“I don’t,” Soilléir agreed. “It has gone missing, but finding it is not my task.”
Acair almost groaned aloud. If he had to listen to one more recitation of that one’s vaunted code, he thought he just might lie down and bawl like a bairn.
“Let’s press on,” he said, hopping over the steaming pile of virtue his companion had tried to deposit there in front of him. “How did you know to rescue those children?”
Soilléir shrugged lightly. “I didn’t.”
Acair decided he would retrieve his jaw from where it had fallen to the earth later, when he also had a free moment to find the breath he’d just lost.
“How do you sleep at night?” he asked incredulously. “Lying like that.”
“Let’s say it was an educated guess.”
“Let’s not,” Acair returned, “and instead you tell me the truth.”
Soilléir looked slightly uncomfortable. “Perhaps we should look for somewhere to sit.”
“That would be perfect,” Acair said crisply, “for it would save me the effort of chasing you down to turn you into a birdbath. I have a pair of cousins who I can guarantee would plop you in their garden without a second thought.”
Soilléir only smiled, which left Acair torn between admiration that he could so casually know there wasn’t a damned soul in the whole of the Nine Kingdoms who could do anything at all to him and fury that he’d been used so thoroughly without so much as the slightest hesitance.
He revisited the thought that if Soilléir hadn’t had his fingers in every pie from Tosan to Riamh, he never would have encountered Léirsinn of Sàraichte…
“I wouldn’t say that.”
He glared at him. “Stop that.”
“You’re gasping aloud and looking very green.” Soilléir shrugged with a smile. “Another very good guess. As for other things, I knew Sladaiche—”
“Which you shamelessly lied about in that glade,” Acair said bitterly. “Why didn’t you slay him the moment he looked askance at the first horse in his charge? Nay, never mind. If I must listen to you blather on about your noble doings, I will cut off my own ears.” He waved the man on to further details with a hand that was far less steady than he would have liked, but it had been that sort of morning so far. “You knew Sladaiche, allowed him to live, and then what?”
“I knew him,” Soilléir repeated, “but there is always the possibility of redemption.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“Very well, with some there is no hope, I’ll admit. But it isn’t my place to decide who lives or dies.”
“If there were no evil, what would there be for good men to do, or whatever the rot is you sick up onto everyone you meet,” Acair said, wondering if he might be soon indulging. Supper from the night before, what he’d managed of it, was definitely still lingering in a very unwholesome way in his tum.
“At this point you know most all of what you’d ever want to about him,” Soilléir continued. “I have details about other things, though, that you might find interesting.”
“Another turn in your granddaddy’s solar is what I would find interesting.”
“Library.”
“There, too, but go on. Bludgeon me with the minutiae.”
Soilléir, damn him to hell, only smiled and looked as relaxed as if he might soon be settling in for a pint or two at the local pub.
“What you likely would have discovered soon enough, but I’ll tell you just the same,” he continued, “is that the author of those wee books of faery tales is none other than Tosdach, Léirsinn’s grandfather.”
Acair knew he should have been surprised, but somehow he wasn’t. “If you tell me that he’s a powerful mage…”
“Nothing like that, I fear. Just a man with a love for a good story. As for your lady’s family, I believe my father told you as much as he knew about the particulars. I can give you the details he doesn’t know. Niall was slain by Sladaiche, though you may have guessed as much already.”
Acair looked at him and for the first time in decades of knowing him felt a small stirring of pity. “It must be difficult,” he said, finding the words sliding off his tongue whilst he could only stand there and watch them go. “To simply stand by and watch.”
Soilléir walked next to him for quite some time before he stopped. He took a deep breath and looked at him. “Not many say that.”
“They’re too busy plotting how to have your spells.”
“That might be true. But I appreciate the sentiment just the same.”
“I’ll deny it if you repeat it.”
“I would expect nothing less.” Soilléir walked on. “To continue, after a year or so, Saoradh met Muireall and proposed marriage. It was done out of love and the children were never told.”
“Did he have magic?” Acair asked, trying to digest what he was hearing without a proper libation or a decent chair. “Léirsinn’s true sire, I mean.”
Soilléir considered. “They do in their line,” he said slowly, “but their magic is a very capricious sort, far more unpredictable than what my family possesses. For the most part, the inhabitants of An Caol can trace their ancestors back to Ionad-teàrmainn. Léirsinn’s sire is a direct descendent of the stablemaster that had Sladaiche banished for abusing the horses.”
“I see.”
“I imagine you’re beginning to. Lord Tosdach had found great hospitality in An Caol. Being a lover of horses himself, making the journey back there often was, I’m given to understand, one of the pleasures of his life. When he felt he’d collected as many stories as he could, he bound them all into a trio of books.”
Acair closed his eyes briefly. “Including, no doubt, at least one from Léirsinn’s sire.”
“One passed down from Léirsinn’s paternal grandfather, actually, through her sire, but aye, you see where the tale leads.”
“He collected the stories without having any idea what he was actually collecting, then Sladaiche followed his nose there and slew Léirsinn’s father.”
“Aye,” Soilléir agreed, “only after having watched her father’s father and grandfather, for reasons I don’t need to give you. None of that line remains, as I said. I’m not sure their ends were quick and painless.”
Acair rubbed his fingers over his brow, but found that a rather inadequate means of stopping the pounding there. “I won’t tell her that bit, I don’t think.”