He was covered in the glow of another man’s power. It shone from his chest, his gut, his limbs. Judging from the way Janna gaped at him, he assumed that it was all over his face.
The glow was unmistakable: a deep aqua, the color of the ocean on a clear, sunlit morn. Once, this had been among his favorite hues, a reminder of the years he had spent at sea, before the Ruby Blade mutiny and his conviction. Now it was the color of apprehension and uncertainty, of torment and pain. It was the color of Nate Ramsey’s conjuring power. And it covered him like disease.
He slashed his knife across his forearm, drawing fresh blood. “Cast the counterspell, Janna. I don’t want to see this.”
She nodded, swallowed. “Vela omnias magias,” she said, her voice low. “Ex cruore evocatas.” Conceal all magicks, conjured from blood.
The glow of Ramsey’s power began to fade, dying away slowly as Ethan watched. He wanted to shout at the magick, to make it vanish that very moment, but the spell Janna had cast didn’t work that way. And truth be told, it mattered not. Now that he knew it was there, he could almost feel the captain’s conjurings on him. His skin crawled with them.
When at last the glow of the spells had disappeared, Janna raised her gaze to his. She opened her mouth to speak, but stopped herself with a small shake of her head. At last she stood and smoothed her dress with the palm of her hand.
“I’ll find you those books,” she said, and left him.
Chapter Fifteen
Janna returned several minutes later bearing three small volumes, all of them leather-bound and worn.
Ethan hadn’t moved. Janna eyed him for several seconds before placing the books on the barrel beside him.
“Why would your spell work that way when mine didn’t?” Ethan asked her, his voice taut.
“I don’t know. But if he’s found a way to use your power the way he would his own, hiding those conjurin’s from you would be easy. Know what I mean?”
Ethan was far beyond his depth; his knowledge of spellmaking had not prepared him for anything like this. But he sensed that she was right, that if Ramsey could turn his magick against him in this way, concealing the residue of his spells would be a small matter. He picked up the books and examined their spines.
“I don’t know what you’ll find in those,” she said. “But they’re the best I’ve got. If you can’t find it in one of them … Well, I think you probably can.”
“My thanks, Janna.” He stood, his legs feeling leaden. “I should go before he casts again and starts a fight in your tavern.”
“You have mullein?” she asked.
“Aye. A pouch full of it.”
“That’s good. Ain’t nothin’ better for protection spells. You should have some betony and horehound, too. Spells in those books might call for them.”
“All right. I’ll have a pouch of each. How much will that cost?”
“A few shillin’s is all.” She was staring at the fire again; Ethan sensed that she was afraid to look him in the eye. “Maybe you should leave Boston. Just until you figure out how to beat him.”
“Kannice said much the same thing.”
“She’s a smart woman.”
“I have a job here. I need to finish it.” As soon as he spoke the words, though, it occurred to Ethan that his job could well take him out of the city to the home of Louisa’s parents. He balked at the very idea of it. Not because he couldn’t leave Boston, but because he didn’t want to. Or rather, because he refused to be driven from the city.
“For all I know, he wants me to leave,” Ethan said, his words filling a growing silence. “Perhaps that’s been his goal all along.”
“His goal is to see you dead, and to take as many other people with you as he can. Clearly he’s alive, but I’d wager every coin in my till that there’s nothin’ left of him but skin and bones and hate. And magick. I understand you not wantin’ to leave. Your woman’s here. Your friends are here. But don’t tell me you’re stayin’ for a job. You’re stayin’ because you wanna fight him, and you don’t wanna run.”
“Aye,” Ethan said. “That’s it precisely. I don’t want to run. I refuse.”
Janna studied him, her expression as hard as obsidian. “All right then. When it comes time to fight him again, you know where to find me.”
Ethan had to smile. “I do. And I’m grateful to you, Janna.”
She waved away his gratitude as if it were a fly. “Let me get them herbs for you.”
Janna left the the kitchen once more. Ethan picked up the books and followed her. His pulse had slowed, and an odd calm had settled over him like a cloak. The surety that Ramsey was in fact alive and back in Boston, the weight of Janna’s books in his hand, his resolve not to leave the city until he had found and defeated Ramsey: All of these served to quiet his mind. He remained afraid of the harm Ramsey might do with one of his spells, and he still felt as though he were corrupted and diseased by the man’s spells. But he would not surrender to Ramsey or to his conjurings, and he clung to that determination to fight the way he would a spar of wood in a storm-roiled sea.
“Here you go,” Janna said, presenting him with a pair of fragrant pouches. “That’s betony on the left and horehound on the right. If you forget which one is which, remember that betony is sweeter, horehound more bitter.”
“Thank you, Janna. How much do I owe you?”
“Four shillin’s.”
Ethan pulled five shillings from his pocket and handed the coins to her. “That’s for my supper and ale as well.”
Janna glanced at them and slipped them into the folds of her dress. “I meant what I said. When it comes time to fight, you find me. Understand?”
“I will.”
He reached for his tankard, which still sat on the bar next to his half-empty bowl of stew, and drained what was left of his ale. He picked up his hat, pulled on his greatcoat, and left the Spider for the cold.
Ethan knew that Kannice would be concerned about him, wondering where he was, but he returned to his room on Cooper’s Alley, and after restarting the fire in his stove, he sat on his bed and began to thumb through the first of Janna’s books.
He searched for any mention of a spell that enabled a conjurer to use the power of another, regardless of whether the second speller gave his consent for such a conjuring. Finding nothing in the first book, he tossed it aside and picked up the second, a volume titled Spells and Incantations of the Necromancers, which had been published in London in 1632. Ethan leafed through this book, once again finding nothing that could help him. He was about to give up on this one and look at the third book when he came upon a page describing “The borrowed incantation.”
He sat up and lit a candle. And then he read.
It was not exactly what Ethan was looking for, but one line in the book’s description of the spell caught his eye. “The borrowed incantation enables one witch to use the power of another to accomplish what he might not on his own.”
There was no mention of the “borrowed incantation” in the remaining pages of the book, nor did he find mention of it when he again scanned the first book.
But the third volume, A Collection of Spells and Conjurings, devoted pages to it. According to the author, a man named Thaddeus Beralt, conjurers might borrow spells from allies or steal them from foes. He seemed to assume that this “borrowing” would always take place in the context of conjuring battles and would require that one conjurer be in close proximity to another. But in every other way, what he described resembled what Ramsey had been doing with Ethan’s power.
“A determined necromancer might pilfer magick from another with ease provided that the second witch is unaware of what the first intends, and has taken no precautions against such violation.”
Ethan frowned at this and searched adjacent pages for other references to the precautions a conjurer might take. He found none.