The Razor's Edge

by Seanan McGuire

  “Sir?”

  “Aye,” Ethan said, studying the young woman. “Just a moment.”

  She paused at the corner of Essex Street, swept Newbury with her gaze one more time, and started down Essex toward the waterfront, lifting her petticoats as she stepped over a puddle.

  Ethan tracked her progress until he could no longer see her.

  “Sir?” the clothier said again, walking back to the front of the shop. “I found several bolts of blue linen, if you care to take a look.”

  “Thank you,” Ethan said, tipping his hat. “And my apologies. I’m afraid I must go. Another matter demands my immediate attention. I’ll return when I can.”

  “But—”

  “Good day.”

  Ethan opened the door more sharply than he had intended. He cursed the jangle of the bell, let himself out of the shop, and shut the door with more care. At the corner, he peered after the woman and saw her some twenty paces ahead of him. He followed.

  The woman in green walked with purpose and never once turned to see who might be following her, which made it that much more surprising when magick surged in the street again and her spectral counterpart to Uncle Reg materialized beside her. This figure, a woman who shone with a faint golden hue, did turn to stare back at Ethan. After a moment, the ghost smiled. Then she faced forward, keeping in step with the young conjurer.

  Ethan could only chuckle and continue to follow. It seemed the woman was more skilled at this sort of intrigue than he had credited. As if reading his thoughts, she halted and half turned.

  “Do you wish to follow me more, or shall we dispense with the games?”

  He looked up and down the lane—it was mostly empty save for the two of them—and approached her with some caution. Already he had warded himself, though only against physical assaults. He hadn’t expected to encounter another conjurer this day. As he neared the woman, he bit down hard on the inside of his cheek. He tasted blood, which he used to source a second warding, this one against any spells she might throw his way.

  The conjuring thrummed, drawing Reg again. The woman’s ghost glared at him. Reg bared his teeth in response.

  “A warding,” the woman said. “You believe I intend you harm?” A sly smile crossed her lips. “Or perhaps you mean to attack me.”

  Her eyes were deep blue and a sprinkling of freckles dotted her cheeks and the bridge of her nose. Her face was round; some might have thought it friendly, open. He didn’t.

  “Why would I attack you?”

  “I could ask you the same,” she said. “Why would you have warded yourself?”

  “Was your finding spell intended for me?”

  She resumed walking toward the wharves. After a moment’s hesitation, Ethan fell in beside her.

  “I felt your earlier spell,” she said. “I was curious.” She regarded him sidelong. “You don’t look like a typical Tory.”

  He couldn’t help glancing around to see if others had heard.

  “I see,” she said. “You’re not a Tory.”

  “I don’t care much for politics one way or another. Patriots. Loyalists. I want no part of either side.”

  She considered him still. After a few seconds she shook her head. “I think you’re lying. I believe you’re very much interested in all that happens in Boston, to Boston.”

  “What makes you—”

  The woman held up a hand, stopping him. “No games, no more lies. Why are you here?”

  “I live here.”

  “Not since His Majesty’s army took the city.”

  Ethan returned her frank stare.

  “That wasn’t my first finding spell, Mister …?”

  “Kaille. Ethan Kaille.”

  Her smile this time seemed free of irony. “Ah, the thieftaker. I wondered when we would meet. You have something of a reputation in this city.”

  “To whom have you been speaking?”

  “Sephira Pryce, Sheriff Greenleaf—”

  “Pryce is a rival,” he said, gazing toward the water. “And Greenleaf hates all conjurers.”

  “Before I sailed from London, I spoke with Governor Hutchinson.”

  Ethan opened his mouth, closed it without a word. He hadn’t expected that. He and the former governor had a long and contentious history.

  “I ask you again, what is a Whig conjurer doing in the city?”

  “You haven’t told me your name.”

  “No, I haven’t.”

  He lifted a shoulder, said nothing.

  The woman huffed a breath. “Catherine Percy. Now, answer my question.”

  “If you’re right about me, why would I tell you anything at all?”

  She paused to pick a dandelion that had flowered between two cobblestones. Her eyes met his for an instant. At the same time, Reg reached toward him with a glowing hand, the specter’s lambent eyes going wide. The only warnings Ethan had.

  The spell carved through his wardings as if they were no more than parchment and crashed into him like a runaway carriage. The force of it lifted Ethan off his feet. He slammed into the building beside him and crumpled to the ground.

  He lay still for a moment, or perhaps an hour. He really couldn’t be sure. His entire body ached. He struggled to draw breath, or to focus on Catherine as she walked to where he lay and stood over him.

  “That was a dandelion,” she said, matter-of-factly. “Imagine what I can do with blood.”

  He looked away from her, found Reg’s gaze with his own. The ghost gave a small shake of his head.

  Ethan tried anyway. He bit his cheek again, drawing more blood, and cast. Despite what she had done to him he had no desire to kill, or even wound. He tried to put her to sleep.

  She laughed.

  “Surely you can do better than that.”

  Another conjuring pounded him, like the butt of a soldier’s musket. His vision swam.

  “You’re overmatched, thieftaker. Just as your fellow Patriots are overmatched by the King’s army. Your cause is doomed.”

  He didn’t respond.

  “One way or another, I will learn why you’ve come,” she said. “And I’ve every confidence that what you tell me will prove of great interest to General Gage.”

  “I have no intention of telling you anything.”

  “Of course not. But prison, and magick, and pain judiciously applied, can alter even the best of intentions. Sheriff Greenleaf is on his way here.”

  Ethan raised himself into a sitting position, braced his hands on the cobblestones beneath him.

  Catherine held up another dandelion and shook her head, much as Reg had moments before. “Don’t make me hurt you again.”

  He lift his hands, held them up for her to see.

  She nodded approval.

  “We’ve heard rumors,” she said. “Word of an impending attack on positions in the city. Is that why you’re here, to reconnoiter for General Washington?”

  Ethan tried to keep surprise from registering on his face. How could she have known so much about their plans? “Do I look like a spy?” he asked.

  She answered with a gentle flick of her slender hand, a gesture that encompassed her face, her hair, her gown. “Do I? Answer the question.”

  He would have liked to stall, hoping that time might reveal an opportunity for escape. But if, as she said, Greenleaf was coming, he had no time to waste.

  Already she had proved that her wardings were more than a match for his conjurings. But what if he didn’t attack her directly? After all, she already held in her hand the source for a spell.

  “Aperi hiatum ex taraxaco evocatum.” Open chasm, conjured from dandelion.

  The rumble of his spell was lost in the rending of rock. A fissure opened in the street beneath her leather shoes. Catherine fought for balance, but fell back into the crevice. Ethan scrambled to his feet and, before she could recover or cast, kicked out, catching her square in the jaw. Her head snapped back and she collapsed. Ethan approached her warily and checked to make certain she
was still breathing.

  Some who fought for the Patriot cause would have wanted him to kill her, to eliminate for good the threat she represented. There were limits, though, to what Ethan was willing to do, even in pursuit of liberty for the colonies. He would not murder, even if ordered to do so by Samuel Adams himself.

  Satisfied that she would recover, albeit with an aching head, Ethan hurried back along Essex to Hill’s Stillhouse. His vision had cleared, and he had found his breath, but every step pained him, and he had a headache of his own.

  He entered the distillery through a side door off the wharf, as he had been instructed. The moment he stepped inside he was nearly overcome with the smell of rum. Eyes watering, vision adjusting to the dim light within, he scanned the space.

  Danny Roan, the man he had come to see, stood near the kiln, stoking the fire with a large bellows. He was stout, dark-haired, with a boyish face, and thick, muscular arms. He caught sight of Ethan, looked around, and beckoned him nearer.

  “I expected you earlier,” he said, gaze darting right and left.

  “I know. I ran into a bit of trouble. I can’t stay long.”

  Danny’s expression hardened. “If there was trouble, you shouldn’t have come at all.”

  “I had no choice. The attack will happen tonight, just after sundown, while there’s still light enough to see.”

  “Tonight,” Danny repeated. He glanced about once more. “Well, that’s …” A smile broke through his frown. “Tonight? Really?”

  “Aye. There have been no more than ten or a dozen men at the guardhouses on the Roxbury side. This is the best chance we’ll have.”

  “I’d like to take more than the Neck, but I suppose Washington knows what he’s doing, eh?”

  “I’m certain Washington will lead us well,” Ethan said, because he felt he should.

  The truth was, he harbored more doubts than his words suggested. In the past few days, since news of George Washington’s arrival in Cambridge spread to Roxbury, many among his Whig friends had spoken with confidence—bordering on arrogance—of a quick victory over the British. Several had predicted that the lobsters’ hold on Boston would be broken before summer’s end.

  Ethan had no reason to doubt Washington’s competence as a leader, but the British were dug in; forcing them from the city would take time. And Ethan feared that Boston had lost its finest military leader three weeks before on Bunker Hill. Young, dashing, intelligent, Doctor Joseph Warren was as passionate an advocate for liberty as anyone, including Samuel Adams. He had also been a friend to Ethan, even before Ethan pledged himself to the Patriot cause. More to the point, he knew the city better than Washington and would have been the natural choice to break this occupation.

  “But we won’t take the city in a single night,” he went on. “Small steps, Danny. We’ll drive them out eventually. It starts at dusk. You know what to do?”

  “We know. You have my word. With all the trouble we intend to stir up in Cornhill tonight, any extra regulars who might otherwise be on the Neck will be in the city instead.”

  Ethan gripped the young man’s shoulder. “Our thanks.”

  He returned to the distillery’s side door and opened it a crack. Seeing no one on the wharf or on the small stretch of strand beside it, he slipped out into the hot air and sunshine. He would have preferred to make his way back to the skiff under the protection of another concealment spell, but he didn’t dare risk a conjuring with Catherine Percy so near.

  He removed his hat and his coat, bundling the latter under his arm, and walked up the wharf and onto the strand as swiftly as his bad leg would allow. The skiff remained where he had left it. He saw no sign of the woman, or of Sheriff Greenleaf and his men. He had abandoned faith long ago, in the heat and brutality of his life as a convict, but he could almost convince himself that God himself smiled on their endeavor.

  Once on the water again, Ethan rowed himself to a cluster of fishing boats, shipped his oars, and reached for the pole he had stowed in the vessel. He lingered there, fishing with the rest, trading greetings and comments on the day with other fishermen.

  “Hot as the devil, even on the water.”

  “They were biting earlier. Not as much now.”

  “At least the lobsters don’t tax our catches.” This last from a bold soul.

  Some of the fishermen laughed. Others scowled in disapproval. Every one of them cast at least a glance in the direction of the warships moored near Long Wharf.

  After a while, Ethan rowed to another group, closer to Roxbury. And when he had spent a bit of time with them, he continued to shore.

  The militiamen on the road leading into town recognized him and let him pass. At the first lane on the west side of the road, he turned and made his way to the farmhouse of Robert Lyons, where the militia leaders had set up their headquarters. More than a hundred soldiers prowled the grounds of the house. They looked young and restless and, Ethan had to admit, not nearly as formidable as the regulars he had seen on the Neck.

  The majority of Boston’s most prominent Whigs had been forced to leave the city’s immediate environs after His Majesty’s forces took Bunker Hill. Samuel Adams and John Hancock were now in Philadelphia as members of the Continental Congress. Paul Revere had joined the Committee of Safety in Cambridge.

  But William Dawes remained in Roxbury and had assumed command of the raid planned for this evening. A tanner by trade, he had become a local hero, along with Revere and Samuel Prescott, on the night before the battles of Lexington and Concord. If not for their warnings, shouted into the night as they rode through the countryside, those first skirmishes with the British might have turned out far worse for colonial forces.

  Dawes was also a member of the Massachusetts Artillery Company. Less than a year before, he had been instrumental in the success of a plot to steal several small cannons from the British. Two of those pieces currently sat in the Lyons’ barn awaiting this night’s assault on the Neck.

  Dawes was a big man, heavy around the middle, with thick, unruly hair, and a broad, homely face.

  When Ethan entered the Lyons house, Dawes greeted him with a booming “Kaille!”

  Ethan grinned. “Good day, sir.”

  Dawes sat at the dining table, a cup of watered Madeira set precariously amid several maps.

  “All went as planned?”

  Ethan faltered for the span of a single heartbeat, but that was enough.

  Dawes turned to the young militiaman standing near the table. “Leave us.” Once the soldier was gone, he beckoned Ethan to the table with a meaty hand. “What’s happened?”

  Speaking in low tones, Ethan described for the tanner his encounter with Catherine Percy. As he spoke, a grimace settled on Dawes’ face.

  “You say she’s like you?” he asked, when Ethan had finished.

  “A conjurer, you mean.”

  “Aye.”

  Ethan nodded. “Yes. A powerful one. I escaped her, but only just. That’s the least of our worries. She knows we’re planning a raid. And if she knows—”

  “Of course they know,” Dawes said, dismissing Ethan’s concern with a wave of his hand. “They know everything, and they know nothing. They can’t expect us to give up Boston, and so this woman can say to you in all honesty that she knows we’re planning something. She’ll even know that the first assault will come from Roxbury. What choice do we have? We’re no match for His Majesty’s navy, but by the same token, they can’t fight us in the countryside. We’ve already proved that to them.” He sipped his wine. “No, Kaille. What she knows about our plans is far less important than what she might do with her witchery.” Dawes cringed. “Forgive me. Her … what do you call it?”

  “Her conjurings.”

  “Aye, those. It falls to you, Kaille. We can take the gate. But only if you can keep this woman at bay. Understood?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The tanner nodded. “Good. You spoke to the lad at the stillhouse?”

  “I did. H
e and his friends will see to it that the gate has no reinforcements tonight.”

  “Well done.” Dawes gazed out the nearest window. “We’ve a few hours still until dusk. There’s nothing more you can do. Get something to eat and be ready come sundown.”

  “I will be. Thank you, sir.”

  Ethan exited the house, but despite his orders from Dawes, he didn’t bother searching for food. His stomach felt tight, uneasy. He had fought at Concord and also on Breed’s Hill. He didn’t fear battle any more or any less than the next man, but in those engagements Patriot forces had faced only the might of the British army. They hadn’t been tasked with fighting magick as well. This night’s skirmish promised to be tiny by comparison, yet he dreaded the encounter, knowing the woman in green would be there and determined to have her revenge.

  * * *

  At day’s end, with the sun low in the west casting golden light and long shadows across the fields of Roxbury, William Dawes mustered nearly two hundred militiamen into formation. The two cannons had been brought forth from the barn on horse drawn carts.

  Ethan stood with the other soldiers, a musket braced on his shoulder, his knife on his belt. Dawes had made it clear he wanted him on the front line, not because he was a good marksman, though he was, but because they might need his magick before the night was over.

  Kannice had long urged him to join the Patriot cause, but seeing him at the fore of this company, she would have been more worried than proud.

  They marched toward the causeway, following the road as far as they could without alerting the guards on the Neck to their approach. At a signal from Dawes, they halted and waited while the cannons were unhinged from the horses.

  Then they resumed their advance, silent, concealed first by trees and then by the dimming of the day. Several men pulled each of the cannons. Once in the marshes, they kept low, as Ethan had earlier that afternoon. A soft wind blew—not enough to cool the air, but enough to mask the sound of their advance. Two men stood outside the guardhouses at the Town Gate. Neither appeared to take any notice of the colonial force.