Read Chapter 18: The Fair of Thorns

The fair at Kilmorack was a lie dressed in coloured cloth. Pennants snapped in the wind, piper’s tunes tangled with the lowing of cattle, and the press of bodies gave off heat like a furnace—but Callum saw none of it as anything but cover. He moved through the crowd with a trader’s patience, letting the current carry him past wool stalls and ironmongers, his eyes scanning reflections in the polished brass of a merchant’s scales.

There. A flash of grey wool, too plain for the fine bonnet atop it. The same man who had dogged his steps at the last market day, pretending to haggle for peat while watching Callum’s hands. Thorne’s hound, and not a subtle one.

Callum cursed under his breath and turned sharply down a lane between stalls reeking of salted fish. His boots found the familiar sludge of the alley’s edge, and he slipped through the gap where a cart had overturned last month, the boards still splintered. He did not run. Running would confirm suspicion. But he walked with the unhurried purpose of a man with a destination, and the spy’s footsteps—cloth-shod, heavy on the stones—dogged him at a steady distance.

The alehouse called the Thistle and Thorn squatted at the end of a crooked street, its sign hanging by one chain. Callum ducked inside. The air hit him like a wet cloak—smoke, stale ale, and the sour smell of unwashed men. A dozen heads turned, then looked away. He found a corner table with a view of both doors and ordered a half-pint he had no coin to pay for.

While the serving girl fetched it, he scanned the room. No rebels. No sign of Tam Sinclair’s cutthroat grin or the red kerchief that marked his runners. But there—by the hearth, nursing a cup with scarred knuckles turned white—was a cooper Callum had seen at the rebel muster three months past. A little man named Fergus, who had once carried a dispatch pouch for Eilidh’s uncle.

Callum rose, spun his empty cup on the table, and wandered toward the hearth as if seeking warmth. He bent close, pretending to knock ash from his sleeve.

“The laird’s words need a boat,” Callum muttered, low enough for Fergus alone. “Tam Sinclair’s ear.”

Fergus did not turn. His jaw tightened. “The laird can speak for himself. I’m no messenger boy.”

“The laird is in a cage,” Callum hissed. “And what he says will matter by Thursday. Find Tam. Tell him the map is coming. A red-haired hunter waits at the crossroad stone.”

Fergus exhaled, a thin plume in the smoky air. “Red-haired hunter. Aye. I know the place.” He scraped his stool back, spat into the rushes, and made for the side door.

Callum turned, heart easing a fraction, and reached for his ale.

That was when the door burst open.

Three redcoats, bayonets fixed, shoved through the entrance with a sergeant bellowing orders. Behind them, a fourth man in a dragoon officer’s coat—Lieutenant Craddock, Thorne’s newest shadow—pointed a gloved finger straight at Fergus.

“That one! The cooper! Seize him!”

Fergus had half his body through the side door when a redcoat lunged and caught his shoulder. The cooper twisted, swung a fist that connected with a jaw, and for a glorious heartbeat it looked as if he might break free. Then the butt of a musket cracked against his skull. He folded like wet linen.

The room fell silent. A woman near the bar let out a strangled cry, then swallowed it. The redcoats dragged Fergus past Callum’s table, close enough that Callum could see the blood crawling from the cooper’s temple. Fergus’s eyes, half-lidded but aware, found him for an instant. There was no accusation in them. Only a warning that burned like a coal, then blinked out as they hauled him into the daylight.

Callum stood frozen, his ale untouched on the board. His map—the precious, painstakingly copied supply-route map that had been his one honest proof of loyalty—was still folded inside his boot, waiting to be handed off. Fergus had been the only link he knew this side of the river. And now Fergus was gone, bound for Thorne’s interrogation rooms.

The spy in grey wool appeared in the alehouse doorway, scanning the crowd. His eyes found Callum, and a thin smile touched his lips.

Callum moved. Not toward the doors—both watched now—but through the press of drinkers, past the bar, into the reeking passage that led to the privy. A window, shuttered and warped, gave onto a narrow alley. He shoved it open, caught a glimpse of a woman hauling washing, and vaulted through.

His boots hit the mud with a wet slap. He ran.

Behind the alehouse, a tangle of back lanes served the poor quarter. He took them at a jog, head down, darting past startled children and a goat tethered to a fence. When he was certain no grey wool dogged him, he ducked into a doorway and stood panting, hands braced on his knees.

The map burned against his ankle. He could not carry it back to the British camp—Thorne would have the sentries searching him from head to toe now that his spy had reported him entering an alehouse. He could not destroy it; it was the only card he had left with Eilidh. And he had no contact. No Tam Sinclair. No Fergus. Only the tide of a street fair, indifferent to the war tightening its fist around a man too stupid to know when he was beaten.

He straightened. Think.

At the corner of the lane, a beggar crouched against a wall—an old man with milky eyes, blind or near it, a wooden bowl before him. Beside him, a basket half-covered by a rag held three stale loaves, hard as stones. The baker’s charity, no doubt.

Callum approached. The beggar’s head tilted at his footsteps.

“Kind sir,” the old man croaked. “A penny for a blind soul?”

Callum looked past him, down the lane. The grey wool had not yet appeared. But a redcoat patrol turned onto the street a hundred yards distant, and the spy could not be far behind. He knelt, choosing the smallest loaf. With his knife, he slit the crust along the bottom, then peeled back the map from his boot—the paper thin, folded tight, dry as it had to be. He slipped it into the hollow he cut, pressed the crust closed, and rubbed the seam with a little dust to hide the cut.

“No penny,” Callum said, keeping his voice flat. “But I’ll buy your bread.”

The beggar’s lips worked. “A shilling, then, if your heart is good.”

Callum had no shilling. He emptied his coat pocket into his palm—a few coppers, a button, a twist of tobacco. He pressed them into the old man’s hand. “It’s all I have.”

The beggar weighed the coins, then nodded. “Then the bread is yours.”

Callum rose, holding the loaf—the wrong loaf. He set it down in the beggar’s basket and tucked the map-loaf inside his coat, then turned. The patrol was closer. The spy had not yet appeared. He would never make it past the fair gates carrying a stolen loaf that could not be searched without revealing its secret.

A cart rumbled by, laden with turnips and driven by a lad of perhaps fourteen, straw-haired and bored. Callum stepped into its path, stumbling, and the cart halted. He pressed the loaf into the lad’s hands.

“Take this to the man at the crossroad stone on the Inverness road,” Callum said, his voice urgent but low. “The one who wears a red kerchief. Tell him it is from the red-haired hunter.” He looked at the boy’s bewildered face and added, “Your sister’s debt is paid.”

It was a guess. But the lad’s eyes widened, and he clutched the loaf like a holy relic. He nodded once, kicked the cart forward, and was gone.

Callum stood at the edge of the fair, watching the cart weave through the crowd. He had just handed the fate of Laird MacLeod—and his own brother’s life—to a boy he had invented a connection to, trusting to luck and a stranger’s guilt.

He laughed bitterly. That was all he had left.

Then he turned and walked back toward the British camp, his pockets empty and his pride in ashes. Behind him, the fair churned on, oblivious. Ahead, the sentry fires burned, and Thorne’s questions waited.

By the time he reached his tent, night had fallen. He lay on his cot, staring at the canvas above him, and calculated what he had lost. Fergus, arrested. The map, given to a straw-haired boy who might eat it or sell it for a ha’penny. His coin, gone. His credit with the rebels, thinner than a blade.

And Thursday—Thursday came whether or not he was ready.

If the map reached Eilidh, there was hope. If it did not, Duncan would face Thorne alone, and Callum would have nothing left to offer either side but a corpse’s loyalty.

He closed his eyes and did not sleep.