The White Spell (Nine Kingdoms #10)(4)

“Very well,” he said heavily, “let’s have this over with. To spare myself an endless existence on the front stoop of some mindless faery, as well as secure the guarantee that I’ll never have to encounter either of you again unless there are spells of death involved, I will agree to a month without magic.”

“A century, Acair,” Soilléir said mildly.

“Absurd,” Acair said. “Two months and no more.”

Soilléir only looked at him. Acair managed to keep himself from rubbing his arms against the sudden chill that blew over him but damn it if he couldn’t keep himself from shifting.

“Very well, a year,” he snarled. “And not a heartbeat longer.”

Soilléir and Rùnach exchanged a look. Acair sensed a softening of the resolve of the pair, something he didn’t dare disturb with even a mild epitaph.

Soilléir looked at him. “Very well, then,” he said. “A year. Upon your honor.”

Acair refused to respond to that. “I assume you are leaving me free to roam where I choose to,” he said. Considering the number of souls he had been less-than-friendly with in the past, the list of places where he might find sanctuary was very short indeed. There was, of course, no use in pointing that out. The two fools across from him knew that very well.

“Oh, nay,” Rùnach said, with a feeble attempt at solemnity, “we wouldn’t dream of leaving you so—how shall I put it, my lord Soilléir?”

“Exposed,” Soilléir said.

“Exposed,” Rùnach agreed. He smiled. “We wouldn’t want you to be vulnerable, of course, which is why we’ve selected an appropriate destination for you. Lots of opportunities there to do good. You’ve become so adept at that sort of thing, we thought you might want to keep on with it for a bit longer.”

Acair thought many things but decided it would be best if he didn’t voice any of them. He would have attempted a smile but found it was simply beyond him. He settled for something just short of a grimace. “Where?”

“Sàraichte,” Rùnach said, looking terribly pleased with himself. “A stroke of genius, if I do admit as much myself.”

Acair was past surprise. “Indeed.”

“I suggest a labor of some kind,” Soilléir said thoughtfully. “With your hands.”

Besides wrapping them around your neck? was what came first to mind, but Acair decided that was perhaps something also better left unsaid. If he didn’t get away from the pair of imbeciles in front of him, he was never going to be able to speak again.

“I don’t need a labor when I can . . .” He paused and frowned. It was going to be a bit difficult to feed himself if he couldn’t pluck the odd piece of Nerochian gold out of thin air now and again. “I’ll need magic to conjure up funds from time to time.”

“Use it and become a conversation piece for a faery,” Rùnach said. “Isn’t that right, my lord Soilléir?”

“That did seem to be our bargain.”

Acair wriggled his jaw to loosen it. There had been no bargain; there had simply been a chess game that he’d played very badly. But Sàraichte? Could there be a place in the whole of the Nine Kingdoms less appealing?

Well, he supposed there could be and he could name several of them without effort, so perhaps he would be better off to simply keep his mouth shut and carry on as if he were bested yet again. He looked at his companions coolly.

“Very well, I’ll go,” he said with as much politeness as he could muster. “I don’t suppose that as a courtesy you two would spot me a sovereign or two to help me on my way, would you?”

Meager funds were produced and pushed across the table. Acair collected them—he was a pragmatist, after all—and pocketed them. Obviously, he would be sleeping under the stars more than he cared to, but he couldn’t see how anything could be done about that at present. But later? Aye, there would be retribution. He stood up and pulled his cloak around his shoulders.

“Don’t make this any worse for yourselves,” he warned. “And you know exactly what I mean by that.”

Rùnach lifted his cup up in salute. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

“Oh,” Soilléir said, holding up his hand, “one more thing. You are forbidden to reveal your identity to anyone who doesn’t already know you.”

Of course. Acair glared at Soilléir. “Anything else?”

“If I think of anything, I’ll let you know.”

Acair snarled a curse at him, sent his half-brother a look of promise, then stomped out of the pub and into the twilight. He might have enjoyed the rustic view, but he had the feeling he was going to be seeing far too much of that kind of thing in the future, more particularly from his vantage point on the ground. The pleasures of flying along as a terrible wind were obviously lost to him for the moment.

But damnation, what choice had he had? The past half year had truly been an unsettling one, full of unpleasant experiences he would have preferred to forget, and all because of a rather innocent piece of magic he’d decided to attempt after a rather tedious and uninteresting decade. The idea had come to him as he’d been wandering about a library in a locale he didn’t care to visit again and he’d stumbled upon a book of—