Sniffing out the dead was also in the Blackwood sisters’ nature, as surely as finding a prize that sparkled on the ground.
“We volunteer to sit with the old and infirm at Saint Basil’s,” Edwina said. “It isn’t hard to find death there.” She decided it was best to return her find to the river, so she found a crevice in the embankment wall where the rising tide would accept her offering later. She placed the skull wrapped in seaweed between two stones covered in slick green slime and said a quick blessing for the dead.
After, Ian absentmindedly pressed his fingers to his neck above his Adam’s apple. Again. She’d seen him do it three times since he awoke in her father’s bed. A quirk? A sore throat? Or something else? Though Hob had restored the man’s memories with his protective magic, she couldn’t be sure how complete the imp’s spell would prove. Or her sister’s, for that matter. Memories were malleable. Changeable. Unreliable, wispy things. Magic couldn’t change that. Not until they were removed from the body and could be solidified in stone.
Ian held any further curiosity about Mary in check, letting his attention drift back to the shore, where the water had moved closer by several feet. The river had risen significantly since they’d climbed down the steps near the pier. Sometimes unpredictable, the rising water could catch the unsuspecting walker by surprise until they found themselves trudging through dangerous mud. Or worse, stranded on a small spit of high ground until it, too, eventually sank beneath the dark water.
“We should probably think about heading back,” she said with a nod to the water as it lapped against the stones and shards of broken pottery.
“It’s an odd location, is it not?” He scanned the treacherous terrain of the foreshore again. “For a man to be walking in the dark?” Ian was speaking more to himself than to her, as if going over some chain of events in his head that could account for his body lying on the foreshore in the wee hours of the morning. “You did say it was just before dawn.”
“The water was on the rise then too.”
“Aye, of course it was.” Ian seemed to have got the scent of something. Something important. “And if you hadn’t found me, I’d have drowned and my body would have been carried off on the tide. Perhaps I’d have washed up on some shore a half mile away, or maybe I’d have been lost to the sea, never to be heard from again.”
It was a gruesome thought, one she wasn’t sure served either of them well to dwell on. “It’s a lucky thing we found you.”
“Nae, it couldn’t have been random,” he said. “I obviously wasn’t out here fishing or even mudlarking. So why else would I climb down to a stretch of the foreshore in the dark?”
“I wondered if you hadn’t fallen off the embankment.”
“Aye, but wouldn’t that have broken a rib or arm?” Ian paused, as though thinking or revisiting a memory or feeling. “I was drawn here. Following someone.” He paced over the rocks and rusty nails poking out of the mud. “Perhaps I discovered something someone didn’t want me sharing.”
“Something about Sir Elvanfoot’s son? Isn’t that what you were investigating?”
“Aye, and whatever I learned was apparently enough to get me killed.”
Edwina thought back to that morning. There had been others on the street. There always were, day or night. The number of rough sleepers in the city could fill the ranks of an army. Any one of them could have been on the foreshore before she and Mary climbed the stairs down from the embankment. She hadn’t been looking for anyone else on the shore, but it didn’t mean they hadn’t already come and gone. It was mere chance they’d found Ian in time to accidentally save his life.
“What now?” she asked.
He finally took his eye off the shore and turned his attention fully on her. “Thank you again, Miss Blackwood. For sending the constable to find me. I might have died otherwise, left unconscious with the tide rising. And I intend to find out why.”
“You mean for the second time,” she said, flushing after staring so deeply at him she’d noticed the flecks of gold in his green eyes.
“Undoubtedly. I was sent to the city to find Sir Elvanfoot’s son. That was my only mission. Whatever I discovered led me to the river’s edge, and I will find it again. I just have to start at the beginning. Retrace my steps.” He was taking a last, lingering look at the scene when his gaze snagged on a young face at the top of the embankment staring down at them. Not the boy from the lane but a lad of seventeen or eighteen perhaps. The young man grinned beneath a mop of unruly blond hair. Even from twelve feet away, Edwina could see the discoloration of his teeth, the pockmarks on his face, and the greasy ring around the collar of his jacket. An uneasy feeling rose up in her humors.