The White Spell (Nine Kingdoms #10)(22)

It took him far more time to catch Léirsinn up than it would have normally, leading him to believe he hadn’t had nearly as much rest as he should have. He followed her without thinking until he realized she was headed toward the manor house. She kept to lesser paths that skirted substantial gardens, obviously something she did regularly because she seemed to know where she was going. He did spare the energy to wonder if she hadn’t had perhaps a cup too many of Doghail’s brew given the way she would walk in a perfectly straight line, then suddenly stop, step around something, then continue on. It only happened a pair of times, but he wondered what in the hell she was doing. Practicing dance steps?

Had she been enspelled?

He considered, then decided against that latter idea. He couldn’t use his magic, of course, but he damned well had all of it to hand and along with that power came the ability to recognize magic in all its forms so he didn’t walk straight into a web of spells without realizing it. Nay, she wasn’t enspelled.

But she was turning to look behind her, giving him hardly the time to leap off the path and duck behind a shrubbery before he should be discovered. Something poked him—as usual—in the arse so painfully he almost yelped. He was made of sterner stuff than that, however, so he bit back a very vile curse and peeked over the greenery.

’Twas a pity, to be sure, that a woman that beautiful should be wasted in a barn. Worse still that she should have lost her wits at such a young age. To look at her, one would have thought she was a fair-faced, mild-mannered wench with money and pedigree enough to secure a fairly well-heeled husband to take care of her properly for the rest of her days.

He considered. Mild-mannered was likely not the right thing to call her. He’d watched her manage that stallion and he’d listened to her call him a fool for not knowing how to tend a horse. Acid-tongued and daft as a duck was likely closer to the mark. But she was indeed lovely in a way that was mesmerizing enough to leave him crouching stupidly behind a bush that he realized with a start contained a hive full of angry bees, one of whom had obviously decided the horses were right in their choice of locations on his poor person to abuse.

He jumped back out onto the path and trotted off after his quarry, hoping he was moving quickly enough to allow his former winged companions to find something else to torment. His handful of coppers were clinking in his purse along with what remained of the meager funds he’d extorted from Soilléir and Rùnach, damn them both to hell. If things continued on the way they seemed to be going, he was going to arrive back home in a year much thinner than he was at present because he would never manage to afford a decent pub meal.

The only positive thing he could see was that he was so far out of any sort of decent civilization that no one would recognize him. Considering that he had absolutely no way to protect himself save his fists, that wasn’t something to be taken lightly. He wondered how Léirsinn kept herself safe and what it would be like to know that the only thing you had standing between you and death was some sort of barn implement.

He had the feeling he was going to become much more familiar with that than he cared to.

He was tempted to stop, turn himself back toward the barn, and go find a horse trough in which to soak his head. He couldn’t protect himself in his usual fashion, he had a very light purse, and there were some very unusual things going on in Sàraichte. If he’d had the modicum of good sense the gods had given a slug, as his father would have said, he would have abandoned his current path and trotted back to his closet.

But that lass there in front of him was walking into the gloom without anyone to guard her back, her uncle seemed perfectly content to treat her very poorly, and Acair was beginning to wonder if she might have red hair. He didn’t know any flame-haired wenches, but he’d heard tales of their tempers. If there was anything he found hard to resist, it was a feisty woman in a temper.

Perhaps he would buy her supper and count that as yet another good deed for the day.

He shoved aside memories of a certain dwarvish princess of uncommon feistiness who hadn’t been all that receptive to his offer of a fine meal, reminded himself that there were quite a few women who had accepted his invitations to supper, and strode off into the twilight. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Even with a stable lass who controlled horses he hardly dared come close to.





Five





Léirsinn walked quickly toward town, knowing she would likely arrive too late for what business she wanted to accomplish but unable to do anything else. She needed advice and the one reliable place to get that was from Cailleach the fishwife.

There were numerous sellers of fish in town, that was true, but there was something about Mistress Cailleach that hinted of her knowing things that others might not. Unusual things. Just the sorts of things Léirsinn thought she might need to know, such as how the hell she was going to take two decades of the meanest of wages and turn that into enough money to spirit her grandfather away from a man she feared she could no longer call benign.

Trolls. Léirsinn nodded to herself over that idea. Her store of knowledge about things that lurked in forests and assaulted unwary travelers was extensive thanks to the tales her parents had told her during her childhood. In spite of whatever other sorts of mischief they combined, trolls were famous for having hoards of gold—

Nay, that was dwarves. She stopped and looked up at the darkening sky. Trolls hoarded all sorts of things, or so she thought, but dwarves collected gold. She considered that for a moment or two, then conceded she wasn’t entirely sure of that either. Perhaps dwarves collected mountains of gems.