask about such things—they’re much on people’s minds of late. If you weren’t so certain that this man is not what he seems, I’d think little of it.”

  “But the fact is, I am certain,” Hannah said. She heard doubt creeping back into the thieftaker’s tone, and she was determined to quash it. “This captain is of the fae, Mister Kaille. I don’t know his purpose in coming here, but I know what he is, his appearance notwithstanding.”

  “All right, then. Let’s find him.”

  They continued on to Cornhill and then made their way down to the waterfront. In spite of the mist that had blanketed the city the previous evening, Boston had enjoyed a mild, pleasant spring, and the harbor and her docks teemed with ships and sailors, wharfmen and merchants.

  “He could be on any of those ships,” Hannah said, as much to herself as to Kaille.

  “True. Let’s walk a bit. Perhaps something will catch your eye.”

  She nodded and followed him along the waterfront toward Long Wharf and Minot’s T. She couldn’t help noticing that his limp had grown more pronounced throughout the morning.

  “Your leg,” she said. “Did I do that to you with my working last night?”

  He laughed. “No. I hurt my leg a long time ago.”

  “How?”

  “Another time, perhaps, Miss Everhart. We don’t know each other that well. Not yet.”

  They walked on, saying nothing, his eyes scanning the water and the piers. She looked as well, but had no idea what she was searching for. At the Town Dock, he paused, squinting against the sun.

  “Well, that’s interesting,” he said.

  “What is?”

  “Look over there at Wentworth’s Wharf. Tell me what you see.”

  She gazed in the direction he indicated, shielding her eyes with an open hand. “I see ships, men, warehouses.” She glanced sidelong at the thieftaker, searching for some reaction. He kept his eyes on the wharf. “I’m not certain what I should be looking for.”

  “Do you notice anything about the ships?”

  Hannah frowned, but surveyed the wharf again. There were at least a half dozen vessels tied to bollards on the pier, most of them clustered near the base of the wharf closest to Ann Street. Most, but not all.

  “That ship there,” she said, pointing to a large, two-masted vessel at the far end of the dock. “It’s all by itself.”

  The thieftaker’s grin was hard, feral. “Curious, isn’t it? That’s a Bermuda Sloop. Such vessels are popular with merchant captains, because they carry a good deal of cargo, yet have shallow enough draft to accommodate tropical harbors. And if she was loaded when she arrived, her captain chose the worst spot on the wharf from which to offload his goods. Why would he do that?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know.”

  “Neither do I. But perhaps we should take a closer look.”

  They walked to the pier and then ventured out past the other ships, halting some distance from the vessel in question. The ship shifted gently with the incoming tide, the ropes holding her creaking softly. But otherwise she was perfectly still. Hannah saw no one on her decks, or even on the wharf near her.

  “No one seems to be home,” Kaille said. He took another few steps toward the vessel, then stopped again and glanced behind them. “I’d like to go aboard, but I don’t dare.” He whispered something Hannah couldn’t quite hear, and a moment later his spectral guide was back, as thin as smoke in the bright sun. “I want you to search that ship,” he said. “Tell me what you find.”

  The specter grinned and vanished.

  “Come with me,” the thieftaker said, heading back toward the street. “Reg will find us wherever we are, and I don’t want the captain to happen upon us when we’re so close to his ship.”

  They returned to Ann Street, and strolled deeper into the North End, as if enjoying the day. After perhaps a quarter of an hour, the spectral guide winked back into view, making Hannah start.

  Reg was no longer smiling. He planted himself in front of Kaille and began to gesture wildly.

  “Slow down,” Kaille said. “I can’t follow what you’re trying to tell me.”

  They stood thus for a minute or two, Kaille watching the ghostly figure as the old man continued to gesture, his glowing face as animated as Hannah had seen it.

  “What is he saying?” Hannah asked, when at last she could wait no more.

  “Sometimes I truly wish he could speak,” Kaille said. “But from what I gather, the vessel is essentially empty. It holds no cargo, and more to the point, carries no crew. There’s no indication that it ever did.”

  “Are you saying the captain sailed here alone?”

  “No. I expect men here on the waterfront would have noticed if that were the case. It may be that he has others of his kind with him, or perhaps creatures of some other sort are sailing with him. But it’s not a human crew.”

  She shuddered.

  “That’s not all. Reg found one chamber below decks that is set up more like a prison than quarters. There’s a cell down there with iron bars and a formidable lock.”

  “Is that unusual?”

  “On a merchant ship? Very. The cargo hold is designed for just that: cargo. Even a naval vessel doesn’t have a gaol; those who deserve punishment are dealt with in . . . other ways.”

  She heard a catch in his voice as he said this, but before she could ask him how he knew so much about life at sea, he went on: “I’d say it’s likely our captain intends to take someone from the city, back to England perhaps.”

  “But who?”

  “I can think of only one man who would be worth this much trouble to those back in London.”

  “Samuel Adams,” Hannah said.

  “Aye. Without him, I believe the patriot cause would wither and die.” He turned and started back toward the central lanes of the town. “Whatever you need to do to the brooch to cast your spell, you should start doing it. We may not have much time.”

  It’s a working, not a spell.

  She kept this to herself and followed, at times having to lift her petticoats and run to keep up with him. By the time he halted on Union Street, outside a plain-looking brick building, she was b
reathless, her face coated with a fine sheen of perspiration.

  “What is this place?” she asked.

  “It’s the home of the Green Dragon, the tavern in which the Sons of Liberty meet.” The street was crowded, and as Kaille took in the scene he began to shake his head. “He wouldn’t do it here,” he said, speaking more to himself than to her.

  He struck out southward, his limp pronounced and painful looking. Hannah had little choice but to hurry after him. They followed a winding, confounding route through the lanes of the South End, emerging at last onto Purchase Street near the soaring spire of the New South Church.

  Again the thieftaker halted, this time pointing at a house with an observatory and extensive gardens, which overlooked the waterfront.

  “Samuel Adams’ house,” he said.

  Hannah hardly heard him. “He’s near.”

  “The fae captain?”

  “Yes. I . . . I sense him.” Her throat tightened around the words, and abruptly she felt small and very young. She wondered how she would ever manage to defeat the fae. She had been a fool.

  “Will he know you’re here, as well?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “All right, do what you must to prepare. I’ll keep you safe.”

  She met his gaze and nodded, her pulse racing. There were no patches of dirt anywhere near, and Hannah didn’t think Mister Adams, or any of his neighbors, would appreciate having a circle carved in their garden plots. But she found a loose stone on the street and scraped a crude circle on the cobblestone street.

  The fae was drawing nearer. His presence—her awareness of his power—pressed on her senses, like darkness looming at the periphery of her vision. Her hands shook as she withdrew the brooch from within her gown.

  Its diamonds glittered in the dappled sunlight, but it was the sapphire that drew her eye. A sinuous white line, as inconstant as starlight, marked its middle, and the blue of the stone was deeper than any sky or sea she had ever known. Giving it back to the Grews would not be easy.

  She closed her eyes briefly, imagining the working. The fae’s guise was like nothing she had encountered. It was more than a mask, more than a disguise. It was a shell; the creature dwelled within. And so she needed to crack that shell, to split him open so that she and Kaille could treat with the fae in its true form.

  Hannah opened her eyes again and gave a small nod, though Kaille wasn’t watching her. The working would need to fall upon the creature like a hammer blow. Doing so, it would break the shell. She reached for the harbor waters anchoring herself to the sapphire, using its bond with the earth to bridge the distance between herself and the water.

  It seemed that tidewater swirled around her, the surge and retreat of the current filling her, replenishing her power, slaking a thirst she could not name or explain. She was water itself, and she was the light sparkling on its surface; she was ancient and new and so alive she wanted to laugh aloud.

  And then someone did laugh. It seemed to Hannah that her strength iced over and fractured at the touch of that mocking, hateful sound.

  She turned, noting that Kaille did as well, their movements synchronized as if rehearsed.

  The sea captain she had first seen in Cornhill stood a short distance off, at the end of Long Lane. He appeared as she remembered: his hair silver, his face ruddy and broad, his gut ample but not grotesquely so. He wore a white linen shirt and black breeches, and over these a long blue coat, with brass buttons that shone in the sunlight. He was the very picture of a sea captain.

  But only now, seeing him once again, searching for signs of his subterfuge, did Hannah notice details she had missed during their previous encounter. His irises were inky black, so that it was impossible to see the pupils within, and the whites of his eyes were shot through with red, as if he had spent much of the day in his cups. His teeth, on the other hand, were perfectly white and looked to be as sharp as saw teeth.

  “A witchling,” he said in a heavy brogue, approaching them. “And a conjurer.” The way he spoke this last word, one might have thought he had called Kaille a blackguard.

  The thieftaker eased nearer to her. He had his blade in hand and a bloody wound on his forearm, though Hannah hadn’t seen him draw the knife or cut himself.

  “Your magicking will not avail you here, conjurer,” the captain said. Hannah noticed, though, that he had halted where he was.

  “Are you sure?” Kaille asked. “Maybe you’d like to come closer and have a better look.”

  The fae bared his razor teeth.

  Kaille stepped in front of her, partially blocking her view of the creature, and its view of her. “What are you doing here?” he asked. “Why have you come to Boston?”

  “Captain Cleary has business here.”

  “There is no Captain Cleary.”

  “Oh, but you are wrong. There has been such a man, and there will continue to be so long as we need him.”

  “What do your kind care of rebels and Tories? Why would you come here for Adams?”

  Hannah closed her eyes again, touched the sapphire with her mind so that she might use the power that lingered there to pull the tide to her, to make it her own.

  “That is not yours to know,” the captain said, his tone as sharp as broken glass, the words thickened with his burr. “What is the girl doing?”

  Current and eddy, surge and flow. She gathered them, anchoring them in the stone.

  The cobbles beneath her rumbled again, as they had when the thieftaker summoned his spectral guide, and an instant later an unearthly shriek rent the air. Hannah winced, but held fast to the energy building within her.

  “For that you shall pay!” The threat reached her as a snarl and a rasp; there was nothing human in that voice.

  She sensed that the fae was summoning power of its own, and she feared Kaille would not survive its assault. She would have liked to let the power swirl within her for another few moments, but she dared not delay. Opening her eyes, seeking the captain, her feet still within the crude circle she had drawn in the lane, she directed the working at the fae.

  Power poured from her. She felt it leave her chest, her eyes, her fingertips. She was aflame with it.

  The fae screamed again. Light flared, blinding her, making her turn away. Silver, like the ocean beneath a hazy sun, but tinged with the blue of the stone.

  A heartbeat later the luminance had spent itself, and she found herself on nothing more or less than a quiet, sunlit street. The hale captain had vanished, and in his place there now stood a creature the like of which Hannah had never imagined.

  It was half the size of a man, naked and hairless, its skin the color of ash, its limbs short but its hands and feet tapered and almost graceful. If not for the black eyes and those terrible teeth, bared in its rage, Hannah might not have believed that this could be the same creature.

  It leveled a long finger at Hannah. “You!”

  The air around the fae crackled as from a lightning strike. Kaille jumped in front of her, only to be knocked aside as if by a giant fist. The thieftaker hit the cobbles hard, rolled twice and lay still.

  “You should not have interfered!” the creature said, advancing on her again.

  She still stood in the circle, and the stone remained in her hand. Pulling power from the harbor yet again, she sheathed herself in a warding. At the same time, the fae cast. But this working rebounded and struck the creature in the chest, so that it tumbled back in a frenzy of flailing limbs.

  And before the fae could do or say more, Kaille, still prone, slashed at his arm with the blade and shouted something in Latin. The conjuring thrummed as had his previous ones.

  The creature’s eyes went wide, and it let out yet another screech.

  “What is this? What have you done to me?”

  “It’s called a binding spell.” The thieftaker climbed to his feet, his movements stiff. “It will hold you for as long as I will it.”

  “Are you all right?” Hannah asked. She remained in the ci
rcle, eyeing Kaille and the fae in turn.

  “I’m fine.” He walked to where the creature lay. “You came for Adams, isn’t that right?”

  The fae said nothing. It appeared to be struggling against Kaille’s conjuring, though to no effect. The thieftaker raised his knife to his forearm.

  “Yes,” it said, hissing the word. “I came for Samuel Adams.”

  “Why? What is your interest in him?”

  Nothing.

  Kaille cut his arm again, as if to conjure.

  “No!” The fae strained in vain against invisible bonds and then howled like a cornered beast. “I have no interest . . . in him . . . or in you,” it said, panting. “But the appetites of my kind . . . are not dissimilar from those of humans. Land, gold, gems, wine . . . These and more have been promised us in return for our . . . services.”

  “Land? What land would the king’s men—” Kaille exhaled, muttered a curse. “Land here, you mean, in North America. Of course. Help His Majesty preserve the colonies, and there would be land aplenty for you. And riches as well—all that this New World has to offer.”

  The creature gave a jerky nod. “Just so.”

  “You’re mercenaries.”

  “Call us what you will. I am not alone. The Unseelie are formidable warriors. Woe to those who would hinder us.”

  “Yes, well we know of you now. We’ll be watching.”

  “Watch all you like, conjurer. You cannot be everywhere. Your numbers are too small. Even with witches like this one helping you.”

  “What are we going to do with it?” Hannah asked.

  Kaille turned to her. “What would you suggest? No gaol will hold it, and though it might take a day, eventually it will defeat my binding.”

  She shook her head. “I’m not sure. Is there a more permanent way to hold it? A circle perhaps, like the one I’ve drawn? But deeper, in the earth. Perhaps lined with something powerful. Silver might work. Or copper.”

  The creature gaped at her. “No!”

  “There may be,” Kaille said, considering the fae again. “Clearly, it doesn’t like that idea. Or we could simply kill it and be done.”