A breathless race across the whole of the Nine Kingdoms in the company of a madman and a shapechanging horse—two horses actually, but who was counting?—had left her standing where she was at present, trying not to gape at her surroundings like the country mouse she most definitely was and wishing she were safely tucked away in an obscure barn.
Where she was at present was Eòlas, the capital city of the country of Diarmailt. She hadn’t dared ask anyone to verify her location, though she likely could have given that most of the inhabitants of the Nine Kingdoms were on the same cobblestone byway with her. Never in her life had she seen so many people gathered together in one place.
To make matters worse, most of those souls seemed determined to either elbow her out of their way or grope various parts of her person as they passed by her, no doubt in search of valuables.
She frowned at a particularly irritating lad who seemed determined to pester her, but she wasn’t sure what the rules were for ridding oneself of that sort of vexation. She thought a hearty shove or perhaps even a fist to the lad’s nose might be the easiest way to make her wishes known, but she was unfortunately under an injunction to do whatever was necessary not to draw attention to herself.
“A bit of ale,” the young man said, looking at her meaningfully, “then perhaps a quiet moment or two in a—”
“Ditch?” suggested a deep voice from directly behind him. “Or perhaps you would care to select a less comfortable final resting place.”
The lad turned, squeaked, then fled.
Léirsinn understood. She looked at the tall, cloaked figure now standing where her would-be companion had recently stood and supposed that if she’d had any sense, she would have bolted as well. The man facing her, while terribly elegant, gave the impression that a good brawl was something he indulged in each morning just after sunrise and just before helping himself to a hearty breakfast.
Fortunately for her, he was her traveling companion and deliverer of the occasional bit of maudlin sentiment. If he also happened to be the youngest bastard son of the worst black mage in recent memory, well, she wasn’t going to complain. He was sitting on her side of the table instead of sitting across from her and spewing spells at her. She didn’t think she could ask for anything more than that, though she did snort silently at how freely thoughts of magic galloped across what was left of her mind.
Spells. What absolute rot.
She turned away from indulging in those thoroughly useless thoughts and focused on the man standing in front of her. Acair of Ceangail shoved aside another gangly youth, then joined her in leaning against the pub wall, as far out of the press of humanity as possible.
“Any trouble?” he asked.
“Nothing noteworthy,” she said, “though I’m probably not the right one to judge that.” She glanced at him. “I’ve never seen so many people in one place in my life and ’tis only dawn.”
He pushed his hood back from his face. “It is an easy place in which to lose oneself, true. In your case, though, I can see why nothing would aid you in escaping the attentions of every lad in the area.”
She ignored the flattery, mostly because the memory of their thoroughly unpleasant journey to their current locale was still very fresh in her mind and he was responsible for it. “Did hiding your face help you in the past quarter hour?”
“Barely,” he said, straightening his cloak. “I vow I was accosted by no fewer than half a dozen maids with mischief on their minds.”
“Good thing you’re accustomed to it,” she observed.
“Isn’t it, though?”
She suppressed the urge to roll her eyes. She imagined he was very accustomed to the same and she further supposed he had rarely passed up an opportunity to indulge as many lassies in their desires as possible. Given that she had experienced his powers of persuasion firsthand, she knew those poor women weren’t to blame for whatever straits they found themselves in.
She could scarce believe she had been just as overcome, but the man was hard to resist. He was also, as she had reminded herself just a moment or two ago, completely to blame for the terror-filled journey she’d made on the back of her favorite horse to places she’d never intended to go, where she had encountered people of various sorts she had never imagined existed—
“You’re thinking pleasant thoughts about me,” Acair murmured, leaning closer to her. “Planning on joining that list of my admirers?”
“I was actually wishing I had stabbed you with a pitchfork the first time I saw you,” she managed.
He smiled, and she winced. She realized at that moment that it had been his smile to render her not only witless but unable to do him any serious bodily harm. The first time she’d clapped eyes on him, she should have clapped her hand over her own traitorous eyes and stumbled away to somewhere he wasn’t.
“You aren’t in earnest,” he said with a small smile. “Do damage to this extremely fine form? I don’t think you could.”
“I’m not sure you want to test it after what you put me through last night,” she said, trying to ignore the memories of that extremely bumpy ride on the back of a dragon who had seemed determined by his antics to wring shouts of laughter from the madman standing next to her. She dredged up the sternest look she could muster and attempted an abrupt return to the business at hand. “What now?” she asked. “Well, besides watching you step over the pile of lassies who have fallen at your feet, did you find anything unexpected?”
He propped his foot up underneath him and sighed. “Nothing out of the ordinary, which bodes well for success here. Unfortunately, that leaves us with nothing to do but continue to keep ourselves out of trouble whilst we wait for a certain finicky prince of Neroche to locate the sort of accommodations he might find to his liking, then we run away from them as quickly as possible and find something suitable.”
“And then?” she asked. “I know you told me yesterday, but I spent so much time screaming last night that I believe the noise drove it from my mind.”
He bumped her companionably with his shoulder. “You didn’t scream the entire time.”
“Nay, I fainted midway through the torment, which likely saved your ears.”
He smiled. “I thought you were swooning for my benefit, so I’m not sure I’ll accept anything else.” He watched the shadowy press of humanity for a bit longer, then looked at her. “We’ll find somewhere safe to leave our gear, then I need to nip in and out of the library and fetch that book I need.”
She knew that, of course. She’d simply been hoping her ears had been failing her. Traveling to their current locale seemed like a great deal of fuss for not much at all. “You couldn’t have found a copy of this book somewhere else?”
He opened his mouth, then shut it and shook his head. “Nay, though you’ve no idea how it pains me to say as much. The damned thing is of my own make, unfortunately, and whilst I usually make at least one copy of my notes to hide elsewhere, in this instance I was in a hurry and therefore less careful than I should have been.” He shrugged. “I would prefer not to be here, but here we are.”
She was tempted to ask him why he didn’t just stash things under his bed, but for all she knew, he didn’t have a bed, never mind a home to call his own. Perhaps he was forced to hide his priceless treasures in odd places just to keep them safe. Given that he seemed to endlessly travel the world, she wouldn’t have been surprised.
The idea that she might travel the world in a similar fashion had honestly never occurred to her. In fact, if anyone had suggested the possibility of it to her even a pair of months before, she would have stabbed them with a pitchfork to give them relief from their stupidity. Getting herself even from her uncle’s stables in Briàghde across the hill to Sàraichte, nothing more than a leisurely hour’s walk, had seemed the very limit of what she could do. It had never crossed her mind that she might someday travel farther than that, never mind all
the way across the Nine Kingdoms.
Yet there she was, hundreds of leagues from the only home she truly remembered, keeping company with a terrible black mage on holiday from his usual business of wreaking havoc, and looking forward to a nap in lodgings that had been sought for them by a prince of the royal house of Neroche. She had seen elves, mages, and horses worth a king’s ransom. She had encountered kindness she hadn’t deserved and refuge she hadn’t dared hope for. It had been an adventure beyond her wildest imaginings and she knew it was far from over.
It couldn’t be over yet because apart from the fairly pressing need to avoid having her uncle slay her, she had Acair’s promise that once he’d done what he needed to, he would rescue her very ill grandfather from that same uncle’s house. She was prepared to entertain all sorts of ridiculous notions of magic and mages in return for that aid.
That was, she admitted freely, why she found herself where she was with the task that was set before her, namely keeping an eye out for shadows lying on the ground. Not just any sorts of shadows, of course, such as might have been made by ordinary people standing just so against the sun, or the odd planter placed just outside a pub door to catch whatever light might be had. Nay, the shadows she was meant to be looking for were created by magic.
It was daft, of course, something she continued to tell herself because it allowed her to continue to breathe normally. She absolutely refused to admit that she might or might not have had her own unsettling experience with those spots of shadow where shadows shouldn’t be found. With any luck, while about her looking she might manage to stumble over her missing wits.
She didn’t hold out much hope for it.
“I think we’d best be off looking for that hapless prince of Neroche before he finds himself entangled in some madness or other,” Acair said heavily. “He is definitely not the brightest flame that family has produced.”
“He seems chivalrous enough,” she offered.
“The man might know how to offer an arm at the right time,” Acair conceded, “but that is the absolute limit of his gifts. I’d avoid him at all costs, were I you.”
“What did he do to irritate you so?”
Acair reached for her hand and looked briefly both up and down the way before he pulled her into the crowd. “I would give you a list, but there is the lad himself. One can only hope he’s found somewhere suitable for us to sleep tonight.”
She supposed her standards for lodging were far below what either of her companions might consider acceptable because at the moment all she wanted was somewhere flat and unmoving to cast herself.
“Finally,” Prince Mansourah said in disbelief, stopping in front of them and causing several passersby to hurl curses at him. “Where have you been?”
“Waiting for you where we agreed to wait for you,” Acair said with exaggerated politeness, “and all the while holding out a desperate hope that you would take a set of chambers somewhere discreet.”
Mansourah glared at him. “I did, and I paid for them in local currency so as not to attract any notice.”
“Then my skepticism is quite happily allayed,” Acair said, “though I doubt that will last for long. Lead on and pray assure me there is a decent pub nearby as well.”
“There is, though if I had any sense I would leave you scrambling to wash platters in return for your meal instead of putting myself out to pay for your breakfast myself.”
Acair favored Mansourah with a look that Léirsinn imagined had sent more than one nobleman’s butler scurrying for cover.
“I have coin enough,” he said coolly. “Whilst I am not at my liberty to fill my own purse, my half-sister, your brother’s thoughtful wife, was kind enough to do it for me, so please don’t concern yourself about my poor tum. I have sufficient for myself and my lady without ruining my hands.”
Mansourah pursed his lips. “Then your delicate fingers are safe for the moment, I suppose. Follow me and we’ll see ourselves settled first.”
Léirsinn was fairly certain Acair had made some sort of less-than-polite comment about Mansourah’s tendency to find himself lost in the weeds while about any sort of meaningful quest, but she decided to let it pass. The sooner she could escape the press of city-dwellers getting on with their business for the day, the happier she would be. She glanced at Acair as they walked.
“How do you feed yourself?” she asked. “If that isn’t too personal a question.”
He shook his head. “My life is an open book, as they say. I mostly manage to find myself invited to supper at one superior table or another, which keeps me from starving. When I require funds, I go about acquiring them in the usual way.”
She looked at him sternly. “If you use the word I can scarce bear to utter, I will do damage to you.”
“Magic can be fairly useful,” he said with a smile, “when you think about it.”
She wasn’t about to dignify that with any sort of response, not that there would have been a decent response for it. That happy time when she had lived her life blissfully unaware of anything but the rich smells of green grass, steaming oats, and freshly baled hay was gone. Being something just short of an indentured servant in her uncle’s stables had been difficult, but there had been a certain peace that had come with living in such innocence. Things of a troubling and capricious nature had been easily relegated to her imagination while the tales her parents had told her in her childhood had been consigned to fanciful imaginings with equal ease.
Now, though, a being once relegated to her imagination was walking beside her, muttering under his breath about peasants, princes, and the condition of the boots he was wearing that were most definitely not his own.
A black mage who used magic as easily as she drew breath.
Well, not of late, but he certainly seemed to be familiar with the stuff. As for anything else, she wasn’t entirely sure what to think. She kept count of the frisky lads that same black mage sent scampering off with either a warning look or a quick shove and reminded herself of all the reasons she had not to believe a damned thing anyone had said about him. His reputation was awful, true, but his manners were impeccable, he wasn’t afraid to shovel a substantial bit of manure in return for having the privilege of riding a spectacular horse or two, and he had never once in all the time she’d known him worked even the simplest spell.
She refused to bring to mind what she had seen of him, how she’d seen him, when she’d been standing in a particular spot of shadow that shouldn’t have existed outside her nightmares, all found within the king of Neroche’s garden.
It occurred to her with a bit of a start that she hadn’t seen a damned one of those shadows so far that morning.
That was odd.
She realized Mansourah had come to a halt only because she’d run into Acair’s outstretched arm. She looked at the rather rustic door there in front of them and hoped she wasn’t about to enter a place she wouldn’t be able to get back out of easily.
“Here?” Acair asked in disbelief.
“Have you never stayed here before?” Mansourah asked.
“Well of course I’ve stayed here before,” Acair answered shortly, “when I wanted everyone in the city to know I’d arrived!”
“The innkeeper is capable of discretion,” Mansourah said smoothly, “though I generally find it difficult to hide my identity in spite of that.” He looked down his nose at Acair. “The trials of noble blood and all that. And before you wring your hands overmuch, all they know is that I took rooms for myself, my affianced lady of quality, and you, my very silent and witless servant.”
Léirsinn would have smiled, but she wasn’t at all sure that Acair wouldn’t strangle Mansourah right there in the street. He took a deep, careful breath, then gave their companion a look that Léirsinn was half surprised didn’t have the prince blurting out an apology.
“When I am again sailing under my own power
,” he said seriously, “you had best find somewhere to hide.”
Mansourah pursed his lips. “I would remember that, but I’m not sure ’tis worth the effort.”
“I’ll make a note of it for you,” Acair promised, “at the bottom of my list of tedious but necessary engagements to be seen to the moment I am back fully to myself.” He pulled his hood up over his face. “Let’s stow our gear, then I want something marginally edible before we’re about the true business of the day.”
Mansourah elbowed Acair out of the way and held out his arm. “Lady Léirsinn?”
“I’m no lady—” she began.
“Your uncle is, I believe, lord of his own hall, which gives you station enough for me,” Mansourah said gallantly. “Here, let me take your gear and give it to him whose task it is to carry it.”
Léirsinn would have protested that as well, but Mansourah had already taken her pack and held it out toward Acair. Acair took it without hesitation, shot her a brief smile, then turned a look of fury on Mansourah. She wasn’t sure the pair wouldn’t kill each other before they managed to achieve their purpose in coming to Eòlas, but there was nothing she could do to change that. She simply followed Mansourah through rather worn and uninviting doors into the antechamber of an inn that revealed itself to be far more lavish than expected.
Her opinion of the inn only improved when they were shown to their accommodations. Mansourah managed to listen politely to the innkeeper falling over himself to make certain he was content while at the same time shooting Acair looks that promised him nothing more comfortable than the floor. She was torn between checking her companions for weapons or finding the first marginally suitable spot to use for a quick nap. All recent events aside, she was most definitely not accustomed to the methods of travel she’d recently been subjected to. If she never saw the Nine Kingdoms from farther off the ground than a decent horse put her, it would be too soon.