The White Spell (Nine Kingdoms #10)(40)

“What are you doing in here?” he demanded.

“Wrong chamber, milord,” Acair said, ducking his head.

Fuadain backhanded him. Acair couldn’t remember the last time he’d been struck. A spell of death was halfway out of his mouth before he realized what he was doing. He kept his head down, congratulated himself on not dropping his burden, then made Fuadain a small bow.

“Thank ye for the correction, milord,” he said in his best working man’s accent.

“See that I don’t find the need for the like again. Now, get out.”

Acair got out, but he would be damned if there wouldn’t be some repayment for that. He stood outside the door, shaking, silently cursing everyone he could think of until he settled finally on a certain Cothromaichian prince and his elven companion.

He walked a bit farther down the passageway, just to give himself time to cool his temper. He turned the corner the first chance he had and found himself facing what appeared to be Fuadain’s suite of rooms. He looked about himself to make certain he was alone, then poured the port into a pair of boots that had been left out for a polishing, shoved the decanter and glasses into a planter, then suppressed the urge to take the silver tray and fling it at someone.

Truly, it had been a trying few days.

He got hold of himself, then went back to the corner near where he’d come from and listened again. He could hear only the faintest murmur of voices, but ’twas obvious Fuadain hadn’t left the grandfather’s chamber. He slipped back down the way, stopped in front of that worn door, and put his ear to the wood.

“And so you see, Tosdach . . . why . . . die.”

Acair cursed the builder of the manor for having seen to the privacy of any given chamber’s occupants so well, then gave up when he heard voices coming closer to the door. He headed off down the passageway as if he had business elsewhere, but he was considering things he didn’t particularly want to.

Who needed to die? Whilst he wasn’t opposed to sending a ruffian or rogue elf speedily off into the next life, he liked for there to be some reason for it. That had to have been Fuadain speaking. The man was a bastard of the first water, brutal to his servants, and unkind to his relatives.

He suppressed the urge to find a polished glass and have a good look in it. ’Twas possible he might have recognized those traits because they were his own, but that was something he could think about later. That list of items was growing very long, but he would simply put think about the list on the bottom of it and it would endlessly rotate, leaving him too busy watching that rotation to give the items it contained any thought.

He waited a moment or two longer, then left down the same passageway he’d walked up. The whole evening had been a completely useless exercise, but the truth was, he was not at his best. That encounter with the shadow had left him far more drained than he wanted to admit. All he truly wanted to do was find his pile of straw and cast himself down upon it.

There was something going on inside that manor house, though, a plot that he could smell the rankness of from fifty paces. And if there was anything he knew the stench of, it was a vile plot. Fuadain was obviously in the thick of it, which was worrisome. Unfortunately, he could do nothing else that night.

He trudged back to the barn and sought out his scrap of floor, hoping rather uneasily that he hadn’t given in too soon.

? ? ?

He woke to darkness. He didn’t awaken during the night usually, a gift no doubt reserved for those with either a clear conscience or none at all. The one thing he could say for certain was that he could see in the dark as well as any feline, a rather useful gift he had from his father, the old rapscallion. It usually served him quite well.

At the moment, it only served to let him know he was a heartbeat away from death.

There were two mages there, hovering over him like specters, very thorough and businesslike spells of death on their lips. He hardly had the chance to remind himself that he couldn’t unleash the same without that damned spell that followed him falling on him, much less weigh the certainty of that against the possibility that the two trying to slay him might not be able to manage it.

And then, quite suddenly, they seemed to be doing less floating and more falling. He watched with a good deal of surprise as each mage in turn flinched as if he’d been struck, flapped around a bit, then landed in a heap, one atop the other. Acair sat up, knowing he was gaping and wishing he could look a little less astonished.

A match sparked in the darkness, a terribly pedestrian way to call fire, but he wasn’t going to argue. The light the subsequently-lit lamp gave wasn’t at all steady, but he suspected that might have been thanks to the trembling of the hand holding that lamp. He looked to find Léirsinn there, looking as if she were the one who had just narrowly escaped death.

She was also holding an empty crossbow.

Acair scrambled to his feet with no grace whatsoever, took the lamp from her and hung it on a hook, then caught the crossbow as she dropped it.

“Are they—” She looked to be attempting to swallow. “I mean, are they—”

“Dead?” he supplied. “I certainly hope so.”

She looked horrified. “I didn’t mean—”

“I should damn well hope you meant to,” he said. He shivered. “A fortunate thing you came along when you did.”

She was silent for so long, he began to wonder if there were things going on that he might be interested in knowing. He looked at her in surprise.