by Lynn Kurland
He paused. Very well, he could remember with perfect clarity the last time he’d donned black, slid tools for the picking of locks into his pocket, and scaled the outer walls of an impenetrable fortress in an utterly magickless fashion in order not to set off any alarms put in place for just such a lad as he, but perhaps that was a memory better left unexamined at present. In the end, he’d managed to get himself inside the place, had an unfortunate encounter with the lord of the hall in that lord’s private study, then barely escaped—eventually—with his life. Again, a rumination better left for a more comfortable locale.
At present, he was safely inside another man’s domain and that man was nothing more than an annoying gnat compared to what he’d faced in the past. There was mischief afoot and the pretentions of a minor lord in a backwater hellhole weren’t going to keep him from finding out what he wanted to know.
He glanced at the butler he’d left sitting, quite senseless, in a comfortable-looking window seat. He’d appropriated the man’s jacket without compunction, a jacket which of course didn’t fit his fine form as it would have if he’d been able to do a bit of altering on the fly, as it were. At least he’d done the old fellow the courtesy of clipping him under the chin before he pilfered his coat instead of simply ripping it off him and daring him to do anything about it. Acair suspected the man would wake with something of a headache, which was likely less than he deserved. Perhaps he would think twice before he was rude again to a stable lass who didn’t deserve that sort of treatment.
He sighed at his seemingly uncontrollable instinct to display chivalry where Léirsinn was concerned, then took up a tray topped by a decanter of port and a trio of crystal glasses. He considered the possibilities, then turned and headed down the passageway as if he knew where he was going.
His first stop was the room Léirsinn had first exited. He knocked, waited, then decided perhaps the libations were more desperately needed than he might have thought. He opened the door, then peeked inside the chamber.
He almost dropped his tray in surprise.
Very well, so the very quiet conversation he’d utterly failed at making out between Léirsinn and the chamber’s occupant had been rather one-sided. He was sure he’d distinctly heard her call the man grandfather. It wasn’t possible that man lying there before the fire was the man she’d been talking to, was it?
He moved inside the chamber, set his tray down on a handy side table, then closed the door behind him. He found himself quite at a loss for words, which was alarming in and of itself. What he was seeing was the last thing he’d expected.
Léirsinn’s grandsire, if that’s who that was, was completely incapacitated.
Acair glanced about the chamber and was genuinely surprised by how shabby it was. These were servants’ quarters, surely not worthy of use by the lord of the hall’s father. He frowned thoughtfully as he walked across the threadbare carpet to have a closer look at the lone occupant.
The old man was lying on a chaise in front of the fire, wrapped in blankets, scarce breathing. He seemingly couldn’t even move his eyes, though he did occasionally blink. Acair thought it best to offer some sort of assurance.
“I mean you no harm—”
Ah, hell and damnation. He leapt back across the chamber and had his tray back up in his hands before the door finished opening. It was Léirsinn’s uncle, Lord Fuadain. The man looked at him with a surprise that wasn’t of a pleased sort.
“What are you doing in here?” he demanded.
“Wrong chamber, milord,” Acair said, ducking his head.
Fuadain backhanded him. Acair couldn’t remember the last time he’d been struck. A spell of death was halfway out of his mouth before he realized what he was doing. He kept his head down, congratulated himself on not dropping his burden, then made Fuadain a small bow.
“Thank ye for the correction, milord,” he said in his best working man’s accent.
“See that I don’t find the need for the like again. Now, get out.”
Acair got out, but he would be damned if there wouldn’t be some repayment for that. He stood outside the door, shaking, silently cursing everyone he could think of until he settled finally on a certain Cothromaichian prince and his elven companion.
He walked a bit farther down the passageway, just to give himself time to cool his temper. He turned the corner the first chance he had and found himself facing what appeared to be Fuadain’s suite of rooms. He looked about himself to make certain he was alone, then poured the port into a pair of boots that had been left out for a polishing, shoved the decanter and glasses into a planter, then suppressed the urge to take the silver tray and fling it at someone.
Truly, it had been a trying few days.
He got hold of himself, then went back to the corner near where he’d come from and listened again. He could hear only the faintest murmur of voices, but ’twas obvious Fuadain hadn’t left the grandfather’s chamber. He slipped back down the way, stopped in front of that worn door, and put his ear to the wood.
“And so you see, Tosdach . . . why . . . die.”
Acair cursed the builder of the manor for having seen to the privacy of any given chamber’s occupants so well, then gave up when he heard voices coming closer to the door. He headed off down the passageway as if he had business elsewhere, but he was considering things he didn’t particularly want to.
Who needed to die? Whilst he wasn’t opposed to sending a ruffian or rogue elf speedily off into the next life, he liked for there to be some reason for it. That had to have been Fuadain speaking. The man was a bastard of the first water, brutal to his servants, and unkind to his relatives.
He suppressed the urge to find a polished glass and have a good look in it. ’Twas possible he might have recognized those traits because they were his own, but that was something he could think about later. That list of items was growing very long, but he would simply put think about the list on the bottom of it and it would endlessly rotate, leaving him too busy watching that rotation to give the items it contained any thought.
He waited a moment or two longer, then left down the same passageway he’d walked up. The whole evening had been a completely useless exercise, but the truth was, he was not at his best. That encounter with the shadow had left him far more drained than he wanted to admit. All he truly wanted to do was find his pile of straw and cast himself down upon it.
There was something going on inside that manor house, though, a plot that he could smell the rankness of from fifty paces. And if there was anything he knew the stench of, it was a vile plot. Fuadain was obviously in the thick of it, which was worrisome. Unfortunately, he could do nothing else that night.
He trudged back to the barn and sought out his scrap of floor, hoping rather uneasily that he hadn’t given in too soon.
• • •
He woke to darkness. He didn’t awaken during the night usually, a gift no doubt reserved for those with either a clear conscience or none at all. The one thing he could say for certain was that he could see in the dark as well as any feline, a rather useful gift he had from his father, the old rapscallion. It usually served him quite well.
At the moment, it only served to let him know he was a heartbeat away from death.
There were two mages there, hovering over him like specters, very thorough and businesslike spells of death on their lips. He hardly had the chance to remind himself that he couldn’t unleash the same without that damned spell that followed him falling on him, much less weigh the certainty of that against the possibility that the two trying to slay him might not be able to manage it.
And then, quite suddenly, they seemed to be doing less floating and more falling. He watched with a good deal of surprise as each mage in turn flinched as if he’d been struck, flapped around a bit, then landed in a heap, one atop the other. Acair sat up, knowing he was gaping and wishing he could look a little less a
stonished.
A match sparked in the darkness, a terribly pedestrian way to call fire, but he wasn’t going to argue. The light the subsequently-lit lamp gave wasn’t at all steady, but he suspected that might have been thanks to the trembling of the hand holding that lamp. He looked to find Léirsinn there, looking as if she were the one who had just narrowly escaped death.
She was also holding an empty crossbow.
Acair scrambled to his feet with no grace whatsoever, took the lamp from her and hung it on a hook, then caught the crossbow as she dropped it.
“Are they—” She looked to be attempting to swallow. “I mean, are they—”
“Dead?” he supplied. “I certainly hope so.”
She looked horrified. “I didn’t mean—”
“I should damn well hope you meant to,” he said. He shivered. “A fortunate thing you came along when you did.”
She was silent for so long, he began to wonder if there were things going on that he might be interested in knowing. He looked at her in surprise.
“Did you know that they intended?” he asked. “Do you know them?”
“Must we discuss this now?”
He glanced at the heap of dead mage, then back at her. “I’m not sure there would be a better time, but I’ve been known to be wrong about that sort of thing before. What do you think?”
“I think I might be ill.”
Well, she certainly looked as if that might be the case. He didn’t suppose she would do any more damage to his poor floor than had already been done, though, so he mentally gave her permission to vomit if she needed to and turned his mind back to the matter at hand.
“I wonder who those lads were,” he mused.
“I overheard someone talking in the garden,” she managed. “About you. I didn’t see who it was, but it might have been those two.” She wrapped her arms around herself. “I couldn’t believe my ears, if you want the whole truth.”
So he wasn’t as anonymous as he’d hoped he would be. He frowned. “Did they name me by name, or was it just general mayhem they were about?”
“I’m not sure,” she said miserably. “They said much I didn’t hear and more I heard but didn’t understand, but there was definitely quite a bit about murder and magic and . . . aye, they used your name.”
Perfect. He sent a silent curse wafting heavenward in the direction of a certain pair of busybodies, then looked at his savior. “You didn’t see them?”
She shook her head. “I just heard them.” She looked at him then. “They were here for you, weren’t they?”
“’Tis possible,” he said, because it was the best he could manage on short notice. Aye, those two were obviously there for him, but the question was why?
His list of enemies was extremely long, something he’d been quite proud of in the past, but he couldn’t bring to mind anyone who would know where he was at present save Rùnach and Soilléir and they wanted him alive to enjoy his current straits. His Aunt Cailleach knew where he was, but it wasn’t possible she would have sent mages to kill him. He was family. Possibly undesirable family, but she had little room for criticism there. If she’d wanted to off him, as she was wont to say, she would have gotten her hands dirty herself. Nay, those lads weren’t from her.
He hadn’t seen anyone else he knew, he hadn’t spread his presence about, and he hadn’t dropped pieces of mischief along behind him like bread crumbs.
He had, however, touched a patch of darkness.
And he was looking at a woman who perhaps hadn’t been as discreet about being able to see them as perhaps she should have been.
“Did you tell anyone?” he asked.
“Tell anyone what?”
“What you can see.”
She looked at him as if he’d just announced he was, well, who he was. “Are you daft? Of course not.”
“Why did you tell me then?”
She started to speak, then shut her mouth. She seemed to be casting about for something say, then finally shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know. I thought you might understand, though I’ve no idea why.”
“You’re wise beyond your years,” he muttered. He studied the mages on the floor at his feet, still as death, then looked at her. “You’re certain you didn’t tell anyone else about those spots? Servants? Stable boys? Potted plants?”
“Nay, none of the three, though I can’t imagine what a potted plant would reveal.”
“It could be a mage disguising himself as a plant.”
“You are mad,” she said without hesitation. “How could a man turn himself into a plant?”
There was no point in even starting down that road. “I have an overactive imagination.”
“I’ll say.”
He watched as the mages in front of him began to steam. Interesting. He realized, as they began to simply vaporize, that the woman beside him was about to faint. He caught her before she fell, sat down rather heavily on his stool, then landed on his arse as the stool collapsed under their collective weight. He clapped his hand over Léirsinn’s mouth as a courtesy.
She put her hand over his hand, then clutched his arm with her other hand. She was strong, he would give her that, but he’d be damned if he squeaked. She pulled his hand away slowly.
“Holy hell,” she breathed.
“Hmmm,” he agreed as the vapors swirled up into the faint light from the lantern. They made a keening sound that was almost too faint to hear, then vanished. He nodded abruptly. “Well, that takes you out of the running for lass-least-likely-to-kill-a-mage. Nicely done.”
“I don’t believe in mages,” she wheezed.
He nodded toward the spot where the bodies had lain. “What would you call that, then?”
“Part of my nightmare?”
“Believe that, if you can.” He patted her back. “Time to go.”
She looked at him. He noticed that she had freckles sprinkled across her nose. The quintessential country miss, to be sure. The quintessential country miss who had apparently just encountered things she had likely never dreamed about even in her nightmares.
“I thought mages were just make-believe characters in those tales told down at the pub,” she said very faintly. “Or in faery tales. If they existed in truth, I assumed they lived in nasty places up north where I never want to go.”
He had no comfort to offer her on that score so he sighed lightly and attempted a shrug. “Apparently not.”
“I thought magic was limited to charms and love potions and silly things that old women invented to keep food in their pantries,” she continued, as if she hadn’t heard him. She looked absolutely shattered. “You know. Lies told to give people comfort.”
He met her eyes. “I’m afraid not.”
She looked at him as if she’d never seen him before. “They said you had magic.”
“Lads say many things,” he said dismissively, “most they don’t mean.”
She pulled away from him and scrambled to her feet. She looked at him in alarm. “Who are you?”
“I can’t say.”
“Why would those—” She pointed at the spot where the pile of mage had most recently resided. “Why would those things want you?”
He heaved himself to his feet, not entirely happy with how drained he still felt. “I can’t say that either.”
The lump of cloaks shifted suddenly—one last farewell, he supposed—and he found himself with his arms full of horse girl. He wasn’t sure he had ever over the course of his very long, very selfish life ever offered another soul comfort unless it was to wish them a good journey as he sent them off to hell with a well-crafted piece of magic. He wasn’t quite sure what to do with the woman in his arms, partly because he wasn’t at all good at that sort of thing and partly because he was mightily distracted by a piece of stool that was still poking him in the arse.
He reached around and removed the splinter. He was half tempted to save it so he could use it to drive home a fitting piece of retribution somehow, but he wasn’t sure it was worth holding on to for as long as he feared he would need to.
So, lacking anything else better to do, he put his arms around Léirsinn and rocked her just a bit. He wasn’t sure how to do it properly—and suspected he was doing it poorly—but what else could he do? His mother rocked herself, but she did that whilst muttering incantations over a bubbling pot, so perhaps she wasn’t one to emulate.
He soon felt very silly indeed, so he patted Léirsinn again and set her away from him.
“Time to go.”
She blinked. “Go? What in the hell are you talking about?”
“We must leave and the sooner, the better.”
She looked at him as if he’d lost his mind. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“I suggest you rethink that,” he said seriously. “I am guessing—and only guessing, mind you—that those two were sent after me because I disturbed those spots you don’t want to talk about. And I’m not the one who saw them first, if you see what I’m getting at.”
“But I’m no one,” she protested. “Just a stable hand.”
“If I were you, I wouldn’t want to remain here to see if I might be mistaken about that.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” she said desperately. “I have responsibilities.”
He studied her for a moment or two in silence, glanced at the pile of cloaks still lying near where he’d almost died, and wondered just how he was going to talk sense into the woman standing in front of him.
“If you stay, things could go very badly for you,” he said finally.
“I’ll take that chance. You go ahead and scamper away, though, if you like.”
Her words stung, mostly because he was fairly sure she’d muttered coward under her breath. He reached down, picked up her crossbow, and handed it to her. “Interesting weapon, that. Best fetch the bolts before someone else does.”