“They will mean to kill you, assuredly,” Durand said in a matter-of-fact tone to Quire.
“They will try, I know. Perhaps I will kill them.”
The Frenchman grunted, and wiped a weary hand across his damp brow.
“You will not find it easy to kill what is in Blegg. Not easy at all. Still the heart, remove the binding spells from the skin of his hands. Destroy the body, utterly, to its last scrap. And even then…”
Durand shrugged, which made him cough and tremble once more. It took a moment or two for him to recover, before he could speak again.
“He is an old thing. Not like we poor mortals. It takes no more than a fever to put an end to us.” He smiled bitterly. “Should you see Mr. Blegg in your travels, perhaps you could enquire whether he has some little figure of me—made of clay or wood, most likely—about his person.
“He is a great one for making such things. Each of the dead we have raised had one of its own, as part of the binding of flesh and spirit. He hides them away somewhere up on that great hill of yours—Arthur’s Seat. It is a place of old power, evidently. One might be used just as well, I suspect, in the right hands, to separate flesh and spirit. It would need some part of me—hair, perhaps—but he might easily have obtained such a thing while I slept.”
“I’ll bear it in mind,” Quire said.
“Thank you. He will not part with it, of course, but you could ask. This is not how I would choose to die. Ha. How many of us choose how we die, though?”
A flock of kites swept and swirled across the wind. Half a dozen of them, each tethered to the earth, to the hand of a child, by a long, taut string. Each straining against that tether, trying to tear itself free and escape into the sky’s embrace; go dancing off with the wind into the distance.
They floated close by Holyrood Palace, rising up from the fields just to the east of it. There was little by way of flat ground in the King’s Park, and what there was drew families. The parents brought their children, and the children brought paper kites, painted with faces and trailing sinuous tails of ribbon bows. The grass was grazed low by sheep and cattle, and for the younger children in particular it must have felt like a limitless, soft expanse, fit for running and falling and tumbling.
Quire knew, for his friend had told him often enough, that Wilson Dunbar’s was one of those families to be found here, on any Sunday suited to the flying of kites. He walked across the turf towards them with a feeling of sick dread in the pit of his stomach.
He could hear the kite strings thrumming in the wind, and the crack and snap of their long tails. If he had closed his eyes, it could have been the rigging on a fleet of little boats, stirring. The laughter of children fluttered around and through it, light and joyous. Dunbar should be here, a part of it. This, Quire thought miserably, was what he had taken the man away from.
Ellen Dunbar was standing with her back to him, watching her sons happily wrestle with the straining kites, dragging them across the breezes, shouting encouragement up to them. Quire did not know the boys well, for he had never intruded much upon the privacy of Dunbar’s familial life, but he knew how precious that life was. He envied it, though the envy had never troubled their friendship.
“Hello, Ellen,” he said as he drew near.
She half-turned to him, not wanting to lose sight of the boys. The wind that buoyed the kites above them lifted her hair.
“Adam,” she said quietly. “Where is my husband?”
“I thought perhaps he might be here.”
“And I thought he might still be with you, sleeping off drink on a floor somewhere.”
She kept her voice calm and subdued, but Quire could hear the cords of anger, of worry, tight within it. She hid it well. When the boys glanced back from their games with the sky, they saw only their mother in easy conversation with the man they knew as a friend of their father’s.
“So not here, not with you,” Ellen said. “Where is he, then? I don’t know what games the two of you were playing last night, Adam, but I’ll be needing my husband back.”
“I will find him,” Quire said, his guilt souring in his gut. “I promise you that.”
“Be sure you do. Be sure you do.”
Quire stood there, at her shoulder, watching the kites. His gaze drifted up towards the rough, rising swell of Arthur’s Seat. Jackdaws and ravens were cavorting on the boisterous air, up above the high ground, like scrappy black kites launched by the great hill itself. But not tethered, those wilder flags; riding the wind freely, ever on the border between being its master and being mastered by it. Revelling in their nature.
“Get along, please, Adam,” Ellen said. “I don’t want the boys thinking something’s wrong. I don’t want them talking to you.”
Quire approached the Holy Land cautiously, discreetly, in expectation of trouble. It had already proved itself a less anonymous hiding place than he had—perhaps foolishly—hoped. He might not have gone there at all, but for his desire to arm himself. His one remaining pistol and his French sabre resided there, under Cath’s bed.
He found nothing untoward as he turned into Leith Wynd. All was quiet, as only a Sunday could make the Old Town quiet. Those out on the streets were, most of them, in their best church attire, and though some of the shops were open and some stalls doing a sluggish trade, it was not a day for toil.
Quire would not permit himself to relax into the general mood of calm, though. He climbed the stair of the Holy Land quietly, alert to any hint of danger. There was nothing but the usual stale stink of the place, and the light breezes ebbing and flowing through the window apertures.
For all his caution, he was taken entirely unawares by what awaited him within the room he shared with Cath. Isabel Ruthven was seated on the bed.
Cath was kneeling at the fire grate, blowing to put some life into the embers there. She looked up as Quire entered, and smiled broadly at him.
“Ah, Mr. Quire,” Isabel said, before either he or Cath could speak. “I was assured you would appear here sooner or later, and I’m glad it was not too much later. There’s just starting to be a little chill on the air, don’t you think?”
She wore a short, light coat, the bell of her skirts blooming out from under it. Her hands, neatly folded in her lap, were clad in very soft, tan-coloured gloves.
“Here I am,” he said flatly. “Cath, could you leave us alone for a bit?”
Cath’s expression faltered. She caught the leaden tone in Quire’s voice.
“Leave the fire be,” he said, and she rose to her feet, and brushed her hands off on her skirt.
“I’ll see if Emma’s about,” she said, moving carefully past Quire towards the door.
She paused at his shoulder, and whispered to him.
“Did I not do right, letting her in, Adam? Only she said she knew you, and needed to see you quite urgent.”
“It’s all right,” Quire said.
He had not taken his eyes from Isabel Ruthven since entering the room, and did not do so now, as the door scraped shut behind Cath and he edged backwards to set his heel firmly against the base of it. He did not want anyone bursting in behind him.
“What are you doing here?” he asked.
“Oh, dear. I hoped we might attempt, at least, a little civility.”
“That would depend on why you’re here, wouldn’t it?”
“I suppose it might. I fear I am about to disappoint you, then. I have a message for you, Mr. Quire.”
Quire curled his lip in distaste. It had not occurred to him to count Isabel Ruthven amongst the ranks of his enemies. But little about that household had been as it seemed, so he supposed he should not be entirely surprised.
“Ruthven’s got you running foul little errands for him now, has he? Like some scullery maid?”
“Oh, don’t be so wearisome. I’d not run errands for John if my life depended upon it. He’s been no husband to me for years.”
“Blegg, then?”
“Blegg, as you so rudely put it. An entirely different proposition. Really rather intoxicating, when one develops a taste for men possessed of real power. Do you think me dreadful?”
