Bisset moved swiftly, head down and peching like a mating bull – Christ’s Wounds, but he had too much beef on him these days – half-turned and paused. He was sure he saw the flitting figure, steady and relentless as a rolling boulder; he half-stumbled over a snarling dog tugging at the remains of a bloated cat and kicked out at it in a frenzy of fear.
That and the sheer tenacity of the pursuer panicked Bisset and he swept sideways into Lachlan’s Tavern, a fug and riot of raucous bellowing laughter and argument. He pushed politely into the throng, to where a knot of drovers, fresh down from the north, were starting in to singing songs off key. Big men, they smelled of sweat and earth and wet kine.
The cloaked man ducked in, blinking at the transfer from dark to dim light, the sconce smoke and the reek of the place attacking his nose and eyes – sweat, ale, farts and vomit, in equal measure. He could not see the fat little man, but was sure he had come in here – sure also that the fat man now knew he was being followed, which made matters awkward.
Bisset saw the man, a shadow with a hood still raised, no more than two good armlengths away. He whimpered and shoved the nearest drover, who lurched forward, careering into a clothier’s assistant, spilling ale all down his fine perse tunic and knocking the man off-balance into a half-drunk journeyman engraver, who swung angrily, missed his target and smacked another of the drovers on one shoulder.
The cloaked man saw the mayhem spread like pond ripples from a flung stone. He cursed roundly as a big man, a great greasy shine of joy on his fleshy face, lurched towards him swinging. He ducked, hit the man in the cods, backed away, was smashed from behind by what seemed the world and fell to his knees.
Bisset was already in the backland, stumbling past the privy, hearing the shouts and splintering crashes from inside Lachlan’s. The Watch would arrive soon and he hurried off until he was sure he was safe, then he stopped, hands on thighs and half-retching, half-laughing.
He reached the safety of his sister’s house moments later, found the door unlatched and fixed it carefully behind him, leaning against it and trying to stop the thundering of his heart – yet he was smiling at what he had left behind. That will teach the swine, he thought with savage joy.
He was still laughing quietly to himself when the hand snaked out of the dark and took him by the throat, so hard and sudden that he had no time even to cry out, even as he realised he had not been as clever as he had thought. An unlatched door. On a silversmith’s house – he should have known better . . .
‘Happy, are we?’ said a voice, so close to his ear he could smell the rank breath. From the side of one eye, he caught the gleam of steel and almost lost the use of his legs.
‘Good,’ the voice went on, soft and friendly and more frightening because of it. ‘A wee happy man is more likely to give me what I need.’
The shadowed man came in through the back court, limping slightly and almost choked by the smell from the garderobe pit. The windows here were wood shutters over waxed paper and no match for the thin, fluted blade of his dagger, but there were bars beyond that, installed by a careful man, with wealth to protect. He moved to the backcourt door, which was stout timbers, nail-studded to thwart savage axes – yet it was unlatched, so that he was in the dark, still room in a few seconds.
He stood for a moment, listening, straining against the thunder of his heart blood in his ears, feeling the matching throb of his cheek and the knuckles of one hand; the drover who had done the first and received the second had the bones of his face broken, but it was small comfort for the cloaked man.
He had come here because it was Bisset’s sister’s house and the place where he had picked up the Edinburgh trail of the fat wee man who had – he was forced to admit – cunningly contrived to thwart him at the tavern.
Now he listened and peered into the grey-black, took a step, then another and stopped when he crunched something under one foot. Glass or pottery, he thought. Smashed. He heard soft scuttling and froze, then heard it again and felt slowly into his belt, fishing out fire-starter and a nub end of candle. He took a deep breath and struck.
The sparks were dazzling in the dark, even through the veil of his closed eyes and, after the first strike, he waited, alert and ready. No-one came; something scuttled at floor level. He struck sparks until the treated charcoal caught, then he fed the wick to the embers and blew until it caught, flaring like a poppy.