The White Spell (Nine Kingdoms #10)(51)
“You’re cursing.”
He blinked, then sighed. “A terrible habit.” He rose. “I’ll find food and drink. Do not leave.”
She looked up at him. “I’ve exchanged one gaol for another it seems.”
“You’ve forgotten what you heard in the barn in the middle of the night, obviously.”
She nodded. “And so I had. Thank you.”
He suppressed the urge to curse again, wondering why in the hell he bothered with manners given who he was, then left the chamber before he suffered from any more altruistic impulses.
He didn’t need to bother with cards given that he had, on the way to the inn earlier, lifted the fairly substantial purse of a lesser master he’d bumped into—ill-gotten gains on that man’s part if ever there had been any. He ordered a meal to be sent upstairs, ordered one for himself, then bought a round for a group of students who looked as if they needed it. He’d been inside Buidseachd himself on more than one occasion and sympathized with them.
He sat down before he did anything else utterly out of character.
He watched Léirsinn’s supper be carried upstairs, then attended to his own. The food was better than he had expected, but his expectations had been very low indeed.
It was profoundly odd, he decided as he lingered over a mug of reasonably tasty ale, to be in a city where he’d been so many times before yet have everything be different. He was not sweeping in on the wings of an evil intention, fully prepared to do whatever was necessary to achieve his dastardly ends, he was . . . well, he was fully prepared to do something dastardly and admittedly he was there to save his own sweet neck, but he had taken a chamber for a rustic miss and he wasn’t going to force her to sleep on the floor. If that wasn’t altruism in action, he didn’t know what was.
He studied without excessive interest the souls gathered about the tables in the gathering room. Most he could tell were from Buidseachd, given their dress and conversation. He supposed a single day of liberty was the best they could hope for in such a place. At least the food was better at the pub than what they were eating up the way. He’d filched more than one meal at the castle and regretted it each time. He’d half suspected there was someone there who purposely ruined as many suppers as possible, just to give the lads something proper to complain about.
There was a table more sparsely populated than the rest, but he understood that. It looked to be a few older, perhaps lesser men associated with Buidseachd. Servants or minor magelings hoping to better their lot, no doubt. Acair wished them well and left them to it.
Until he realized his name was being bandied about.
He normally would have been satisfied with being spoken of as the creator of all kinds of trouble, but he was appalled to realize how annoying it was being credited where credit was definitely not due. He was being blamed for mischief he never would have bothered with. It was insulting, truly.
He had to put an end to the farce before he lost all claim to his former character. He was a black mage, damn it to hell, and one that gave other black mages pause. His father might have been terrifying and his mother unnerving, but he was all that and definitely more when it came to instilling fear and a desire to immediately do whatever he asked.
He downed his ale, set his cup down, then left the gathering chamber. He would find Soilléir, get him to take that damned spell back, check on Léirsinn’s horse for her—that was the very last pleasantry he would engage in—then he would be back to his usual way of carrying on.
Murder, mischief, and mayhem. He would embrace all three with renewed affection and commitment.
He had to, before he completely lost himself.
Eleven
Léirsinn stood near the chamber door and watched Acair look out the window. It was almost exactly what they’d been doing the day before. The only difference now was she’d had a pair of remarkably tasty meals and a good night’s sleep. She wasn’t sure what Acair had had. He’d returned from the gathering chamber the night before in a foul mood. If he’d been a horse, she would have put him in his stall and left him to sort himself on his own. Since that had seemed a rather useful idea, she’d put herself to bed and left Acair to work through whatever was troubling him.
His mood hadn’t improved much after breakfast, but she supposed she couldn’t blame him. He was obviously concerned about something and she suspected she knew what it was. As much as she tried, she couldn’t forget the sight of those two things hovering over him . . . how long had it been? Two nights ago? She thought it might have been no longer than that, but that night plus the journey to Beinn òrain, then a very uneasy sleep the night before—it was all a bit of a blur. If Acair wanted to look out the window and make certain he wasn’t being stalked by more of those things, he was welcome to his looking.
“Let’s go,” he said, dropping the very worn curtain.
She said nothing, mostly because she was afraid if she started talking, she would never stop. It had been the most unsettling pair of days she could ever remember having had. Perhaps she was more a creature of habit than she’d ever dared suspect.
The discomfort had started the moment she’d hidden behind that pile of fencing and watched someone walk off with a horse that wasn’t hers by right but definitely was by affection. Her unease had only increased as she’d boarded a boat that could hardly have been seriously considered the same, spent the entire trip wishing she’d had the courage to turn and heave her guts over the side, then disembarked in a city that made Sàraichte look like a pristine habitation for elegant faeries from one of the tales she remembered her parents having told her as a child.