He was a dreamer, but there it was.
Soilléir eased the door open, listened for a bit longer, then pushed opened the door fully.
“All safe,” he said, stepping out and holding the tapestry away from the wall.
Acair invited Léirsinn to follow him as he made certain Soilléir’s ears weren’t failing him, then he saw her settled in her chair there by the fire. He set his burdens of the written word by her feet, then turned his attentions to the man who had caused him so much trouble. He folded his arms over his chest slowly, hoping to send the message that he was choosing not to commit murder right there on Seannair’s library hearthrug.
Soilléir sat down in his father’s recently vacated chair and smiled faintly. “I see you’ve made it this far.”
“No thanks to you.”
“You might be surprised.”
“Did you know?” Acair demanded.
“Know what?”
“Who I was meant to be looking for,” Acair snapped.
Soilléir lifted a shoulder in a half shrug. “I know many things.”
Acair patted himself figuratively for something sharp to plunge into that damned essence-changer’s chest but, as was his lot in life at present, managed nothing but a noise that came far too close to mewling babe for his taste.
“You useless whoreson,” he said.
Soilléir only shrugged, something he seemed to do with frightening regularity. “I am a pragmatist.”
“I am a pragmatist,” Acair shouted, then remembered where he was and with what secrecy he was supposed to be there.
“Then perhaps we are more alike—”
“Do not even start with that,” Acair growled. “If you tell me that you’ve sent me scampering over the whole of the damned world simply to bring me here where you could tell me what you could have told me anywhere else, I vow I will cast aside my better instincts and slay you where you sit.”
“There were conclusions you needed to come to on your own,” Soilléir said simply.
Acair shook his head in disbelief. He realized with annoyance that he had shaken his head so often over the past year that he had acquired a permanent crackle in his neck. He blamed Soilléir and Rùnach. He would also be damned if he would ask them to see to repairing the damage. Who knew what sort of sparkling rot they would leave rampaging about his fine form in the process?
“You could have told me and saved me all this trouble—”
He stopped speaking. It was becoming an alarming habit, that realizing that he was on the verge of saying things he shouldn’t. Admittedly, he had a far better guard over his tongue than most of his family, but he had never shied away from flinging a well-conceived barb or a hastily slung-together insult and the consequences be damned.
Trouble, however, at his current juncture included a red-haired stable gel who had sacrificed not only her momentary peace of mind but likely her future peace as well simply to keep him alive. He didn’t dare look at her lest he see her reaction to his heart sitting so prominently, as the saying went, upon his sleeve. He knew as he had seldom known anything in the past that Soilléir had known what he would find in that barn. He shook his head slowly.
“Impossible.”
“Is it?”
“You didn’t.”
Soilléir smiled very faintly. “There is a rich history of that sort of activity in my family. I’m not sure you need worry, though. She might not be interested in you given that I don’t see any sort of betrothal ring on her fingers.”
Acair glanced at the woman in question’s fingers and almost suggested a rude gesture she might make with at least one of them, but perhaps that was an insult better saved for later.
“I’m working on it,” Acair said. “Why are you here?”
“Unforeseen circumstances,” Soilléir said succinctly.
Acair realized he’d finally reached a point with the mage across from him where he was simply past surprise.
“I didn’t intend to be,” Soilléir added, looking the faintest bit unsettled. “Events—or uncontrollable players in those events, if you will—took a turn I didn’t anticipate.”
Acair felt one of his eyebrows go up and he heartily agreed. “A wench,” he said in awe. “A wench has thrown you for the proverbial loop.”
“What is it your mother says about your untoward deeds?”
“If you can’t name them, I won’t claim them,” he said. “Pithy, but a bit too much on the rhyming side. My mother, as you might imagine, doesn’t care.”
“She doesn’t,” Soilléir agreed, “and she’s right about many things. Also, you two should go now.” He paused. “Please.”
Acair would have looked around himself in an exaggerated fashion, then made some cutting remark about the state of the world as a whole, but the truth was, he was just too damned unsettled to.
“You’ll need to help us out the back gate.”
“I wouldn’t think to do otherwise,” Soilléir said.
Acair suppressed the urge to swear at him. “Let me be more specific. You’ll need to get us over the border, invisible, with a distraction to draw eyes off us—on the off chance your damned spell isn’t enough.”
“A distraction won’t be a problem,” Soilléir said, “and my spell will be enough.”
“For more than one journey through the air.”
“I’ll give Léirsinn the key to use in removing it so you might use it as long as you like.” He rose and held down his hand for Léirsinn. “A safe journey to you, my dear.”
Acair was surprised she didn’t clout him on the nose, but that gel had more restraint than he did. He refrained from muttering threats under his breath because they were, after all, trying to go about in secret.
He retrieved the lexicon on the off chance he might need to use it as a weapon in a pinch, dared Soilléir to make any comment about removing it from his grandfather’s library—which he very wisely did not—and invited the man to join them in making a discreet exit out Léirsinn’s window after they retrieved their gear from her chamber.
The one thing he could say—and he did so with only a slight gritting of his teeth—was that whatever else his faults might have been, Soilléir of Cothromaiche was as good as his word. Within minutes they were safely in the air under cover of a spell that was so beautiful, he thought he might have to remove an item or two from the Reasons to Slay a Certain Essence-changing Whoreson column of Soilléir’s ledger after having heard the man weave it over them.