“Oh,” said Ross. “Well. I’d best be getting on, lest we both end up missing our suppers. Good evening to you.”
“Good evening,” said William, and he walked on.
Only a few minutes after he’d started walking again, he regretted leaving Ross behind. Not that he was so very attached to the other man’s company, but talking to him had been a distraction. Once William was alone, his thoughts started circling once more, producing and discarding drafts of a letter, interspersed with images of Judith.
In dragon form, naturally, she’d have been a sight to remain with him for his whole life, even if he hadn’t known her at all, and perhaps a sight to trouble his sleep as well. Although she’d counted herself among the monsters, she hadn’t looked like the horrors William had encountered before. Once he’d gotten past his shock, he’d found her to be rather majestic, an unsettling description when he thought about it. He suspected that Watkins would find it even more alarming than he did.
Formally, after all, D Branch was loyal to only one source of majesty.
Watkins wasn’t a man to act rashly, William told himself. None of them were. And D Branch was also small and widely stretched. The Germans were making noises on one flank—though he doubted that would come to anything, one had to make the appropriate countermoves to ensure it didn’t—the colonies were restless in several directions, and cults were springing up like mushrooms after bloody rainfall. Nobody was going to send an army up into the Highland mountains after a family that had, for at least a few hundred years, shown every sign of living as peaceful and productive British citizens.
And D Branch had known something about the family for a long time.
Unfortunately, that only argued more strongly that the MacAlasdairs had gone to not inconsiderable effort to keep the details secret. For the most part, they’d succeeded—and then William had come along.
Well, it wouldn’t be the first time William had uncovered traditions their practitioners would have preferred to keep secret. It wouldn’t, likely, even be the action he felt the most guilt over on his deathbed. He’d taken oaths to D Branch when he’d been inducted. Even if those oaths hadn’t had magical force behind them, he would have taken them seriously. This was his job. This was his duty. If it had always been pleasant, he would have been paying them.
The lights of Mrs. Simon’s house came as a relief. So, in its own way, did her shocked look and Claire’s curious one, and the prompt-but-not-too-rote reeling off of the explanation William had devised, similar to the one he’d given Ross. With the light revealing the state of his clothes and hair, though, he added another touch. He’d followed a deer into the forest, on a whim, and had gotten well and truly lost before managing to locate the path out.
“You were lucky,” said Mrs. Simon, shaking her head. “I dinna’ think there’s anyone but the MacAlasdairs and their gamekeeper as know all the paths in that place, and perhaps no’ even them.” She clicked her tongue, a wordless commentary on the foolishness of even middle-aged men from London, and then changed the subject. “I’ve kept your supper hot for you. You’re no’ so late as all that.”
“Thank you,” he said and managed a smile. “If it wouldn’t be too much trouble, I’ll have it in my room. I’ve a letter that urgently needs writing.”
“Aye, of course,” she said, frowning. “No bad news from home, I hope.”
“News,” he said wearily. “I hope it’s not bad.”
Delay never improved anything. Once William reached his room, he sat at his desk and put down the evening’s events in blunt, stark detail, neither omitting nor trying to disguise anything that had happened. At the last, he stopped, chewed on the top of his pen until he started to taste ink, and then added:
She guessed that I was going to inform you of her identity. As far as I could gather, she isn’t angry about this and will make no effort to prevent it.
She wasn’t happy either. Judith had faced him with over a century’s experience in accepting circumstances, and probably at least that much knowledge of the way men and their institutions behaved. Acceptance, and even expectation, didn’t preclude resentment.
You’ve my word not to harm you already. Had that been the only thing keeping her from violence there on the path? Had his pistol been all that had saved his skin earlier? Tactically, professionally, William had thought it might have been, and had used every safeguard that came to hand against an unknown force. He didn’t regret it.
But as a man, the possibility that Judith might seriously have wanted him dead made him weary and bleak, as if the color had drained out of the world around him.
He put his report into code, adding the first paragraph with the keyword and the last for pure disguise, folded it sharply, and sealed the envelope. The sound of paper against paper was too quiet. It should have been harsher: a slammed door, a dropped glass, a slapped face.
Dinner was outside his door when he finished. Writing, he’d heard the footsteps but not investigated, and either one of his hostesses had been tactful enough not to interrupt. A small tray held a covered dish that smelled of mutton and onions, as well as bread and tea and even a few iced biscuits. William had to smile at that last touch. Mrs. Simon’s motherly instincts extended further than she would admit.
He wondered how far they’d go if she knew his real situation. The people of Loch Arach seemed very loyal. Even the servants who couldn’t talk about the north wing hadn’t really acted as though they wanted to, or as though the restriction particularly bothered them. Mrs. Simon was one of Judith’s friends, as far as she had any in the village—or among mortals. William supposed it would be hard for beings like her to get attached to those with only human blood.
Food was waiting for him. He carried the tray over to his desk, careful of the newly sealed letter. He ate mechanically and well; it did help. By the time he was done, the pain had receded to a gray dullness and a vast tiredness that spread all through his body. He told himself that it would recede further still, and that he knew his duty. He thought that he wouldn’t be able to get the letter out first thing, in any case. He’d have to go down to Belholm with it, or at least find Young Hamish’s temporary lodgings and ask whether he was still taking the mail.
He let sleep take over, soothing away shock and worry alike for a time.
Twenty-four
With the house mostly dark and the servants safely busy or abed, Judith opened the door to the north wing. Beyond lay a short hallway with three rooms opening at equal distances from each other. The walls and floors were unadorned stone. It was safer that way. It was also colder, particularly as there’d been no fires in the place for a hundred years or more, and despite her thick wool wrapper, Judith shivered as she walked.
On the left was a solid iron door, massive and older than Judith. She kept it oiled and polished every month, just as she swept and dusted the other rooms with her own hands—servants didn’t come into the north wing. Of everything in the castle, the upkeep of that door and the room behind it was most important. The large chamber, lined with silver runes and warding gems, was where the adolescent MacAlasdairs learned to control their transformations, and where Stephen had secluded himself while his curse had lasted.
That chamber wasn’t Judith’s destination that evening, and neither was the one on the right, where a vast inlaid table changed to show the condition of the land and the weather. She opened the middle door, a solid but more modest polished oak, and stepped into a plain stone room whose bare floor stretched away in all directions from a circular pool two feet wide. At the near edge, as a concession to flesh that at least felt mortal, she’d placed a green velvet cushion.
Shelves on one wall held old books and other devices, many of whose powers Judith herself was unclear about. A few swords and axes hung in brackets opposite them, and a circle with more inlaid runes occupied one corner of the room, but Judith’s concern that night was for the
pool. She lit the candles in their sconces, letting the smell of smoke and beeswax fill the room and begin to calm her nerves. Even she, least sorcerous among her family, knew that magic was best done with a steady mind.
After a few breaths, and after making sure she’d closed and locked the door behind her, Judith knelt on the cushion and rolled up her sleeves. The pool glimmered beneath her with a silver gleam that would have been out of place for any real water she’d ever seen. She’d never known where the “water” came from. It didn’t rise or fall with the weather, as a real pool would have. Her father hadn’t known either. Time swallowed knowledge, even for her bloodline.
Judith reached down and placed her palm against the surface of the pool. It was warm, and it gave at her touch, but her hand took a moment to break through. “Judith Mary MacAlasdair, daughter of Andrew Marcus MacAlasdair and Riona of the White Arms, seeks her kinsmen’s aid and counsel.”
The formality helped this time. She rarely used the scrying pool because she always felt the cost afterward, and particularly since Stephen’s curse, she wasn’t fond of magic. Just then, Judith welcomed her annoyance and her unfamiliarity with the ritual words.
This was going to be a hideous conversation.
The water wrapped itself around her fingers, gripping her hand with more-than-human strength. To either side, it clouded and colored. Stephen appeared first, on her right, with a thick dressing gown belted around him and his red-black brows drawn together in anticipatory worry. He was right—if Judith was using this means of communication, the situation was no common one—but if the same thought had occurred to Colin, he didn’t show it when he appeared. He had his shirtsleeves rolled up and his collar unbuttoned, and he held a glass of wine in his free hand.
“A few weeks of our company and you’re already missing us this much?” were his first words. “You’re a pinnacle of sisterly affection, Judith, truly, but I’m afraid I can’t oblige you. There might be worse fates than Scotland in winter, and yet none spring to mind.”
“Might be worse fates than having you eating our supplies too,” said Judith, “but I’m as puzzled as you are.”
“What’s gone wrong?” Stephen asked. “Are you well?”
“Aye, so far,” said Judith. “But there’ve been a few things you should both know.”
Quickly and bluntly, she sketched out the events of the last month. She included William’s role working for a mysterious branch of the government. She talked about his visit to Aberdeen, although she did not even hint at kissing him, much less what they’d gotten up to on the train. Neither Stephen nor Colin was the sort of overprotective idiot one too often found among mortal men, and none of the three of them were under any illusions about the others’ innocence, but there were things one did not discuss with family.
By the time she was finished, Stephen’s mouth was a thin line. “So he knows everything.”
“Not everything. He knows what I am. He can hazard a guess about what you two are. And has.”
“Wonderful. By God, Judith,” Stephen said, every atom the exasperated elder brother, “when I think of all the time and effort I spent—and you just let—”
“‘Just let,’ like hell,” she shot back, drawing herself up to her full height. The pool wouldn’t show that, granted, but it made her feel better. “The man followed me magically, which I’d no notion he could do. I’d transformed because I had to. He walked in on me at a bad moment, aye, and I’ll hear not a word from either of you on that score, thank you very kindly.”
“She has a point, Stephen. Not her fault you got a pretty girl for your intruder and she’s stuck with some awful chap from Whitehall.” Colin’s silver-blue eyes glimmered with amusement, even now. “And I’ll admit, of the three of us, I’m the most complicit in my own unmasking, grabbing at young women on balconies and so forth. Still, can’t complain.”
“Neither can I,” admitted Stephen, allowing himself a slow and contented smile. Then he was back to sobriety, sighing. “But that’s a far different situation from a government man. What are we to do about that?”
“Nothing to do, from what Judith’s said.” Colin shrugged. “Unless you want to kill him before he can get word out, Ju. I can’t say I approve entirely if you do—seems a rotten thing to do to a chap just for doing his job, but I’m not there and you are. So—”
“No!” The answer tore itself from her throat, completely bypassing her damned brain. From the looks on her brothers’ faces, it sounded just as vehement out in the air as it did in her ears. Bloody hell. “No, I gave him my word I wouldn’t hurt him. He was holding a pistol on me,” she added in a feeble attempt at justification. “And I don’t just kill people.”
In the past, she had. Or at least she’d killed for worse reasons than to protect her family, and the people in question had, despite uniforms and a degree of training, been far less able to defend themselves than William Arundell was.
This is not then. This is now. This is here.
Also, the idea of hurting him made her feel like being sick.
“No, we don’t,” Stephen said, his voice stern. It drew her back to the present moment, and she gave him a grateful smile. Let him think it was for supporting her on the principle.
“I said it seemed rotten, didn’t I?” Colin sighed and sipped his wine. “Don’t read me a sermon—I’m glad to fall in line with the no bloodshed policy of the new administration. And I might add that I saw this coming.”
“Government agents and demons?” Judith asked. “Well, thank you very much for warning me, Cassandra, I’m sure.”
“Not specifically. But the world’s smaller than the two of you are used to. It gets smaller every day, and people develop new forms of evidence too. There won’t be much room for secrets in a decade or two,” Colin said, “even on remote mountaintops.”
The notion should have shaken the walls around her, even the floor beneath her feet. She’d never thought about not having to hide what she was—or about not being able to. Judith licked lips gone suddenly dry.
“We’ve not always been completely secret,” said Stephen thoughtfully. “Father used to tell me that, when he was a young man, there were those in the Queen’s court who knew of him and of other magical creatures. And the folk of the village knew us better back then, he said. At least a few of them. It was different after James, and more different still after Culloden.”
Judith nodded, remembering a few of her own early years. “Things get lost,” she said. “It’s not a bad perspective. Particularly since, as Colin said, there’s nothing we can do to keep William from reporting.”
A thought began to take form, but it wasn’t solid yet. She let it alone. Such things developed in time, or not.
“What about this other man? The killer?” Stephen asked.
“Could be a woman,” Colin pointed out. “Nasty piece of work either way. Particularly as they’ve clearly gotten their grimy hands on some sort of magical knowledge. Might be best if we came in to help.”
“Not a damned chance,” said Judith before he’d finished talking. “Best thing we can do is spread all the possible targets out as far as possible. Plus, the two of you have civilians to look out for.”
“We’re all civilians, really,” said Colin, “even you now.”
“We still know what we know,” said Judith. She liked Mina and Reggie, and she knew from stories that they were good in a pinch—but they hadn’t been trained to fight either demons or men. “And your wives are mortal—even Mina can’t heal like we do or stand up to as much damage—and Stephen has a child. No. None of you get within fifty miles of Loch Arach.”
Being a reasonably kind sister, despite what Colin had said in their youth, she would never let on that she saw relief warring with concern on both their faces, and in serious danger of winning out in Stephen’s. “There’s truth in that, aye,” he said, “though I’ll not sleep
easy until you’ve found this…person.”
“If it helps,” Judith said dryly, “I don’t think I’ll be sleeping all that well either. But it’s not been so long since I risked my life for a living, and I doubt this sorcerer could threaten me much in a fair fight. It’s only a matter of digging the rat out of his lair—and whatever Mr. Arundell’s faults, he’s likely had more training in that than any of the three of us. Now that he’s not applying it to me, with any luck, it’ll point him in the right direction before long.”
“He’s got to be good for something, after all,” said Colin. “Like, mmm, thistles, I believe?”
“You’re a foolish city lad, Colin MacAlasdair,” Judith replied. “And he’s a good man. Takes his job seriously—and it’s a serious job. If he hadn’t exposed us, we’d all think very highly of him.”
“I don’t think highly of anyone who takes things seriously,” said Colin with a grin. “Matter of principle, that. But I’ll admit he’s probably quite admirable, considered from a remote and lofty vantage point.”
“I hope so, for all our sakes,” said Stephen, “and that his masters are as well. Is there anything more, Judith?”
She shook her head. The distance talking was beginning to drain her now, sending lassitude throughout her whole body—like being drunk without the giddiness. She stifled a yawn, incongruous to the situation and subject though the urge was. “Everyone well at your ends?”
“Aye,” said Stephen. “Anna’s walking now. We may need a faster nanny.”
“Just wait until she flies,” said Colin cheerfully. “We’re keeping in one piece, Judith. And I’ll let you go so you can say the same.”
They said their good-byes and departed, leaving Judith kneeling before the pool. It took considerable effort of will to get herself to her feet, and she thought that it might not all be magic. The day had been full of activity, and high emotions took their own toll.
Night of the Highland Dragon Page 16
