A discreet knock sounded against the door, interrupting him. He handed her the notebook.
“Keep that safe.”
“But you’ve memorized it already.”
He lifted his eyebrows briefly and smiled. “You know me.”
Indeed, she did. She watched him walk swiftly over to answer the door and wondered at the twists and turns of her own life. Who would have thought that his present and her past would meet in a barn, perhaps the most unlikely place of all for anything besides grain and hay to meet the interesting end of a pony.
She came back to herself to find Acair collapsing next to her. He handed her a gilt-edged invitation.
“We’ve been invited to supper.”
“What do we do?”
“One foot in front of the other,” he said. “Hopefully there might actually be something decent to eat.”
“What if it’s a trap?”
He smiled, looking thoroughly unconcerned. “It always is, darling.”
She suspected he would certainly know.
An hour later, she sat next to him at a remarkably fine table in a very large hall full of people who apparently wanted him dead. She supposed he was accustomed to it, but she wasn’t sure she would ever be so. She smiled weakly when she realized he was looking at her.
“What?” she asked.
He reached for her hand under the table. “Bluster, darling, is our only hope.”
“So says the grandson of a prince.”
“So must say the future bride of the youngest grandson of Cruihniche of Fàs, the most terrifying witch in all the Nine Kingdoms.”
She smiled. “Are you the youngest?”
“Aye, which is why she spoils me with spells every time she sees me. Can you blame her?”
“You are charming.”
“And you are lovely. Do you have your coins?”
She thought she might blush. “I didn’t have any pockets, so I stuck them down the top part of this gown. I think they’ll be safe.”
“If anyone tries to filch them, there will be a murder tonight.”
He was very gallant, which she supposed he knew, and looking rather more lethal than usual, which she wondered if everyone else knew. If he had casually inspected everything presented to them before he’d allowed her to touch it, perhaps no one could have expected anything less. All she knew was that if she’d been the lord of the hall, she wouldn’t have dared poison him.
She toyed with her food, wishing she could have been sitting in front of the fire in Acair’s study, perhaps with her parents and siblings still alive, listening to her father—or step-father, as it were—read that dragon-filled tale—
“Léirsinn!”
He whispered her name, which she appreciated, and caught her wine glass before she dropped it and its contents all over her gown. She put on the best smile she could manage.
“Weariness,” she said, hopefully loudly enough for those around her to hear.
“Of course, darling. An early night for you, perhaps.”
She waited until she thought fewer eyes might be turned their way, then brought her glass to her mouth and leaned closer to him.
“I don’t know if this means anything,” she said slowly.
He had a sip of wine. “Do tell, just the same.”
“After one of my parents would read that tale, you know the one.”
“I do.”
“There was always a final line we said, though my mother would never let us say it together. Each of us had a pair of words we would say in turn. Always in the same order.”
He choked. She supposed he’d barely managed not to spew his wine all over the table.
“Do you remember them?”
“Of course.”
“All of them?”
“Aye.”
“Give them a little whisper in my ear, then.”
She looked at him uneasily. “Will I bring the hall down around us?”
“I sincerely hope not,” he said, with feeling.
She whispered them behind her hand into his ear. He smiled pleasantly and patted his mouth with his hand as if he might have been hiding a yawn. If that hand trembled, well, perhaps she was the only one who noticed. If he leaned over and pressed his lips against her hair, perhaps the company only thought him terribly besotted.
“I think,” he murmured, “that you’ve discovered why he wants you.”
She felt cold suddenly. Perhaps it had to do with wearing a gown that didn’t cover her shoulders, or perhaps she’d had too much of the wine she’d hardly touched. All she knew was that she was very, very afraid.
“What now?” she murmured.
“We wait, and then we win.”
She could only hope he was right about that.
She didn’t want to imagine what would be left of the world if he wasn’t.
Twenty-one
If there were one thing to be grateful for, it was that he wasn’t going to meet his end in a barn.
Acair pulled off his evening coat and handed it to Léirsinn to wear, partly because he hadn’t had the foresight to bring her a wrap and partly because the cloth was black and she might blend into the darkness better that way. His own chemise was a brilliant white which might have the opposite effect, though he suspected that damned Sladaiche or Slaidear or whatever he was calling himself at present likely couldn’t tell white from ivory with any success so perhaps the color of his shirt wouldn’t make any difference.
Lesser mages, lesser spells. It was apparently going to be his lot for the evening.
Slaidear was waiting for them in the garden, on the far side of a crumbling fountain that was half full of putrid water. Unsurprising, but Acair honestly hadn’t expected anything better. There were no ladders in the vicinity, however, which he thought might be a mercy for that fool there.
He stopped in front of that disgusting fountain with Léirsinn on one side and his wretched spell of death keeping watch on the other and wondered absently if it had been Slaidear to have created the beast that dogged his steps. Perhaps in the end, it didn’t matter. Léirsinn would do what she could to contain it, he would slay the mage across from them, and the world would see sunrise free of one more villain.
He took a moment to appreciate the improbable nature of his current situation. Normally when someone wanted to slay him, that lad—and the occasional lass—took the time to engage in a proper exchange of written insults delivered via messenger. He was not usually the recipient of a terse outside scrawled on a grubby slip of paper that had been passed from hand to hand down a supper table until it reached him and the word disappeared after it had been read.