Outlander 03 - Voyager

thick dark hair.

“Well, then,” he said. He took one or two deep breaths, and turned to his son.

“Come along, then,” he said. “I’ve a room at Halliday’s.”

Young Ian’s bony fingers tightened on mine. His throat worked, but he didn’t move to rise from his seat.

“No, Da,” he said. His voice quivered, and he blinked hard, not to cry. “I’m no going wi’ ye.”

Ian’s face went quite pale, with a deep red patch over the angular cheekbones, as though someone had slapped him hard on both cheeks.

“Is that so?” he said.

Young Ian nodded, swallowing. “I—I’ll go wi’ ye in the morning, Da; I’ll go home wi’ ye. But not now.”

Ian looked at his son for a long moment without speaking. Then his shoulders slumped, and all the tension went out of his body.

“I see,” he said quietly. “Well, then. Well.”

Without another word, he turned and left, closing the door very carefully behind him. I could hear the awkward thump of his wooden leg on each step, as he made his way down the stair. There was a brief sound of shuffling as he reached the bottom, then Bruno’s voice in farewell, and the thud of the main door shutting. And then there was no sound in the room but the hiss of the hearthfire behind me.

The boy’s shoulder was shaking under my hand, and he was holding tighter than ever to my fingers, crying without making a sound.

Jamie came slowly to sit beside him, his face full of troubled helplessness.

“Ian, oh, wee Ian,” he said. “Christ, laddie, ye shouldna have done that.”

“I had to.” Ian gasped and gave a sudden snuffle, and I realized that he had been holding his breath. He turned a scorched countenance on his uncle, raw features contorted in anguish.

“I didna want to hurt Da,” he said. “I didn’t!”

Jamie patted his knee absently. “I know, laddie,” he said, “but to say such a thing to him—”

“I couldna tell him, though, and I had to tell you, Uncle Jamie!”

Jamie glanced up, suddenly alert at his nephew’s tone.

“Tell me? Tell me what?”

“The man. The man wi’ the pigtail.”

“What about him?”

Young Ian licked his lips, steeling himself.

“I think I kilt him,” he whispered.

Startled, Jamie glanced at me, then back at Young Ian.

“How?” he asked.

“Well…I lied a bit,” Ian began, voice trembling. The tears were still welling in his eyes, but he brushed them aside. “When I went into the printshop—I had the key ye gave me—the man was already inside.”

The seaman had been in the backmost room of the shop, where the stacks of newly printed orders were kept, along with the stocks of fresh ink, the blotting papers used to clean the press, and the small forge where worn slugs were melted down and recast into fresh type.

“He was taking some o’ the pamphlets from the stack, and putting them inside his jacket,” Ian said, gulping. “When I saw him, I screeched at him to put them back, and he whirled round at me wi’ a pistol in his hand.”

The pistol had discharged, scaring Young Ian badly, but the ball had gone wild. Little daunted, the seaman had rushed at the boy, raising the pistol to club him instead.

“There was no time to run, or to think,” he said. He had let go my hand by now, and his fingers twisted together upon his knee. “I reached out for the first thing to hand and threw it.”

The first thing to hand had been the lead-dipper, the long-handled copper ladle used to pour molten lead from the melting pot into the casting molds. The forge had been still alight, though well-banked, and while the melting pot held no more than a small puddle, the scalding drops of lead had flown from the dipper into the seaman’s face.

“God, how he screamed!” A strong shudder ran through Young Ian’s slender frame, and I came round the end of the sofa to sit next to him and take both his hands.

The seaman had reeled backward, clawing at his face, and upset the small forge, knocking live coals everywhere.

“That was what started the fire,” the boy said. “I tried to beat it out, but it caught the edge of the fresh paper, and all of a sudden, something went whoosh! in my face, and it was as though the whole room was alight.”

“The barrels of ink, I suppose,” Jamie said, as though to himself. “The powder’s dissolved in alcohol.”

The sliding piles of flaming paper fell between Young Ian and the back door, a wall of flame that billowed black smoke and threatened to collapse upon him. The seaman, blinded and screaming like a banshee, had been on his hands and knees between the boy and the door into the front room of the printshop and safety.

“I—I couldna bear to touch him, to push him out o’ the way,” he said, shuddering again.

Losing his head completely, he had run up the stairs instead, but then found himself trapped as the flames,