Thieves' Quarry (The Thieftaker Chronicles) by D. B. Jackson Read Free Book Online Page A

the shoreline, ghostly white against the deep blue sky, their cries echoing through the city streets. A line of cormorants, black as pitch, glided just above the surface of the water.
    Ethan could see a few merchant ships on the harbor. Two or three white sails billowed in the distance, and several ships closer to port were already on sweeps. But the fourteen British naval vessels positioned near Castle William, the fortification on Castle Island at the south end of the harbor, dominated the waterways. Even at a distance, Ethan could see red-uniformed soldiers on their decks, and the black iron mouths of the ships’ cannons gaping in the gun ports. Merchant ships piloted by captains less bold than those who had passed the naval vessels on their way to port might already have sailed to Newport or one of the smaller ports in Newbury or Salem. If the Crown’s show of force was intended to choke off the flow of commerce into the city, it appeared to be having the desired effect.
    Ethan considered himself a loyalist. He had little patience with those who rioted in the streets, destroying property as a sign of their dissatisfaction with British colonial rule. Boston had seen too much of this in recent years. Three summers before, when Parliament first announced its intent to impose a stamp duty on all official documents, a mob ransacked the residence of Lieutenant Governor Thomas Hutchinson, as well as the houses of several other Crown officials. And this past June, when customs officers seized a ship belonging to John Hancock and accused the merchant of smuggling, agitators in the city again took to the streets, this time threatening physical violence against Crown representatives.
    Yet he knew as well that the king’s men were far from blameless. The seizure of Hancock’s ship had been a vast overreaction to the merchant’s failure to submit proper papers for a shipment of Madeira wine, and it had given Samuel Adams and his mischief-makers just the excuse they needed to riot. Throughout the summer, Governor Bernard had threatened—unnecessarily, to Ethan’s mind—to post British army troops throughout the city, and as tension between loyalists and some of Boston’s more outspoken Whigs rose, and rumors of the impending occupation spread, prominent men such as James Otis and Adams spoke with ever-increasing frequency of a looming confrontation.
    As a loyal subject of His Majesty King George III, Ethan never had cause to fear any British soldier, at least not before this summer and fall. He had served in the British navy, fought in the Crimean War. He had more in common with the men on those ships than he did with the Adamses, Warrens, and Otises of the world. But he knew better than to think that the hundreds of soldiers waiting out on the harbor had come merely as a demonstration of the Crown’s resolve. Boston was on the verge of becoming an occupied city, and Ethan couldn’t help thinking that the landing of regulars at Boston’s waterfront would lead to problems far worse than those that had brought loyalists and Whigs to this point.
    Nevertheless, the city bustled as it would on any day other than the Sabbath. Though it was early still, both Essex Street and Purchase Street, which followed the South End shoreline northward toward the South Battery, were choked with people and carriages. Wharfmen and sailors made their way from warehouse to warehouse looking for a day’s wage. Merchants in silk suits and peddlers in rags jostled one another, trying to find bargains before off-loaded goods reached the markets of Faneuil Hall.
    Ethan scanned faces as he shouldered his way past people on the street, but he saw neither the bespectacled man nor his brawny friend. To his relief, he also saw no sign of Sephira or her toughs.
    He limped on, his bad leg beginning to grow weary and sore. He couldn’t keep himself from glancing repeatedly at the warships. The lead ship appeared to be a fifth-rate frigate, probably carrying