“These symbols,” she said to Evan, “you said they denote cargo type?”
“Aye,” Evan replied. “And destination. Sometimes quantity.”
She flipped another page. Then another. Something snagged her attention: a slight variation in the symbols. One of the hooked marks was doubled—two small strokes instead of one. It appeared again several pages later. And again.
“What does this one mean?” she asked, pointing at the symbol.
He leaned closer, studying it. “Escort required. High-value shipment. Or a sensitive one.”
She scanned the page again. There were secondary marks beside some of the entries—small, almost invisible notations.
“What are these?” she asked, pointing to a faint series of dots and dashes.
“Timing indicators.”
“Timing?”
“Aye. Indicates arrival window. Usually associated with the tides.”
“Can you translate them?”
Evan nodded and as he read them out one by one, Ruby took the charcoal and wrote the expected delivery dates next to the points on the map where that delivery was headed. As the marks accumulated, a pattern began to emerge. A system. The points were not random, or scattered. They formed an arc, a near-perfect semicircle around Edinburgh of places that had recently received shipments of these ‘high-value’ goods.
Ruby pointed. “These estates—the conspirators’ estates—they sit along this arc.” She traced the line with her finger. “The intercepted couriers cluster here and here,” she continued, touching two points on the semi-circle very close to the conspirator’s estates. “And the shipments marked as ‘escort required’ align with those same positions.”
She looked around at them all expectantly. They stared back, uncomprehending.
“There’s a pattern,” Ruby said. “Don’t you see?”
Clearly, they did not. She tapped the map again, “If you wanted to move something covertly towards Edinburgh you wouldn’t go straight to the city. You’d secure the approaches first—which is what he’s been doing by using these locations—each of which has received one of these high value shipments.”
“Right,” Evan said slowly. “But the circle isnae complete yet.”
“Exactly,” Ruby said. “So what estate can he access that would allow him to complete his encirclement of Edinburgh?”
“Mine,” Evan breathed, leaning over the map and tapping the spot. “My lands.”
She nodded. “And there’s an entry here, another timing notation. What does it mean?”
Evan read it and went a little pale. “Ten days,” he said.
“Ten days until the next shipment window,” Ruby said quietly.
Niall looked at Bryce. Bryce looked at Evan. Evan looked at her.
“That’swhy he’s chased you across half the country,” she said. “He wants your land so he can bring in this shipment of these ‘high value goods’. Weapons, if we are reading this right.”
The realization settled over them all. Silence fell.
Bryce straightened slowly. “Then we have ten days. Ten days to come up with a plan to trap MacInnes and stop all this.”
Ruby swallowed. Ten days to lure MacInnes into the open and arrest him before he could enact his plan. Evan reached for her hand beneath the table. She squeezed back.
Ten days.
She wouldnotlose him. Not without fighting for every second.
