A Plunder of Souls (The Thieftaker Chronicles) by D. B. Jackson Read Free Book Online Page B

burial cloth had been slit open with a blade. He could see that her body was badly decomposed.
    “They took her head and right hand, just like with the last one,” Thomson said. “And they took a shred of clothing, too.”
    “What shred?” Ethan asked.
    “They cut a square from her dress. That’s not important.” He uncovered her chest. The symbol carved into her leathered skin was similar to the other one. Similar, but not identical. The lines within the triangle were curved, rather than straight—like waves.
    “Do you think that was intentional?” Ethan asked.
    “I’m sure of it. Because every dead man who was dug up has the other mark, and every dead woman has this one. So tell me, thieftaker, what do you suppose that means?”
    Ethan had no answer. “How many graves have been disturbed?” he asked instead.
    “Nine of them, all told.”
    “And you say all of them were newly dug?”
    “Aye.”
    “And over how many nights have the desecrations taken place?”
    “Three nights. The first graves were dug up on Sunday last. The thieves came back on Tuesday, and again last night.”
    “Can you show me more of them?”
    Thomson stood again, and set out in the direction of the nearest open grave. He had started to favor his right leg. “You can see all of them for all I care. There’s not much difference among them.”
    He pointed down into this third site. Ethan could see what he meant. The damage to the coffin was much the same; once again the burial cloth had been sliced open. The head was gone, as was the right hand. And the decaying skin over the woman’s heart had been scored just the way Abigail Rowan’s had been.
    “Then maybe there’s no need for me to look at the rest,” Ethan said.
    “Oh, I think there is,” the sexton said. “I expect you’ll be thinking of them differently once you’ve seen them all.”
    “What do you mean?”
    Thomson regarded Ethan through narrowed eyes. “Why don’t you walk with me for a time, and look at each grave, and after you can tell me what you think I mean.”
    “All right,” Ethan said.
    For the next quarter hour, Ethan and Thomson walked from gravesite to gravesite, examining the exposed bodies, comparing the marks on their skin and taking stock of what clothing had been taken. Pell and the warden trailed behind them, both of them keeping silent. Pell still grimaced at what he saw in the broken coffins, but like Ethan, he seemed to have become inured to the smell. Gardiner had pulled out a handkerchief of his own, and he held it firmly over his mouth and nose.
    After looking at all of the desecrated graves, Ethan circled back to take second looks at a couple of them. At last he halted near the first grave Thomson had shown them. He stared at the ground, trying to make sense of what he had seen.
    “I was wrong before,” he said at length. “The warden and I both were. These men weren’t careless. They had a specific purpose in mind. I don’t know what it was, but they made their marks, they took the head and hand from each body, and they took the scrap of clothing as well.”
    “Can you think of any reason why someone might do that?”
    Ethan turned. Mister Pell stood a short distance off, his skin flushed, a sheen of sweat on his cheeks and brow. He spared not even a glance for the sexton. He had asked his question of Ethan alone, and Ethan could tell that he was asking him to respond not as a thieftaker, but as a conjurer. He thought once more of the spells that had awakened him during the night. Perhaps he hadn’t dreamed them after all. This last, though, he kept to himself.
    “I can’t,” Ethan said. “Not yet. But there must be a reason, and a meaning to those symbols.” He thought once more of Janna. If anyone could tell him how a conjurer might use what had been taken from the dead, it was her. “I can speak to some people. One person in particular, who knows more about this sort of thing than I do.”
    Pell nodded.
    “But you