“Think back,” he suggested gently. “Was he there when you arrived?”
“I think I might be ill.”
“I think I might join you,” he said frankly, “but later, when we’ve a nicely patterned settee before us and the king nowhere in sight. We’ll puke together down the back of the cushions. I know these are difficult memories, if you can bring them to mind at all. I wouldn’t blame you if you couldn’t. Do you remember his being there when you arrived? Perhaps the day after your grandfather fell ill and your uncle sent you to the barn? Was he there then?”
She turned and walked away a pace or two, then looked out into the rich darkness of the king’s library. She forced herself to revisit a time she hadn’t thought of in years. Unfortunately, there was a decent reason they were uncomfortably clear.
She turned and returned back over the same two paces she’d used to escape what she could scarce face.
“There was a different stablemaster,” she said slowly. “I went inside the barn to find him beating one of the lads, almost to death. Doghail pulled me behind him and hid me.”
“Of course he did,” Acair said quietly.
“He was gone a few days later. That first stablemaster, that is. Slaidear was there next. It could have been a fortnight, perhaps not that long.” She considered, then shook her head. “I don’t remember him doing anything useful, if you want the truth of it. He stopped pretending to train the horses and left them to me years ago. I even decided which ones to buy. I thought it was because he realized he had no eye for them.”
“I imagine that’s true as well.”
She looked at him, feeling horror descend. “He isn’t…”
“Try the spell again, Léirsinn, and use his name instead.”
“I have to go to the window,” she lied. “I can’t remember the words.”
He only nodded and picked up the books. He shoved five into a random shelf, kept the ledger and her blue-hued book of faery tales, then took her hand and walked with her to the window. He pulled the slip of parchment from his pocket and handed it to her, then smiled briefly.
“You’ll be fine.”
She would have protested that she most certainly wasn’t going to be fine, but the dream she’d had in King Uachdaran’s hall came back to her—rushed at her, actually—in a way that left her realizing that whatever was behind her was on fire and the only way out was to walk off a cliff into darkness.
“I would hold you,” Acair said very quietly, “but I fear you might pull some of my power to you.”
She shook her head. “I’ll do this.”
“Of course you can, love.”
She stilled her mind, then whispered the words of the spell, using a different name, one she was convinced would do nothing at all.
A book leapt off the shelf in front of her and fell at her feet.
Acair picked it up “Damnation.”
“What is it?”
He held out a book, then opened the cover.
All the pages were missing.
“Well,” she said uncomfortably, “that’s something, isn’t it?”
“And not a damned thing on the cover to tell us what had been inside. I’m guessing the contents were removed several decades ago.” He looked closely at the cover, then swore and shoved it in the shelf above his head. “Useless. Why this answered to Slaidear and not Sladaiche is something I believe we’ll leave as a mystery for someone else. I think we might be finished here. Can you put these in your satchel for the moment? I’ll carry them later.”
She shot him a look, but supposed she didn’t need to add that she was accustomed to carrying saddles and hay. He only smiled and handed her the books.
“Let’s be away before we’re caught. I think we have what we came for.”
“Is there time to look for that finely patterned divan?”
He laughed softly. “We’ll befoul it a different time and blame it on Soilléir. Off we go.”
She wondered, a moment or two later, if they ever might manage to exit somewhere they weren’t supposed to be without having the master or mistress of the house catch them before they could.
A faint light appeared next the hearth. A fire joined it, blazing to life tidily in that same hearth.
Acair sighed, then took her hand. “It could be worse,” he murmured.
She decided to withhold judgment for the moment. A blond man sat there, dressed in well-made but not excessively fine clothing. His boots, however, were very nice, indeed.
Acair stopped in front of him and made him a low bow. “Your Highness.”
“My lord Acair.”
Léirsinn wondered if the day would come when she would stop being surprised by the people Acair knew—and those who knew him.
“If I might present to Your Royal Highness my beloved companion, Léirsinn of Sàraichte,” Acair said formally. “Léirsinn, this is His Royal Highness, Coimheadair, the crown prince of Cothromaiche.”
Léirsinn attempted a curtsey to go along with Acair’s very posh accents, but it didn’t go very well. That was definitely something she was going to have to work on when she had a bit of free time.
“Sàraichte,” Prince Coimheadair said with a frown. “Don’t you mean An Caol?”
“Your Highness?” Acair said.
Léirsinn realized the prince was looking at her, but she wasn’t sure what she was supposed to say.
“Don’t you know who you are, little one?”
Acair caught his breath, almost so quietly that she would have missed it if she hadn’t been doing the same thing.
“Your Highness, why do you say that?” Acair asked.
“Well,” the crown prince of Cothromaiche said with a shrug, “because I knew her mother, of course.”
Nineteen
Acair spared a moment to wonder when he was going to manage to exit a solar without running afoul of its owner.
He shook his head wearily. Yet another thing to add to the list of things to avoid in the future. No more quests, no more flinging his possessions up in the air when taken by surprise, no more unexpected revelations about the people around him, and definitely no more lights springing to life thanks to the current landlord’s hand.
He realized Léirsinn had been invited to sit. He hadn’t, but he hadn’t expected anything less. Prince Coimheadair, for all his slightly odd quirks, was in the end a king in waiting. Other men simply did not sit in his presence. Acair was perfectly happy to stand behind Léirsinn’s chair and look deferential whilst he determined when and how they might escape with not only their lives, but the books they had filched still in their possession.