Chapter Text
Chapter I — The Ghost in the Market
Inverness, 1602
The market breathed like an animal: wet, hot, and close. Smoke from peat and tallow slid between the stalls, clinging low. The air was thick with dung, iron, and the sour sweetness of rotting apples. Everything moved. Everything spoke.
Men shouted prices. Iron rang. Sheep bawled. A hen burst loose, wings slapping at knees and skirts. Each sound struck Duncan’s chest before he could name it. The world was a fist that kept opening and closing around him.
He clung to his father’s sleeve, wool rough under his fingers. The cloth scratched, anchored him. Elbows passed above his head; coats brushed his cheek. Someone bent for a coin, their breath, stinking of beer and onion, hot against his cheek.
“Keep up, lad.”
He tried. Straw and mud slid beneath his boots. A dog snarled between carts. Smoke stung his eyes. He blinked, bright cloth snapping like banners, a butcher’s sleeve dark with blood, a knife flashing in light. Too many colours. Too much heat.
He wanted to ask how long they’d stay, but his voice stayed behind his teeth. Men made noise to prove they were alive, his father said. Duncan wasn’t sure he wanted anyone to notice.
They passed the tinker’s stall. Roasted oats, warm and sweet. Coins clinked. Laughter cracked like glass. The clamour swelled until it filled his head. If he let go, the crowd would close over him and never give him back.
A hand landed on his shoulder. “Stay close.”
The weight steadied him. Calluses bit through his tunic. It hurt a little, but that was alright. Duncan liked that. It was solid and could be relied upon.
Then, the crowd shifted.
At the far edge of the square sat a man the colour of dust. His cloak hung loose; dark hair half-hid his face. The crowd bent around him like water round a stone. He didn’t move, not even when a cart splashed mud across his boots, or when a mule balked and would not pass.
His hands lay folded in his lap. Even from this distance, Duncan could tell that they were pale and clean as bone.
Something in that stillness pressed against Duncan’s chest. The market’s noise thinned, leaving a hollow where sound should be. For a heartbeat, the air leaned toward that emptiness, as if the world itself were listening.
“Don’t stare at beggars,” his father said, steering him back into the crush. “They’ll follow ye home if ye give them notice.”
Duncan turned, cast a quick look back. The man was still there, watching the mud dry on his boots. Pale hands resting motionless.
He didn’t know why it chilled him, only that the heat of the crowd felt thinner now, as if something beneath it had stirred and looked back.
His father stopped at a cart of iron that offered ploughshares, nails and even a broad axe that glinted like frost. The men began to bargain, their voices rough and rising like a tune Duncan couldn’t follow. Silver clinked. A mule brayed. From somewhere close, a woman’s Gaelic curse cracked the air like a whip.
Duncan stood by the wheel, tracing its iron rim with one finger, the axe cold in the corner of his sight. The words around him blurred into hum and rattle. His feet wanted to move. The sound pulled at him. He told himself he’d only look. Just to the next stall, where ribbons and jars of fire-bright sugar caught the light.
One step. Then another. The crowd pressed him sideways, soft but steady.
Pepper. Smoke. A woman turned meat over a brazier; fat hissed and spat. Heat brushed his face, made his mouth water. A grey-toothed man grinned and held out a bruised apple.
“Here, wee lad. Dinna tell yer da.”
Duncan took it, shy and pleased. The fruit was soft, sweet with rot. Juice ran down his chin. He wiped it with his sleeve and laughed under his breath.
Light flickered everywhere. A drummer beat a painted skin until the rhythm thudded inside Duncan's chest. A juggler flashed coins; a girl squealed when one appeared behind her ear. People clapped. Laughter rose and fell.
Near the well, a monk shouted about sin, his voice cracking with effort. A brown dog bowed for coppers, the little bell at its neck jingling. Duncan stumbled on a loose stone and caught himself on a cart. The world spun once, then settled, still bright, still safe.
He kept walking. Every turn held something new: amber beads spilling light, a boy chasing a chicken through mud, the smell of oats toasting somewhere unseen. He felt drunk on it all. The noise pulled at him like a tide, and he let it. There was always more. Always another turn. Another sound.
Then the sound changed.
Thinner now. Colder.
He turned, expecting the cart of iron, his father’s tartan cloak. All he found were strange faces, none looking his way. The air smelled sharper. Iron, dung, and rain. His stomach dropped hollow.
He shifted the apple to his other hand, though he no longer wanted it.
“Da?”
The word vanished. He tried again, louder, his voice small against the weight of sound.
“Da!”
Someone’s shoulder struck him. He stumbled; the apple slipped and burst in the mud. Breath caught in his throat. The market kept moving, indifferent to his rising panic.
He called once more, shouted, sobbed, then both together, and the world drew tight around him: noise folding, light narrowing, heart hammering in his ears.
He turned, the light slicing thin through the smoke—
Then hands, sudden and rough.
He spun around, heart battering his ribs. If he could just—
A hand clamped over his mouth.
The market vanished.
Only dark. Only breath, hot and foul against his cheek.
He kicked, twisted. The ground slid under him. Mud, straw, something sharp tearing at his shoe. The man dragged him backward, the smell of ale and sweat thick enough to choke on. Barrels loomed, slick with damp.
“Quiet, ye devil-spawn,” the voice rasped, broken and wet. Spit hit his ear. “Marked… I see it…”
The words meant nothing. Only the sound, the hatred in it, cut through.
He bit down hard. Salt. Blood. A grunt, then the hand ripped away. He wrenched free, stumbled toward the thin stripe of light at the alley’s mouth.
For a heartbeat, he could breath freely, saw the sky above.
Then pain exploded behind his eyes.
Everything went red and ringing.
The world bent. Sound came in waves: his pulse, the man’s breath, the scrape of boots on grit. His knees folded. He tried to call out, but the word stuck fast behind his teeth.
The stranger’s shadow loomed, trembling, muttering things he could no longer make out. The smell of rot and old beer closed in.
Light dimmed.
Noise folded inward till only the come and go of his heartbeat remained.
Something moved at the edge of his vision.
Not fast. Not loud. Just there, as if the air had folded and left a man behind.
At the mouth of the alley stood the beggar from the market. Dust-coloured rags. Hair across his face. He didn’t walk so much as arrive. The light bent toward him; even the noise seemed to wait.
The madman turned, knife raised, teeth showing in a wet snarl.
The was no clash of steel. No shout. Only a shift of weight. A breath drawn and not released.
The man jerked once, his eyes going wide. His knees folded under him, hands reaching for something that wasn’t there. A dull thud followed. Then nothing, except the slow, heavy drip of blood on stone.
Duncan’s stomach lurched. The air felt thick. It was hard to breathe. The smell of metal, of sweat and something hot, filled his mouth.
The beggar lowered his hand. A blade hung there, black where it had entered, pale where it hadn’t. No tremor. No rush. He just stood, sure as if he’d done it a thousand times.
Too long that way, hand half-raised, breath unbroken, until even the quiet began to sound wrong.
Duncan stared, unable to tear his eyes away. He’d seen killing before, both livestock and accidents, but never the afterward, this hollow where the world forgot to breathe.
The beggar looked back, and Duncan's breath caught. He couldn't say why, only that the man's gaze was calm in a way that swallowed everything else. Noise, fear, faces. They all blurred together until there was only that look, steady and endless.
The world had gone too small to breathe.
Stone at his back. Cold in his hands. The alley swayed, and his heartbeat filled it, thick and steady, all he could hear.
A low voice cut through it, tone even and careful.
“You’re safe now.”
It didn’t sound like safety.
The beggar knelt beside him. Up close, the dirt on his cloak looked like disguise. Too even, too dry, like it had been smeared on instead of collected over time. The skin beneath was clean. Hair hung dark over a face that gave nothing away. The eyes were steady and quiet in a way that made everything else stop moving.
“Are you hurt?”
Duncan tried to answer. His mouth was full of blood and grit.
The man’s hand moved and brushed mud from his temple. The touch made him flinch. It was gentle, but the kind of gentle that comes after violence.
“Hold still.”
Warm breath. Cold fingers. A faint tremor, or maybe his own. He could hear the drag of his own pulse between them.
The man nodded once. “Still there,” he murmured, as if that were enough.
Duncan stared at the hands. Long. Pale. Steady. They looked wrong here. Clean in a place that had none. He could smell blood between them, old and new. The scent so sharp it made his throat ache.
The man drew back a little. His mouth moved again, shaping words as if against resistance.
“This world eats the kind-hearted first,” he said. A pause. A breath. And then:
"Be brave."
It came softly. Not a warning, but something like hope. As if he, too, wanted to believe in it.
Then he stood. The air seemed to ease around him, though the space he left behind still carried the shape of that touch. The weight of it pressed into Duncan’s skin, where fear and calm had mingled and become the same thing.
Shouts broke the stillness.
“Get away from my son!”
Duncan’s father burst into the alley, sword half-drawn, face white with fear. His boots struck mud; the sound rang sharp in the narrow space.
The beggar stepped back slowly, palms raised, unthreatening. The light caught on his hands: long, clean, out of place here. His gaze flicked toward Duncan’s father. Not defiant, not guilty, only distant, already elsewhere.
Then a shift of bodies at the alley’s mouth. A distant shout. The first drops of rain. When Duncan blinked, the man was gone, swallowed by the crowd.
His father dropped to one knee and pulled him close. The sword clattered to the ground.
“Christ, lad—” His hands were rough, trembling as they checked for wounds. “Are ye hurt? Tell me.”
Duncan shook his head. His throat worked, but no sound came. His father’s coat smelled of rain and sweat. Ordinary smells, living ones. Duncan pressed his face against them and felt the world return, one sense at a time.
“Did he touch ye?”
Another shake.
His father drew a long breath, the kind that scrapes the ribs, then gathered him up. “It’s done now,” he muttered, voice breaking between fury and relief. “It’s done.”
They turned toward the noise of the market, the crowd closing around them again. The smell of meat and smoke came rushing back. Bright, cloying, too much.
But beneath it lingered another scent: iron, cold and clean. And the ghost of a touch at his chin, light as breath.
❖
Donan Wood, 1622
(half a day after Duncan's first death and the ensuing banishment)
The makeshift fire had died hours ago. Smoke clung low to the ground, refusing to rise, a ghost of warmth barely visible in the dark. Duncan lay half-curled in the dirt, his clothes stiff with blood that no longer bled. Each breath came in short bursts, clouding the air and vanishing before he could see it twice.
He tried to move, and the world tilted. Every sound struck like flint: a branch snapping somewhere in the dark, an owl shifting its wings, the slow, uneven drip of rain from the pines.
The smell of iron was everywhere. He pressed a hand to his side. Nothing. No pain, no wound. Only the memory of one.
He lay there a long while, staring at his hands. Faint moonlight caught on dried blood and mud beneath the nails, the black lines of dirt crossing his palms. Something about the sight unsettled him, as if he’d once known hands that were clean.
The thought slipped away before it formed.
He drew his knees closer, shivering. “Be brave,” he whispered, the words rising from a place deeper than voice. They were the only thing that still felt real. He clung to them.
Wind stirred through the trees, hollow and steady, like breath drawn in and not released. He closed his eyes. The dark stayed.
“Be brave,” he said again, softer this time, as though the act of saying it might make it true.