Oskar nodded glumly. “I know. I—I just mean a message of—of—of some kind.… I just don’t like to think of her worrying, is all.”
Komako didn’t like it either. Miss Davenshaw was strict but fair, and there was a kindness in her like steel cable. She put a hand on the younger boy’s shoulder. “Charlie and Marlowe’ll figure it out,” she said. “They’ll tell her we’ve gone off somewhere. But all our things are there. It’ll be clear enough we’re coming back.”
“But what if Charlie and Marlowe aren’t at her class either?”
“Where else would they be?”
He shrugged unhappily in the rain.
A voice at her back snorted. “Thinks they’re still with old Berghast, he does. Taking breakfast, like.”
Komako turned. Ribs had come out while they were talking and was lifting the hood of her cloak up over her red hair.
“I don’t think that,” said Oskar.
Komako gestured at the pub. “So? What did they say?”
“Well, first,” said Ribs expansively, “you’ll be pleased to know they was impressed with my accent. Oh! Charming, it were! Why hello, young lady, they says. An what’s your like doin about on a day like this, unaccompanied as such? An I tells them, Oh, my governess is just outside, taking the air an the like, and they says—”
“Ribs,” said Komako. “What did they say about the chandler’s?”
She shrugged. “They never heard of it.”
“But the Grassmarket? They must know how to get to it?”
“We-e-ell,” she began. “I never quite got the chance to—”
But just then Komako saw the police constable coming back their way. A hulking figure in his black rain slicker and with thick tawny side whiskers that made him look feline and ferocious in the gloom. He seemed to have an eye fixed on Ribs and Oskar and she quickly took the two by the elbows and steered them off.
“It’s time we were going,” she hissed.
And they shouldered their way through the thickening crowds of clerks, stepping down into the ankle-deep water below the bollards, trying to get around and get space. Vagrancy was just an excuse for a constable to do with you what he wanted and the last thing they needed, she knew, was trouble with the law. They weren’t running but nearly so, going so fast as to draw reproving looks from passersby.
“You three! Oi!” the constable called.
He caught them not ten strides up from the corner of Hanover Street. Komako and Ribs and Oskar all shrank back against an iron railing, still in the wet. The man’s eyes were hard to make out. He loomed over them, his face etched in a scowl, and Komako felt suddenly afraid. Here there were fewer pedestrians. But it was too wet for her to manipulate any dust and Ribs was fully dressed and so she couldn’t make herself invisible and Lymenion, Oskar’s flesh giant, was miles away. They were as powerless as any three ordinary kids, anywhere.
Stupid! she thought to herself.
The constable swung his stick—slap, slap—into the flat of his hand. A hansom rattled past. He looked off up the street, then back down at them.
“We wasn’t doing nothing,” said Ribs. “It ain’t against the law to get rained on.”
“Tis true,” said the constable.
“So … we’ll just be going, then?” said Komako.
But he was blocking their way with his size and she could see the whistle around his neck and knew they weren’t going anywhere without his saying so. His side whiskers were long and wet like a dog’s fur and when he grimaced the water squeezed from them.
“I know ye,” he said quietly. “You’d be from that Cairndale place, up the north now, wouldn’t ye?”
Komako froze. She looked at Ribs, looked back at the constable.
“No,” said Ribs.
But the constable ignored this. “My wife’s sister used to deliver perishables up there to the estate, she did. Used to talk about the kids up there. Said it seemed a lonesome life, growin up on the edge of that loch. Just the few of you.” He tipped the brim of his helmet with his stick and the water poured off to one side. “Ye needn’t look quite so shocked, lassie. You’re wearin them capes that come right out of the estate.” He nodded to the insignia over their breasts. “Might be most here in the big city don’t know it, but them what come out of the north know the Cairndale arms well enough.”
“Yes, sir,” said Komako politely. She was too surprised and confused to say anything more.
But Ribs wasn’t. She stepped forward, as if taking the measure of the man, and said boldly, “We was lookin for a particular shop, sir. A chandler’s, run by a Mr. Albany. It’s in the Grassmarket. We wanted to buy a special something for our governess.”
“From a chandler?” said the constable. “I might suggest a fine bolt of cloth be a better gift. Or maybe something from the teashop round the corner?”
“Mr. Albany is an especial friend of hers, sir,” said Komako quickly. “It’s a gift she’d appreciate, for reasons of sentiment.”
“Ah. All right, then. Well…” He screwed up his face and turned in the rain and looked out at the gloomy street. “Let me see. I don’t know a Mr. Albany, but if it’s the Grassmarket you’re after, it’s off away behind the castle rock. Ye’ll go over through them gardens to the Old Town and take a right on Victoria Street and follow it over toward West Port. Mind that. Most of the usual sort are there, dealers in pitch an tar an dyers an the like. And even if your man ain’t, there’d be a one or a two to point ye in the right direction.”
Komako memorized the names. Victoria Street. West Port.
“Ye’d be all right for coin, then? Ye’ve had a bite?”
Ribs’s eyes lit up. “No—” she started to say.
But Komako spoke over her. “We are fine, thank you, sir. We ate before leaving this morning. And we brought all we need.”
“Right, then,” he said.
And he tipped his helmet and took his leave, strolling back off into the rain, cheerfully swinging his club.
But they were hungry, by then. They bought a newspaper full of penny cakes from a hot cart at the edge of the green and then they crossed through in the wet, none of them talking. The gravel walks shining, the stilled trees dark. The castle walls loomed above them, silhouetted and medieval, the battlement cannons just visible in the haze. The Old Town was grimmer and the streets narrower and when they came at last to the open air of the Grassmarket they were all of them tired and filling with doubts. In the old cattle pens, crows as big as ravens stood on the fence rails, watching. Komako could feel the water seeping around her toes with every step.
“Miss Davenshaw will be angry when we see her,” Oskar said.
Komako put a calming hand on his arm. They were standing on the site of the old gibbet and she turned in the rain to peer across the span. A narrow alley, crooked shop fronts. A black horse hauling a wagon past in the gloom. And there it was, on a painted window glass on the corner, in large cursive:
ALBANY CHANDLERS, Purveyor of Fine Candles Wicks Lanterns Preserving Fats & Oils of All Kinds. Edward Albany, Proprietor. Est. 1838.
A faded red awning with holes punched in it dripped over the stoop. A lidless barrel held God only knows what sort of effluent. There was a dead rat lying directly in the middle of the steps, left there by some enterprising cat. That, or poisoned. The shop looked dark, deserted, unwelcoming. But as they watched, the sign in the window flipped to OPEN. A pale face materialized in the glass, peering out at the street, then vanished.
Ribs grinned. She drew her hood up over her hair and affected her upper-class accent. “Well, my dearies. Do let’s go pay good Mr. Edward a visit, shall we?”
Oskar made a face.
“She’s not going to do it like that again, is she?” he whispered.
“Ribs—” said Komako. “Just … be careful. You don’t know what’s in there.”
“I’m always careful.” She grinned.
“If you see any sign of Brendan or any of the missing kids, you come right back. Okay?”
Ribs winked. Then she turned with a flourish, so that her cloak billowed out around her, and started across.
* * *