Night of the Highland Dragon (7 page)

“Three mares in foal,” said Judith, gesturing to the stables as she and Agnes walked past, “and coming along well. Campbell's beast did good work, though of course we've yet to see how they all turn out.”

“Hoping for the color or the height?”

“Neither—I like the line as it is. But they need new blood if they're to stay healthy.” Judith nodded to a few of the grooms out forking hay and using the sunny day to mend fences and turned onto the path that led to the gardens. “Come to think of it, a wee bit of height might not be so bad. Stephen and Colin have an inch or two on me, and the lasses they've chosen are both tallish. I'd not want my niece's feet dragging on the ground in a year or ten.”

Agnes laughed. “Planning for her future already, are you?”

“Oh, aye. What else would a proud auntie do?”

“Teach her to ride, I'd think,” said Agnes, “and the others who come along as well. Or will you let their fathers do it and save your brothers' pride?”

“That? Never,” said Judith. She smiled and didn't let the grin fade when she added, “As for the rest, we'll see.”

In a few years, wee Anna would be not-so-wee any longer and coming up on her first transformations, which were always hard to control or contain. Like MacAlasdairs had done in Judith's day, and as far back as family stories went, Stephen and Mina would come back to Loch Arach and settle there for a decade or two.

That was fine. Judith would be happy to see her family as always—for as long as she could. Stephen's return would be the first step in a transition, though. The wheel would turn, and her time to leave would come shortly after. When that had happened before, she'd never minded. This time, she was trying not to think about it.

“Just hope they get their mothers' temper,” said Agnes, saving Judith from her own mind. “The foals, that is. I dinna' know if you've heard it, but Murray's horse kicked his wife badly the other day. Dr. McKendry had to see her, poor thing, and she's still abed from it. Cracked a rib or two, or so I hear.”

“I hadn't heard,” Judith said and made a note to stop by that house the next day. She had a vague mental picture of Murray's gelding: middle-aged, fat, and as placid as her own horses most of the time. “Odd.”

“Aye, well, you never can tell with animals. It's a hard bit of luck for her. Claire says 'tis worse for her Mairi—the eldest, ye ken—but then, she would.”

“A friend?”

Agnes nodded. “And 'tis an ill wind that blows no good, I suppose. They werena' speaking to each other until it happened. Had words, as lasses will do at that age. But Claire went over the moment she heard, and they've made it all up now.”

“As lasses will do at that age,” Judith echoed. The gardens wound out in front of them—almost all dark greens and browns now, dotted with red and pink where fuchsias and roses still bloomed. Her ancestors had never gotten very elaborate out here, but there were a few stone paths between hedges. When the weather was fair, it was a nice place to wander with guests—particularly when she didn't want to visit those guests at their homes because of who else she might encounter there.

On that note, she looked over at Agnes. “The fight wasn't about your lodger, was it?”

“Oh no,” Agnes said, shaking her head so that the ostrich feathers on her best hat waved back and forth. “You'll have forgotten your girlhood, m'lady. They're all content with each other so long as none thinks she can have him for her own self, and he's given none of them any sign of that.”

“Arundell's been a gentleman, then?”

“Aye,” said Agnes, and then she hesitated. “Aye, he has.”

“But?”

“It's nothing to do with the girls,” said Agnes, and relief unknotted a muscle between Judith's shoulders. In addition to her earlier protective feelings, now that Arundell had kissed her, she would feel thoroughly ridiculous if he'd been trifling with girls Claire's age. “And it could be that 'tis none of my business—each blade of grass keeps its own dew—”

“But he's your lodger, and it's your roof,” said Judith.

“Aye,” Agnes said again, but she drew it out more slowly this time and didn't say anything immediately afterward, until the muscles in Judith's back had begun to twist again.

Judith was a patient woman. She always had been, in her own way, even when she'd been traveling the world outside Loch Arach. Most of the time, she was content to stay still and silent, and to let the prey come to her or the enemy step into her sights. But just then, she wanted to shake Agnes.

Eventually, the other woman did talk.

“You'll recall a few nights past? When it rained so hard?”

“Yes,” said Judith with a grimace. The hole in the castle roof, not quite fixed yet, had necessitated the hurried addition of a cooking pot to the furnishings of the room below. Luckily it was a spare bedroom without much that the water could damage, but it had been another reminder of how quickly time passed and how much there was to do before winter.

“Well, he didna' come in until late that evening. After dinner. I couldna' say the time exactly, but it might have been nine or ten.”

“City hours run late, I hear,” said Judith. “Later than that. Perhaps he was drinking with some of the lads.”

“He does that at times,” said Agnes. “But never so late before, and never in the driving rain. I canna' think who he'd been out with.”

Judith shrugged, forcing herself to show a casualness she didn't feel. “Women a bit older than Claire find him impressive, maybe,” she said, although a liaison didn't seem the likeliest explanation either. Arundell had struck her as more discreet than to carry on at night that way, and fonder of his comforts than to come back through a downpour.

“And so I thought at the time,” said Agnes. “But this morning, I saw the sleeve of his coat had been torn and mended. And then, when I did the washing, one of his jackets was mended in the same place, and I recall it being whole the last time. And there's no reason for a guest of mine to do his own mending, which I told him when he took the rooms.”

“No obvious reason, no,” Judith said. She gazed off over the gardens, not really seeing the plants or the forest beyond. “What did the tears look like?”

Thinking, Agnes closed her eyes. “There were seven of them,” she said slowly, forehead wrinkled in concentration. “All on the forearm, just below the elbow. Long and thin, like. If there'd been fewer of them, or if they'd not been so orderly, I'd have said he'd fought a man with a knife.”

“Don't tell Claire that,” Judith responded automatically. “She'll think it's romantic. And we don't have many knife fights up here.”

“Aye, none that anyone's talked about. Which they would. But—” Agnes's eyes, open now, were troubled.

It was a sense of trouble that Judith shared, particularly because her first impulse was to ask if Arundell was all right. If he hadn't been, Agnes would have been talking about
that
for the last three quarters of an hour, and the question was therefore stupid. Judith also didn't like the way her breath had caught in her throat when she'd thought of him being injured. He was an aggravating outsider, none of her concern beyond what trouble he caused in Loch Arach, and neither the lean strength of his body nor the sure heat of his kiss should change that.

Having thus remonstrated with herself, she forced her mind down analytical paths. “If he hasn't thrown out a shirt with a matching set of rips,” Judith said, “I'll eat my hat. Or yours—it'd be less comfortable.”

Agnes cast her eyes upward to the rim of her own creation of straw and ribbons and feathers, and then looked over at Judith's simple brown velvet with a smile. “One day, m'lady, you'll recollect which of us is supposed to be the staid and solemn widow,” she said and then sobered. “But if he'd mended the coat and the jacket, why not the shirt as well?”

“Mending is one thing. Getting bloodstains out is another.”

“Oh,” said Agnes, round-eyed and round-mouthed. “And perhaps he has been favoring the arm a bit of late. I've not noticed, but I've not been looking. Do you think he met with whatever killed Finlay's ewe?”

“I hope not, for his sake,” said Judith.

If the creature they were looking for was actually an animal rather than a man or a demon, odds were good that it was mad. She'd seen a man—more a boy, though he'd been old enough to enlist—die of hydrophobia once. War wasn't the only subject of her nightmares. She licked lips gone dry and asked, “Has he been in decent health since? No fever or headache?”

“Not that I've seen, no. But it wouldna' be so quick to set in,” said Agnes, her own face grave. She rallied then and said, “But the tears looked too long to be bites, though I'm not so much of a judge. And even if they were, there's dogs as are mean without being mad, aye?”

“That there are.” Judith shot her friend a grateful smile. If Arundell had gone poking around other people's property the way he had with Finlay's—especially if he hadn't bothered asking first—he could easily have run afoul of a dog doing its right and proper duty. “And even with what I told Claire, there are other creatures in these mountains that could damage a man. Wildcats, for instance. If he stumbled across a female with a set of late kittens, he'd be lucky to come back with all ten fingers and both eyes.”

“We'd a barn cat like that,” said Agnes, “when I was a wee girl. My brother's still got a scar on his wrist. Though I can't see why he'd keep the matter so quiet, whatever happened.”

“Neither do I,” said Judith. “And I don't know why Arundell would have been wandering around where any such creature could get to him in the first place, especially in the rain and the dark.”

She took a quick mental tally of the village women who might have been both alluring and willing, and came up with around a dozen. Of those, at least half had fathers or husbands who would take Arundell's advances badly—and who would have been at home before nightfall, particularly in the rain. The others lived near the main village, not out anywhere wild. It was rare for lone human women to live much outside civilization. There was too much work that took physical strength, and there were too many predators, men included.

Drinking at the Dragon would have put Arundell well in sight of Agnes's house, not to mention a number of others. Most people kept their dogs fenced and tied on their own property. If a mad dog or a wildcat had been wandering the main street of Loch Arach, it would have damaged more than just Arundell, and more people than Agnes would have been discussing it.

Agnes was talking again. “That said, it's over now, and perhaps I shouldna' have mentioned it. It's not as though he's harmed anyone but himself, whatever he was doing.”

“No,” said Judith, and she thought,
not
yet
.

That might have been unfair. Arundell wasn't just on holiday, but she didn't know that what he
was
doing would hurt anyone. That was the problem. She didn't know, and she couldn't afford ignorance.

“Can I ask a favor of you?”

Agnes nodded. “Of course, m'lady.”

“If this happens again, or if Arundell does anything else that strikes you as odd, let me know immediately.”

For a second, Agnes was silent. Then she said, “I'll come myself. No good sending Claire, not just now. They'll know to get you right away if I come here?”

“They will.”

In the most immediate sense, William worked alone and had done so for the vast majority of his career. D Branch didn't have so many agents that it could assign two to the same place. When the situation called for out-and-out force of arms, his superiors might make an exception, but they usually sent other men when possible, men who could shoot first and never ask questions. The vast majority of the time, William was on his own.

But he did have superiors, and they were never long from his thoughts nor long out of contact. Even in a place as remote as Loch Arach, William sent regular updates—ciphered, naturally—and received them as well, reading carefully even though most of what the central office told him was happening hundreds or thousands of miles away. Between the laws of magic, demonic power, and the occasional unnatural gifts people demonstrated, action at great distances had always been possible. In the world of the telegraph, the express train, and the steamship, it was all the more likely.

After the night of the demon, William therefore ciphered and sent as exact a description as he could manage, detailed what thoughts he'd been able to assemble about the matter without jumping to any conclusions, and posted an innocent-looking letter to his “man of business in London.”

He didn't expect much of a response. The demon had no obvious ties to Germany, Russia, or France, and none of the more troublesome cults had been active in the region. None of them had been active in general, at least since he'd left London. The Consuasori, if not completely shattered, must still have been picking up the pieces of their run-in with him and Smythe a few months before, and the Brotherhood, if William's sources were correct, was in the middle of an internecine conflict that made the Wars of the Roses look straightforward.

When the grocer handed him the usual lavender envelope, therefore, he wasn't surprised. He did notice that it felt thicker than usual and wondered what was going on in the larger world. He hadn't read anything alarming in the papers, but one never did read about the
really
alarming incidents.

William paid for the pound of flour Mrs. Simon had asked him to retrieve, picked up the letter, and turned away, only to have a substantial form collide with his injured arm. With an even more substantial effort of will, he kept his exclamation to a startled “Oooof!” rather than giving voice to the words and tone that would really express his feelings.

“Oh, terribly sorry,” said the man who'd run into him. “I do hope you're all right.” He spoke with obvious worry, which mitigated the worst of William's annoyance.

“Think nothing of it,” William said. “No harm done.”

He suppressed the urge to rub his arm. Unlike his coat and jacket, the cuts hadn't turned out to need stitching and were healing without any obvious signs of infection, but he still wore a layer of bandages under his shirt, and the arm underneath them ached devilishly at any rough contact.

“If you're sure—” said the other man.

He was thoroughly average-looking in height, build, and face, with brown hair and eyes. The only things notable about him were the quality of his clothing—sober dark wool that could have appeared in a London bank—and the tense, drawn look on his face.

At the back of his mind, William felt a tickle. He'd seen this man before.

Granted, this was Loch Arach. There weren't many people around. He might even have encountered the fellow at the pub and forgotten about it.

“Of course I'm sure,” he said and offered a hand by way of being reassuring. “I don't know if we've met, I'm afraid. William Arundell.”

The other man frowned, just for a moment. They
had
met, William thought—or the man had heard a few things about the English tourist with more money than sense. “Ross MacDougal.” His accent was subtler than most people's in Loch Arach, less pronounced even than Judith's.

“A pleasure to meet you,” said William.

Ross nodded, then glanced at the letter William still held. “Good news from home?”

“I doubt it,” said William. “My aunt hasn't looked on the bright side of anything in her life. But she means well, and she never misses a letter. Family, you know.”

“I do indeed,” said Ross. “My mother and sister are great letter writers. Having me here with them may be a disappointment, at that—one less excuse to pick up the pen.”

William chuckled. “I would think there'd be compensations,” he said. “How long have you been staying with them?”

“Oh, a month or two,” said Ross. “And you? You're Mrs. Simon's guest, if I'm not mistaken.”

“For a little over a fortnight now, yes,” William said. “She keeps an excellent house.”

“Well, I hope we'll have the pleasure of your company for a while yet,” said Ross. He hesitated a moment, then turned to the grocer. “Anything for me?”

“No,” the man behind the counter said without even needing to check. “Nothing today, Mr. MacDougal.”

Leaving them to their discussion, William pocketed his letter and headed off, thinking. Ross made a second recent arrival, though he'd been in the village a while before the first murder. So had Hamilton, granted—and Judith had been at the castle longer than that. And all that speculation assumed the killer had to be an outsider.

Usually, one learned to contact the Outer Darkness from books or from other similarly inclined blackguards. The world was wide, though, and the forests and mountains of Loch Arach were very old. William couldn't say with any certainty that the killer hadn't gotten the spells from a more knowledgeable ancestor, or gone out into the woods and made a dark pact with a Thing already living there.

There was so damned little he could say for certain. That was very often the case on his missions, but never more so than on this one.

He made his way back to his rented rooms, not seeing either his landlady or her daughter on the way, which didn't surprise him. It was a pretty autumn afternoon, perfect for going visiting and completely imperfect for staying inside and doing chores. That was convenient for him—although he didn't have the luxury of neglecting his.

A small oak desk stood in the corner of his room, complete with stationery, a scratchy fountain pen, and a chair with hard purple cushions. Purple was a general theme in the room. William had stayed in much worse, including places where a bed or even a clean patch of ground was a luxury, so he wasn't inclined to complain, but he still sometimes felt as if he were sleeping on the inside of a giant sugarplum.

In that room, the lavender envelope only seemed appropriate, as did the looping copperplate script on the front and the overpowering fussy floral scent that rose from it. The element of surprise was an agent's best advantage. Nobody would expect a scented letter on lavender paper to come from the central office.

Nor would the letter's contents provide that hypothetical onlooker with any immediate grounds for suspicion.

My
dear
Willie
, it opened. Despite his familiarity with the scheme, William still squirmed inwardly when he read that greeting, both for himself and for whoever at the central office had to write it. He wondered if “Watkins” did employ an actual maiden aunt.

I once again take up my pen to write, in the hopes that this finds you well and enjoying your holiday. We all miss you terribly, but that will hardly surprise you.

Everything was holding steady back in London. Good. A letter that didn't mention missing him, somewhere in that first paragraph, would have meant that there was trouble and that he should make immediate arrangements to return.

I myself am keeping well, though the autumn has brought on my rheumatism, as it always does. Your cousin Earnest has, however, recommended a specialist in such things, who he says was quite helpful to his mother.

Earnest
. The family member mentioned in the second paragraph was always the key to the cipher. William skimmed another paragraph of meaningless news, discussions of more fictional people's health and the repairs being made to a nonexistent town house, and then found the line he was looking for.

I was privileged to attend a lecture on Saturday last, which contained a great deal of thoughtful and enlightening discourse. The topic was vegetarianism.

When the writer mentioned a new discovery or educational experience, he—or she, if it really was a maiden aunt—would skip one sentence, and then begin the ciphered material. William took out his own, more reliable pen, removed a sheet of paper from the stack so that the impression of his letters might not travel through to the sheets below it, and began to work the message out.

MacAlasdairs were Jacobites. Not many other details available to us right now. History gets patchy around then. Sorcerous power definite.

The history of the Risings, real or popular, had never been William's specialty. In his briefing, D Branch had given him a few details: that both sides had used magic, often with massive casualties, and that forces on both sides had, on one occasion or another, dipped into the darker side of the occult. Blood sacrifice, and not of the willing, had been one example. Demonic pacts had been another.

William put down his pen and stretched out his fingers, looking at them and not at the message.

A hundred and fifty years was a long time. Nobody living then would be a problem for him now, but grudges were a more common inheritance than any ever laid out in a will.

And he was English—obviously so.

How carefully had Judith's ancestors handed down their resentment? How much of it did she still carry around now? And what else might they have passed down along with it?

So far, he'd seen nothing to directly suggest that Judith was anything but what she appeared. He thought of her face, though—tight-lipped and narrow-eyed with suspicion on their first meeting—and then of the snarling creature that had tried to kill him in the woods.

He couldn't jump to any conclusions. But he couldn't overlook the evidence just because he still awoke breathless and hard from dreams of her body wrapped around his.

William picked up his pen again and began to translate further.

Will search old records. Family very reclusive since Culloden.

A new paragraph began, talking about young people today and the failures of modern etiquette. The “end message” code hadn't appeared yet, so William went on deciphering.

The demon is lesser, minor pseudo-Goetic. We've encountered it before. You're likely right about the sacrifice and feeding. Someone there is working from a grimoire or learned from one to begin with. This is not folk magic. We advise extreme caution.

That message, including the royal “we” and the unnecessary advice, was Watkins all the way, no matter how it might have been translated. The man was very fond of reminding his agents that he spoke not for himself but for an entire, if small, branch of Her Majesty's government. In William's more charitable moments, he thought Watkins was probably reminding himself of that too.

We're looking through our files for likely cultists or solo magicians. We will update you when we know more. Meanwhile, make contact with Charles Baxter at the following address.

The letter named a street and number in Aberdeen. William sighed, wondering if his superiors realized just how large Scotland was or how infrequently the trains ran even up in Belholm.

He can explain more in person, and he has additional equipment for you. End cipher.

William skimmed over the last few paragraphs, saw no coded phrases, and tossed the letter into the fire. He felt considerably more satisfaction than usual in doing so, and immediately regretted it.

This was not a hardship assignment. He'd been on
far
worse. The raid on the Consuasori itself had been more dangerous. He wasn't nearly old enough to gripe at an early morning and a train journey.

He certainly wasn't angry at the central office for adding more evidence to support what he'd already half suspected about Judith. That would have been unreasonable.