“Keep him here, no matter what he says. And put him upstairs, in one of the back rooms, where no one will think to look for him.”
Ethan ran from the Dowser to Cornhill. By the time he turned onto the narrow byway known as Pierce’s Alley, both his bad leg and his newly injured knee throbbed, and his lungs were burning. The lane was but a single block long, running between King Street and Dock Square, but Ethan didn’t have time to check every door on the street. He stopped in at a small grocery, assuming that it was the one shop on the lane most likely to see business from everyone in the neighborhood.
As he entered the store, an old woman behind the counter eyed him with manifest distrust. When he asked where he might find Deborah’s home, she scowled at him and called for her husband.
The man who emerged from the storeroom looked even more ancient than his wife. But he smiled at Ethan’s question and nodded with more exuberance than might have been wise.
“Oh, I know her,” he said. “Pretty thing; sweet as can be. I make a point of calling her ‘Miss Crane.’ She seems to like that. Makes her feel like a proper lady, I think.”
“Just give him the number, Walter,” the woman said.
Something in her voice made the man flinch.
“Twenty-seven,” he said, with considerably less enthusiasm. “It’s three buildings down toward King, on the other side of the lane. She lives upstairs with her sister.”
“Thank you.” Ethan nodded to the man and then to his wife, who scowled again. Back out on the street he limped to the building the man had described. At street level, it was a milliner’s shop. But a stairway at the side of the building led to a wooden door. Like Diver’s building this one was brick, the original structure no doubt having been burned in the fire of 1760. Ethan climbed the stairs and knocked on the door. When no one answered, he tried again.
He heard no sound from within. He tried the door handle, but it was locked. Glancing down at the street to make sure that no one was watching, he drew his knife and pushed up his sleeve. To his surprise, there was still dried blood there. He had never conjured after cutting himself that last time at Sephira’s house. “Resera portam ex cruore evocatum,” he whispered, not bothering to cut himself again. Unlock door, conjured from blood. The latch clicked as Uncle Reg appeared at his side. Ethan pushed the door open and peered into the dark room. He hesitated before stepping inside.
A pale blue waistcoat that Ethan recognized as Diver’s lay over the arm of a chair, and a Monmouth cap that might well have been his, too, sat on the table beside it. But he saw nothing to indicate where Diver might have gone, or who he intended to meet. After looking around for another minute or two, he left the room, locked the door, and descended the stairs.
As he reached the street, he heard someone call out, “Mister Kaille!”
He spun, drew his knife, and dropped into a fighter’s crouch, all in one motion, all without thinking. Seeing the red-haired woman walking toward him, he straightened and slipped his blade back into its sheath.
“Miss Crane,” he said.
“Thank goodness you’re here,” she said, halting in front of him. She sounded winded, and her cheeks were flushed. “I was just at the Dowsing Rod. The woman there told me that you had gone to my home to find Derrey. I’m glad I caught you before you left.”
“Do you know where he is?” he asked.
She shook her head and swallowed, still trying to catch her breath. Ethan wasn’t certain that he would have remembered the woman from their first brief meeting at Diver’s room; he’d had other matters on his mind, and she had left quickly. She was both taller and prettier than Ethan recalled. She stood an inch or two shorter than he. Her eyes were bright blue and she had a generous sprinkling of freckles across the bridge of her straight nose. She wore a simple green gown and quilted petticoats beneath a scarlet woolen cape.
“I haven’t seen him since last night,” she said. “He said he was going to the Dowsing Rod to find you and that he’d be back later.”
It seemed to Ethan that the temperature around them dropped like a stone. “And he never came back?”
“No. I finally fell asleep and when I woke this morning, I was still alone.”
“Did he tell you anything else? Anything at all?”
She shook her head, her expression pained. “Very little.”
Of course. He had insisted on Diver’s discretion, and this one time his friend had done as he instructed.
“Did he say anything about someone he was supposed to meet? Aside from me, I mean.”
“He did say he had to meet someone-that he was doing it for you-but he told me nothing about her, either.”
Ethan felt a sudden tightness in his chest. “Her? It was a woman?”
“Yes, I think so.”
He had to resist the impulse to go back to Sephira’s home and smash it to pieces. What had she said to him just a short while before? You have friends, and I know who they are. Had she taken Diver as a prisoner before he even got there? Had she already killed him?
“Did he say it was Sephira Pryce?” Ethan asked, afraid to hear the woman’s answer.
“Miss Pryce?” Deborah repeated, sounding like that had been the last name she expected to hear. “Oh, no. He didn’t mention her at all.”
That stopped him short. “You’re sure?”
“I would have remembered if he had mentioned her. She’s a very important lady.”
How could he argue? “But who-?”
It came to him in a rush, stealing his breath. He had been staggeringly stupid for so long. And it was possible that his foolishness had cost Diver his life. I’ll be keeping an eye on you, he had told him. I won’t let anything happen to you. How could he have failed his friend so miserably?
“Mister Kaille?” Deborah said, leaning toward him, her forehead creasing with concern. “Are you all right?”
“Go upstairs,” Ethan said. “Don’t open your door for anyone other than Diver or me.”
“All right,” she said, wide-eyed and puzzled. “Do you know where he’s gone?”
“I have an idea, yes.”
He started away, heading toward Dock Square and the North End.
“Do you think he’s all right?” the woman called after him.
“I hope so,” he said without breaking stride.
* * *
The home of the sisters Osborne wasn’t far from Pierce’s Alley, but even running, his leg and knee aching, Ethan felt like it took hours to cover the distance. If Caleb Osborne was still alive, his daughters would know. They might well have been sheltering him. From the first day Ethan spoke to them, they had struck him as odd. Perhaps they had been hiding the truth from him all this time. Perhaps they had been working with their father to gain the riches he stole from Sephira. That would explain why they had been so reluctant to speak of Simon Gant. Not only did they fear the man, they also knew that their father intended to steal the pearls from him. They might even have known that he intended to kill his old associate.
As he approached the worn wheelwright’s shop on Wood Lane, Ethan pulled his knife free and pushed up the sleeve of his coat. He wanted to be ready if Osborne was there. Pausing at the base of the dilapidated stairway, he cut himself, then faltered once more. He wanted to try a listening spell, but any conjurer in the North End would sense the power of it. A conjurer in the room above him might well determine from the casting just how close Ethan was. He started up the stairs, taking each step with painstaking care and wincing at every creak and crack of the ancient wood. When at last he reached the door, he half expected to see it crash open, revealing Caleb Osborne, knife in hand, blood welling from a fresh wound.
But nothing happened, and when Ethan pressed his ear to the side of the building, he heard not a sound within.
He tried the door handle. Locked. Knowing that he was taking a risk, he spoke the unlocking spell again, and at the sound of the lock tumbling, let himself into the Osborne sisters’ room. As before, the floor and furniture were littered with colorful cushions. Molly Osborne had been working her fingers to the bone. The faint aroma of cooked meat hung in the air, but otherwise Ethan saw nothing to suggest that anyone had been there for hours.