Hamish dropped the coin into the man’s dirty palm. “Thank you. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that discretion is advised and we never had this conversation.”
“Don’t you worry. I never saw you and you never saw me.” The coin disappeared into his pocket and he now had the relaxed air of a man who knew all his fingers were staying attached to the ends of his hands.
“One other thing, what did you mean by something odd about them?” Hamish wondered if they were dealing with a pack of vampyres. It would be highly unusual but who knew how desperate the French were becoming to end the war.
Handy shrugged. “Hard to say exactly. You can’t remember what they look like, and they can creep up on you like bloody cats in the dark. It’s like they can hide in shadows, if that makes any sense.”
Hamish didn’t know what it meant, but he filed the information away to examine later. Possibly Forge was working with other Unnaturals; he just didn’t know what kind. They left the tavern and Hamish had to fight the urge to seek a bath and scrub himself clean, but they were close now.
They rode the roads behind the Tower, down to Wapping Wharf and the area of new development at the end, Wapping Wall. One end housed the row of abandoned warehouses. The bustle and activity of the main wharf had not yet reached this far to the east. There had once been five warehouses, squashed up against each other, but now their chimneys stood cold and smokeless. Windows were cracked and broken, and weeds sprouted from the surrounding dirt and cobbles.
Sure enough, one had been completely gutted by fire. The walls and roof had collapsed and pushed against the buildings on either side. Its neighbours sported blackened timbers and scorch marks. It was a marvel the fire hadn’t destroyed the entire row; probably only its proximity to the water had saved them. The other sites had been abandoned, probably for fear more walls would buckle under the burden they now carried.
They hitched the horses at a rail. Hamish and Alick shed their clothes, and tossed shirts and breeches to Ewan. He tucked them into a battered leather satchel and dropped the strap over his head. The change flowed over the naked men as they dropped to all fours, as if they passed through a doorway and emerged as wolves. Their fur retained the colouration of their hair, the Alick wolf of a redder hue than Hamish. Quinn and Ewan would advance on foot; Quinn couldn’t shift and Ewan preferred not to. He found it terribly uncivilised.
With senses alert for movement, light, or sound Hamish and Alick took the lead. They sniffed the ground and air as they approached, searching for signs of their prey or the faint scent of Aster. Could Hamish really trust an informant who didn’t care which side bought information, as long as his price was paid?
They walked with slow steps, peering into broken windows as they went, searching for the warehouse that might have housed the foreign agents. There was a distinct absence of life at this end of the wharf, or at least any sign of life larger than a rat or seagull. Only one boat was tied to a bollard, and it looked a victim of the fire, with the stern end submerged in the water.
Ice settled in Hamish’s gut, at odds with the warm day. He didn’t know if he should be reassured that there was no trace of Aster’s scent around the warehouses, or disheartened. It had been days now since Sir John went missing and Aster told her landlady she had to visit a sick relative. The trail was too cold.
18
Aster
Aster pushed away from the chair and stretched her back. Her eyes ached, and frustration ate at her. Sheets of paper covered the desk, each gridded and containing the alphabet in a repeating pattern. Yet still the code eluded her. She thought it would be somewhat easy. Find the key in the Iliad, draw up the alphabet, and use the key to transcribe each name. Except it didn’t work. She should have known as much by Sir John’s growing irritability.
“We have missed something, but I don’t know what,” she muttered. No wonder Sir John always looked stressed. The answer tormented her. It should have been in her grasp, and yet the more she reached, the further away it slid, like water sliding away from thirsty Tantalus. If Sir John were here they could have discussed different approaches, but as it was, she would have to labour alone.
She needed fresh air and desperately missed Dougal’s company. They always walked the beach together. Aster grabbed a light wool shawl. While the sun grew in heat each day, the breeze off the ocean could still cut through a body. She wrapped the shawl around her shoulders and trod the narrow path down to the beach. Birds circled and wheeled overhead as she strode over the soft sand. She stopped often to stare out at sea. Off to the south east lay France.
Up and down she walked. She picked through pieces of driftwood and drew in the damp sand left behind by the receding tide. Then she climbed atop a large rock, its dark face warmed by the sun. She sheltered her face with a hand as she gazed at the expanse of ocean. Her other hand sought the chain, working the button free of her clothing. Over and over her fingers caressed the brass object, tracing the tiny wolf head.
Another idea began to form in her mind. All the Highland Wolves were listed as Unnaturals. She pondered what that could mean, and the significant of the wolf insignia. There was an obvious answer clutched in her hand—wolves. What if the men were all afflicted with lycanthropy?
What would it be like to live with a man who could turn into a wolf? She couldn’t imagine Hamish being dangerous, even in wolf form; he would never hurt someone he cared about. Surely it wouldn’t be so different to sharing a home with Dougal? Although given the little terrier’s noxious morning breath, Aster shuddered to contemplate the horrors of wolf breath first thing in the morning.
“Oh, Hamish, please return to me.” Her heart ached with the cruelty of life. Hamish had walked into her office, shown her a world she never thought to experience, and then events snatched it all away from her.
A tear rolled down her face, and she wiped it away. She had survived on her own in the world for the last seven years, since her mother died when she was fifteen. If life refused to give her an opportunity to tell Hamish how she felt, then she was more than capable of continuing to walk alone, even if the road stretched long and lonely before her. Well, not completely alone. She would crack the blasted list, hand it off to someone at the War Office, and then reclaim Dougal.
Feeling somewhat less sorry for herself now that the ocean mist had cleared away her tears, she walked back up to the cottage. She picked up her last sheet of workings and scanned the lines, but her mind refused to cooperate. She could not face the rows of cramped text again. Her body felt as stifled as her brain, even after her walk on the beach. There was nothing for it; she would head into the village and purchase another newspaper.
On the walk she realised that there was one problem with being alone—there was no one to talk to. Dougal would cock his head and listen in his sage manner. She had no issue talking aloud with the terrier at her feet, but even in the quiet countryside she felt a little mad muttering to herself. Instead, she sang to distract her mind. She recalled her childhood and the many country tunes her mother would sing to her. Happier memories flooded her wounded heart, and by the time she reached the little grouping of buildings, the pain in her chest had eased.
“Just a newspaper, please,” she said at the general store, and handed over her coin.
The owner smiled, folding a newspaper into thirds for her to carry. “Anything else?”
“Not today, thank you.”
A frown pulled at his forehead. “Did you walk all this way just for the paper? I could have Duncan drop one out to you.”
Aster smiled. “I don’t mind. A walk never harmed anyone.”
He shook his head. “You out there all on your own? It’s not right. Pretty girl like you should have a sturdy husband to keep her company.”
Oh, how she wished he hadn’t said that. It immediately conjured images of Hamish in her mind. A faint trace of heat crept from under her fichu. She tucked the fabric tighter into place, to cover the blush.
He cackled with
laughter and winked. “Have a beau already, do you?”
“Oh, no,” she said, grasping the newspaper between her hands.
He winked again. “It shall be our secret, don’t you worry.”
She smiled and walked back out into the sun. He really didn’t need to bother; there was no secret to keep. Just one lonely woman and her foolish ideas.
She walked away from the little group of houses, far enough to be completely alone. Dropping to the grass under her usual tree, she snapped open the paper and scanned the articles, looking for a headline that caught her attention. Nothing. She shut her eyes and took a deep breath, then started again. She read one article after another, and every tiny advertisement, and still no coded message from Sir John. Whatever had befallen him?
The cold dread settled in her stomach. Two dead soldiers and Sir John missing. If he had escaped the men, he would have placed their newspaper advertisement. He would either warn her to stay away or arrange a meeting elsewhere. She had to consider the horrible prospect that the men were holding him captive somewhere. How long would it take before they realised she’d slipped through their fingers with the list hidden in the little book?
Her walk back to the cottage was a melancholy one, as she contemplated the limited options before her. Only one phrase kept repeating in her head: Trust no one, verify everything. In itself, it was her course of action. She needed to decipher the code. Staring at her work papers stacked on the table, she came to another realisation—she was going to need a fresh pot of tea.
The afternoon wore on as her patience wore away. No matter how hard she tried or how often she started over, it just didn’t make sense. She’d thought the underlined words were the key, but they simply didn’t match. There were too many and she needed to painstakingly work through each possible keyword for each name.
She had an overwhelming urge to toss the book out the window. She assumed it contained the key, because it hid the list. But what if it wasn’t and there was no reason for the selected words? Perhaps the writer of the list thought it a delicious type of torture to make someone labour for weeks over an unsolvable puzzle. She had nothing to confirm that the book held the key; for all she knew there could have been a separate piece of correspondence with the pivotal information.
“This is nonsense,” she muttered, glaring at the volume. “The book is irrelevant, I am sure.”
She walked to the bench and leaned her hip on the side, flicking through pages at random as the afternoon sun fell across the paper. “Meaningless. There is nothing to be gleaned from how the writer slashed across the page.”
As soon as she said the words, a memory sparked of a lesson with Sir John. He had told her that sometimes it wasn’t just the type of code used that was important but also how it was written. Spelling or grammatical errors could be deliberate, as could how a pen was used. Sir John told her a story of how he used different thickness of strokes to denote an important passage within a coded message. Could there be a hidden meaning in this unknown author's penmanship?
Aster peered closer at the book, her attention focused on one word in particular. When a pen is first put to paper the fibres grab the ink, leaving a point. Then the line travels away from the starting point and tapers off to where the nib is lifted from the paper. “Yes, here! This word isn’t underlined the correct way. He has run the pen from right to left.”
It could be a moment of forgetfulness to wield the pen the wrong way round, or it could be a deliberate act. She muttered under her breath as she flipped the page and looked at the next underlined word. “Well, that one is correct, as is the one after, but the third is wrong as well—”
Her mind leapt. Had she discovered a code layered within the way some unknown agent laid his quill? Too often spies relied on magical tricks to conceal their words, but the simplest, non-magical methods of subterfuge were often the hardest to break. Like Sir John using a pen in a different manner.
There would need to be a clue for the intended recipient. Something that alerted him or her how to narrow down the relevant words. Aster went back to the beginning of the book; her gaze looking for anything ordinary and unremarkable that had slipped by both her and Sir John's inspections. She found what she was seeking on the first page. In the margin was a tiny arrow, pointing left.
Aster scrambled amongst her littered papers and found the original sheet where she’d listed each word. Working in the bright light, she added her own arrow to each word showing the direction of the line, left or right. On those where she simply couldn’t tell, she put a question mark.
There were sufficient words for a pattern to emerge, a regularity to the direction that had to be more than mere coincidence. It was a tiny detail that would completely confound someone who assumed the book held the key or who relied on a spell to lift it from the pages. They would find a surfeit of information, and no direct way to narrow down the criteria. How had Sir John missed it, or was it because he laboured in his dim office without the benefit of bright light to illuminate the page? They would have much to discuss when she met him again.
If Aster removed the words struck from the left, or correct, side, the remainder matched the number of keywords she needed to aid the deciphering. Excitement bubbled in her chest. The long dark tunnel that held her now had a glimmer at the end.
“This will do it, Dougal,” she said to her shadow, and then remembered he was not there.
She set the kettle to boil and took up a new sheet of paper. She was close, she could feel it. The list would yield to her, and her question would at long last be answered—was Hamish’s name on it?
19
Hamish
Two enormous wolves and two men paced the row of warehouses. So far they had found nothing except broken crates and rats that Alick gave chase to, until Hamish growled and called him back. Anything of value that hadn’t been removed by the original tenants had been pilfered. Metal was too precious to leave to rust in a disused building. The poor were enterprising, and anything could be sold or repurposed.
They moved to the next derelict building, which occupied the central position in the row of five. Its roof now supported the additional weight of timbers and tiles from its burned-out neighbour. Ewan pointed to a window. The pane was broken long ago, but the dirt around the windowsill had been freshly disturbed.
The hackles rose on the wolves while the other two drew their weapons. Quinn preferred a pistol, and Ewan always carried a multitude of discreet knives. Between men and lupines they had a host of potential scenarios covered. Hamish ignored the large barn-style doors and padded toward the smaller entrance to one side. He sniffed at scuffmarks on the ground and drew the scent over his tongue. Someone had been this way recently enough that the dirt had not resettled. A day, at the most.
He lifted his muzzle and inhaled the air coming from the building. Rot, decay, and animal faeces were overpowering, but underneath he caught a faint trace of a familiar odour. One with a metallic tang and a hint of despair. Blood and death.
His gaze moved upward to the door. The lock hung to one side, as though someone had prised it open. The glint of metal was still raw, not yet oxidised by contact with the air. It could have happened when the building was looted, if raiders had come through in the last week or two. The latch had caught on the very edge, and it took only a gentle push with his furry shoulder for the door to swing open.
He froze as the door swung wide and a shaft of sunlight angled inside. They waited. Let anyone inside think it was just a random breath of wind that caught the unlatched door. Seconds ticked by. Nothing came from within, no hint of life or movement.
He padded over the threshold and into the ruined building, his nose lifted to catch all the scents swirling around inside. The odour of charred and decomposed timber was strong and he had to concentrate to smell what lay under it, to locate the source of the blood. The interior should have been gloomy, had the roof still been intact and the windows covered. However, a timber from next door had cras
hed through one portion of the roof and opened it up to the sky. Light poured in and revealed the full ruin below.
Like the other buildings, there was little left inside. Stray timbers and tiles had slid through the hole above and crashed to the floor. Unlike the other buildings, this one showed some evidence of recent visitors. There were clear tracks through the accumulated grime on the floor. Feet much larger than a rat’s had scurried this way.
One corner sat encased in dark. Huddled against the next building, this part had an intact roof and no windows. The light struggled to penetrate, and the charred walls absorbed what little illumination bounced around the main space. The Wolves spread out as they advanced, ever careful, although they had detected nothing living within the building except a thriving rodent population.
Shadows formed into shapes, and Hamish’s heart plunged to the hard pads of his feet. Fear gripped his heart and squeezed as he caught the tang of death from these shadows. There was a person slumped in the dark. He silently breathed Aster’s name. God, don’t let it be her. Then his enhanced wolf vision pierced the gloom and the shape transformed into a man.
What had once been Sir John.
When he was certain no one else lingered in the warehouse, Hamish shook himself free of his wolf form and rose, naked. Alick patrolled the perimeter, the large wolf sending the rats running for cover as he sought any further signs.
Hamish examined the corner, which held an odd assortment of broken furniture. A three-legged table had a crate propping up one corner, and the chair had four mismatched legs. Sir John seemed equally broken. His upper body was lashed to the chair back, and in death the rope held him upright. Each forearm was tied to the corresponding thigh. His left trouser leg was still neatly rolled and pinned at the knee where the lower limb was missing, and his clothing was stiff with old blood. Multiple cuts showed that whoever abducted him had taken his time with Sir John. Perhaps Harry’d had little information to share, and so his killer vented his frustration on the cryptographer.
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