The White Spell (14 page)

“Acair?”

He pulled back on his rampaging speculations with a skill
perhaps even Doghail might have commented on, then looked at Léirsinn.

“Was I muttering?”

“Looking horrified, actually.”

“I'm hungry,” he said, “and I made the mistake of revisiting the memory of that rubbish we ate on the boat.” He shuddered. “Awful.”

“Hard to ruin apples and cheese,” she offered, “but possible, apparently.”

“Don't remind me,” he said. “You know, I think supper might be what we need at the moment. Then, whilst we're lingering in this lovely city by the river, I thought I might pay a polite social call to someone I know.”

“You know someone here? Is this where you're from—nay, one of those men—” She had to take a deep breath. “They said you were from Ceangail.”

“A little nondescript, nasty place in the mountains,” Acair said dismissively. “I wouldn't suggest a visit. I do have acquaintances here, though. The man I need to see is a friend of one of my half-brothers.”

“What does he do?”

She was obviously trying to distract herself. Acair watched her smooth her hands over her leggings and rest them on her knees as if it were something she had to think very carefully about in order to manage.

“Ah, what does he do?” he said, wondering just what he was going to have to do not to be distracted by her. “He meddles, for the most part. He's also a master at the schools of wizardry.”

She blinked. “A master? A master of what?”

“Do-gooding,” Acair said distinctly. There was no point in attempting to describe whatever other rot Soilléir dabbled in. He highly doubted Soilléir could describe it himself with any success. “I think we could pay him a small visit in the morning, nip over to the stables afterward and make certain your horse is being well cared for, then we'll do what you want to.”

“In truth?”

Why did she have to look so damned grateful? He supposed she was very near to the end of whatever tether she held on to, which was something he couldn't blame her for. He had been at that place once or twice in his life as well, though he had at least had magic to help him cling to his sanity. She had only her will.

“In truth,” he said. “We'll see to it all on the morrow.”

Her fingers that had been clutching her knees relaxed a bit. “So, how do you know all these people?”

The spell in the corner cleared its throat pointedly. Acair didn't bother to offer a rude gesture in return. More alarming than that piece of unconcern was the fact that he hardly noticed that vile spell any longer unless it announced itself. In truth, he hardly recognized himself any longer.

He shrugged and dragged himself back to sifting through what he could and couldn't say. “My father travelled a great deal and I carried his bags for him.”

“Is that the truth?” she asked.

“Almost.”

She sat back in her chair, which he thought might be a good sign.

“So, I suppose we find this friend of your brother's—”

“Half-brother's,” he interrupted.

“Half-brother's,” she said. “Then we find my horse, then I go back home.”

There was no point in arguing with her over that at the moment. Perhaps later, after she'd had something to eat, a decent night's sleep, and a gentle reminder about why they'd fled Sàraichte in the first place.

“I need to learn how to play cards,” she said thoughtfully.

He realized he'd missed something. “Cards?”

“So I can earn enough gold to rescue my grandfather.”

He could think of worse ways to earn the odd coin. “I think you might be very good at it,” he conceded. “You have an honest face, which would serve you well.”

“Will I need to learn how to cheat?”

He started to tell her nay, then realized what she was implying. He scowled. “I don't need to cheat.”

“You're that skilled?”

“Six brothers,” he reminded her, “and an indeterminate number of half-brothers. I learned early on to read faces. And count what had been played, if you must know the truth of it.”

“No sleight of hand?”

“As tempting it might have been, nay,” he said. His brothers would have abused him mightily for that sort of thing and he had wound up on the bottom of the pile often enough without that provocation. That had only lasted until he had taken them one by one and helped them realize that he had become the sort of man who didn't put up with abuse.

“You're cursing.”

He blinked, then sighed. “A terrible habit.” He rose. “I'll find food and drink. Do not leave.”

She looked up at him. “I've exchanged one gaol for another it seems.”

“You've forgotten what you heard in the barn in the middle of the night, obviously.”

She nodded. “And so I had. Thank you.”

He suppressed the urge to curse again, wondering why in the hell he bothered with manners given who he was, then left the chamber before he suffered from any more altruistic impulses.

He didn't need to bother with cards given that he had, on the way to the inn earlier, lifted the fairly substantial purse of a lesser master he'd bumped into—ill-gotten gains on that man's part if ever there had been any. He ordered a meal to be sent upstairs, ordered one for himself, then bought a round for a group of students who looked as if they needed it. He'd been inside Buidseachd himself on more than one occasion and sympathized with them.

He sat down before he did anything else utterly out of character.

He watched Léirsinn's supper be carried upstairs, then attended
to his own. The food was better than he had expected, but his expectations had been very low indeed.

It was profoundly odd, he decided as he lingered over a mug of reasonably tasty ale, to be in a city where he'd been so many times before yet have everything be different. He was not sweeping in on the wings of an evil intention, fully prepared to do whatever was necessary to achieve his dastardly ends, he was . . . well, he was fully prepared to do something dastardly and admittedly he was there to save his own sweet neck, but he had taken a chamber for a rustic miss and he wasn't going to force her to sleep on the floor. If that wasn't altruism in action, he didn't know what was.

He studied without excessive interest the souls gathered about the tables in the gathering room. Most he could tell were from Buidseachd, given their dress and conversation. He supposed a single day of liberty was the best they could hope for in such a place. At least the food was better at the pub than what they were eating up the way. He'd filched more than one meal at the castle and regretted it each time. He'd half suspected there was someone there who purposely ruined as many suppers as possible, just to give the lads something proper to complain about.

There was a table more sparsely populated than the rest, but he understood that. It looked to be a few older, perhaps lesser men associated with Buidseachd. Servants or minor magelings hoping to better their lot, no doubt. Acair wished them well and left them to it.

Until he realized his name was being bandied about.

He normally would have been satisfied with being spoken of as the creator of all kinds of trouble, but he was appalled to realize how annoying it was being credited where credit was definitely not due. He was being blamed for mischief he never would have bothered with. It was insulting, truly.

He had to put an end to the farce before he lost all claim to his former character. He was a black mage, damn it to hell, and one that gave other black mages pause. His father might have been
terrifying and his mother unnerving, but he was all that and definitely more when it came to instilling fear and a desire to immediately do whatever he asked.

He downed his ale, set his cup down, then left the gathering chamber. He would find Soilléir, get him to take that damned spell back, check on Léirsinn's horse for her—that was the very
last
pleasantry he would engage in—then he would be back to his usual way of carrying on.

Murder, mischief, and mayhem. He would embrace all three with renewed affection and commitment.

He had to, before he completely lost himself.

L
éirsinn stood near the chamber door and watched Acair look out the window. It was almost exactly what they'd been doing the day before. The only difference now was she'd had a pair of remarkably tasty meals and a good night's sleep. She wasn't sure what Acair had had. He'd returned from the gathering chamber the night before in a foul mood. If he'd been a horse, she would have put him in his stall and left him to sort himself on his own. Since that had seemed a rather useful idea, she'd put herself to bed and left Acair to work through whatever was troubling him.

His mood hadn't improved much after breakfast, but she supposed she couldn't blame him. He was obviously concerned about something and she suspected she knew what it was. As much as she tried, she couldn't forget the sight of those two things hovering over him . . . how long had it been? Two nights ago? She thought it might have been no longer than that, but that night plus the journey to Beinn òrain, then a very uneasy sleep the night before—it was all a bit of a blur. If Acair wanted to look out the window and make certain he wasn't being stalked by more of those things, he was welcome to his looking.

“Let's go,” he said, dropping the very worn curtain.

She said nothing, mostly because she was afraid if she started talking, she would never stop. It had been the most unsettling pair
of days she could ever remember having had. Perhaps she was more a creature of habit than she'd ever dared suspect.

The discomfort had started the moment she'd hidden behind that pile of fencing and watched someone walk off with a horse that wasn't hers by right but definitely was by affection. Her unease had only increased as she'd boarded a boat that could hardly have been seriously considered the same, spent the entire trip wishing she'd had the courage to turn and heave her guts over the side, then disembarked in a city that made Sàraichte look like a pristine habitation for elegant faeries from one of the tales she remembered her parents having told her as a child.

“Are you unwell?”

She realized that she had simply come to a stop on the stairs. She wondered if she had been babbling aloud. She looked at Acair.

“I'm not sure.”

He held out his hand. She looked at it, then at his face.

Magic? Him?

He reached for her hand and pulled. “Don't start with those looks. If we can gain this man's chambers, I promise you a very stiff drink. Do you a world of good, I'm sure.”

She walked because he gave her no choice. She supposed she didn't want to remain behind, especially when she realized that a pair of men standing at the bar, nursing mugs of ale, were looking at her.

“Keep walking,” Acair said under his breath. “Don't look at them.”

She was happy to comply. She left the inn with him, then kept her head down as he traded places with her and put her farthest away from the street. She would have thanked him for the courtesy, but the truth was, speech was simply beyond her. She was so far out of her normal routine, the routine she'd been engaging in on a daily basis for the past eighteen years, she hardly knew what to do with herself. She was absolutely adrift in a sea full of creatures she fully expected to drag her under at any moment.

The cobblestones were slick and treacherous under her boots,
something that only added to her discomfort. She watched them for most of the journey up the hill, desperately latching onto something that looked familiar. She stopped Acair before he walked into a pool of shadow with a casualness that should have alarmed her. That she was only tempted to yawn should have alarmed her more.

Acair caught himself in mid-step, then blew out his breath. “Thank you. The last brush with one of these was rather unpleasant.”

And it had led to those two creatures trying to kill you
, was what she thought to say but didn't. She simply walked around the shadow, then continued up the way.

At one point, she hazarded a glance at where they were headed, then realized that she hadn't paid any heed to the castle as they'd been on the boat and she definitely hadn't seen anything of it from their chamber. She stopped still and gaped. She had never in her life seen anything so large.

“Tatty old thing, isn't it?” Acair remarked. “Don't know how anyone manages to live here.”

Tatty
was not the word she would have chosen, but what did she know? She nodded because speech was beyond her, then continued on with him right up to the front gates. She wasn't sure how he expected that anyone should let either of them inside, more particularly she herself, but he seemed to have no fear of being rebuffed.

He glanced her way. “My welcome here may not be warm.”

She opened her mouth to speak, then shut it. She was so far out of her depth, all she could do was look at him and hope he wasn't walking her into some sort of terrible trap from which she would never emerge. He smiled briefly, then turned and knocked on the gates.

She was accustomed to barn doors, not castle entrances, but she had to concede that those gates didn't look particularly intimidating and there was no portcullis that she could see. Perhaps the garrison was very fierce and the lords who sent their sons there had no fear for their safety. In truth, what did she know of great men and their progeny save Fuadain? He had a handful of sons, but they obviously
didn't care to pass any time with their sire for she hadn't seen them in years.

A guardsman appeared suddenly, simply bristling with weapons and surliness. “Who are you?” he demanded.

“Er, Buck,” Acair said.

“Buck,” the man repeated. He looked over his shoulder. “Another of 'em. He looks to be kin of the one we let in last year.”

“'Tis a family name,” Acair said quickly. “There are many of us.”

Léirsinn would have asked him what the hell he was doing, giving a name that wasn't his, but what did she know of these sorts of things either? 'Twas obvious that Acair moved in a level of society she didn't understand. At the moment, she thought she might be rather happy about that.

Another guardsman came eventually to take the first's place. He looked equally surly yet far less prone to surprise. He sized Acair up, then pursed his lips.

“Family name?” he asked skeptically.

“I fear it might be,” Acair said, “amongst some of my kin.”

“I believe I know the kin that name might find itself amongst,” the man said, “and I'm not sure I haven't seen you here before a time or two as well.” He considered Acair a bit longer, then shrugged negligently. “Him you're looking for isn't here.”

Acair looked at him in frank surprise. “How can you possibly know who I'm looking for?”

“Because I am far less stupid than my fellows, which is why I'm captain of the guard and not one of the regular lads,” the man said. “If you don't mind my saying so.”

“Oh, please, say on,” Acair said in exasperation. “Where the hell is he, then, if not here where he's supposed to be?”

“Off on holiday.”

Acair's mouth moved but no sound came out. Léirsinn thought he might be the one who needed a stiff drink sooner rather than later. He finally shook his head enough that apparently he shook sense back into it.

“On holiday where?” he demanded.

“Tor Neroche,” the guard captain said with a bit of a smirk.

“Of course,” Acair said bitterly, “where else?”

“Seanagarra?”

Acair shot the man a look that should have had him backing up a pace or two. Léirsinn was very impressed that he didn't so much as twitch. There was a fellow who obviously dealt with his share of feisty stallions. She had no idea why Acair found that name so offensive, but what did she know of anywhere outside her barn? She was moving in a world she wasn't accustomed to.

She wasn't sure she liked it, truth be told.

“Your humor is misplaced,” Acair said coldly.

“And I'm safely tucked inside the gates, which offers me the safety to exercise my tongue even at the expense of someone like you.”

Léirsinn wanted to hold up her hand and ask exactly what the man meant by that but before she could, Acair was distracting her with some extremely vile language.

“That coward,” he said finally, apparently having exhausted a rather long list of slurs. “What gives him leave to take a bloody
holiday
?”

“Are you going to be the one to tell him he cannot?” the guard captain asked politely.

“Aye, the first chance I have!”

“Feel free to do so, my—”

“Buck,” Acair interrupted. “Just Buck.”

“Buck,” the man repeated slowly. He shook his head. “Not very original, but I don't suppose you care about my opinion. Since you've made the trip here, would you care to see anyone else, Master Buck?”

“Thank you, but nay.”

Léirsinn wasn't sure what she expected, but to have the conversation end without any further niceties was definitely not it. Acair nodded briskly to the guard, nodded at her, then walked away. She didn't bother with the guard. She ran after Acair because she wasn't about to be left behind in a strange city where she knew absolutely
no one, had absolutely no money, and didn't have a bloody clue how to get herself back to where she'd come from.

Acair paused, waited for her to catch up to him, then cursed and strode furiously down the street.

“Who is Soilléir?” she managed, running to keep up with him.

“No one of import,” Acair snarled. “Just a bloody—ah, damn it all, what next?”

Kitchen refuse, apparently. Léirsinn couldn't say she was growing accustomed to hiding behind heaps of things with him, but she could say it was becoming something of a bad habit. She was, however, growing unfortunately quite adept at leaping over things to use them as shields. She forced herself to breathe evenly until she caught that breath, then she looked at Acair.

“The things we're using as barriers seem to be growing increasingly fragrant,” she noted.

“I'm happy to see your sense of humor is returning.”

“I'm numb.”

“That works as well.”

She hazarded a glance between piles of rotting vegetation. “Who is that we're hiding from?”

“Droch of Saothair,” he murmured. “Not a nice man.”

She couldn't even nod. She wasn't one to exaggerate or fall into needless faints, but if she had been that sort of woman, that man standing there a dozen paces from them would have inspired both. The evil simply poured off him, as if it were a foul sort of perfume. It was all she could do to breathe without screaming.

She distracted herself by trying to decide which feeling was most loudly clamoring for her attention. Revulsion was near the top of her list, but fear was there as well, but perhaps that fear was quickly morphing into terror. Acair reached for her hand and held it, hard. She nodded and clapped her other hand over her mouth. It seemed prudent.

Acair didn't seem to need to watch the man they were hiding from. He simply bowed his head and breathed lightly—

His fingers were suddenly wrapped around her wrist. She understood why only after she realized she was halfway to her feet. She crouched back down next to him, but he didn't release her. He looked as if he fully expected that man to leap over the rotting vegetables and half-broken crates and strangle them both. Given how unpleasant Droch seemed, she thought she might understand. She caught sight of him thanks to a hole in a pile of molding greens and studied him with as much objectivity as she could manage.

The truth was, he was very handsome in a distinguished, aloof sort of way. He reminded her a bit of some of the men who came to look at her uncle's horses, only there was something about his aura that made him seem so far above any of those other men, she was a little surprised Fuadain sold any of his ponies to anyone else.

Droch frowned, then walked on. Acair waited a few more endless moments, then let out his breath slowly and looked at her.

“He is the master of Olc, if you're curious.”

“I wasn't,” she managed, “but what is Olc?”

“Magic,” he said.

“Rubbish.”

“Do you think so?” he asked. “Even now?”

She shivered. “He could just be the sort of man to beat his horses and his servants. That's evil enough for me.”

“I imagine he does that too,” Acair said, “but along with that, he is the keeper of a very dark magic. Useful, of course, but not all that welcome in polite salons.”

She looked at him then. “And you've spent enough time in polite salons to know?”

He lifted an eyebrow. “You continue to think of me as a country mouse.”

“I don't know any city rats. You're the best I can do.”

He smiled. When he smiled, she had to admit, she wanted to sit down. The truth was, she could see him in any number of very polite salons, surrounded by very polite misses who had likewise
decided they could admire him more easily if they were sitting down instead of falling at his feet in an artful swoon.