The White Spell (Nine Kingdoms #10)(58)

This was something else entirely.

“Léirsinn,” he began, dredging up his most reasonable tone, “we’ve come too far to turn—”

“You should have given me the choice!”

“I tried—”

“You did not!”

He shut his mouth and scowled. Aye, this was what the rescuing of a damsel in distress got a man. A prickly, unpleasant—ah, nay, not tears. He shifted uncomfortably. “Um, the weeping—”

“I’m not upset,” she spat, “I’m furious!”

He considered that. “So you’re weeping instead of reaching for a blade—oh, you don’t have a blade—”

“Weeping seemed a more reasonable thing to do than kill you, which was my first choice!”

Well, the woman was terribly proficient with a pitchfork, but he suspected she didn’t have the heart to inflict any serious sort of damage on anyone. At the moment, though, she looked as if she might be capable of quite a few things. It was likely best to simply humor her and see if they couldn’t get that pony back up in the air and be on their way.

“I appreciate the concession,” he said. There, that ought to do it. “Very kind,” he added, on the off chance the former hadn’t been enough.

Er, it hadn’t been enough.

She was looking around for a weapon. At least they’d left her crossbow and bolts somewhere behind them, likely back in Sàraichte. Well, there was no time to go back to get them, which he hoped wouldn’t come back to haunt him in the future.

“You cannot go back,” he said with another attempt at sounding reasonable. “Remember what lies in wait.”

“My uncle making a bad jest,” she said dismissively.

“And those mages who tried to slay me?”

“Lads with the right idea,” she said shortly. “I should have let them have at you.”

“We can argue that point later if you like,” he said carefully, “but let’s look at the bigger picture—”

“Aye, the one in which I push you off the back of my horse and ride back home!”

He looked at her standing in the last rays of sunlight that streamed over the plains of Ailean and had to pause to wonder at her hair. Whilst he was wondering, he wondered how it was he’d missed the true nature of its color for so long. He realized that for the most part, she had worn it tucked up under a knitted cap, no doubt to keep it out of her way, or perhaps so all the lads in the barn didn’t stare at her as stupidly as he was doing at present, trying to decide what to call her hair.

He settled on red.

It wasn’t a deep red, like fine port viewed by firelight in perfect crystal. It wasn’t a pale red that could have charitably been called blonde. Her hair was red, simply red, like the depths of a fire on a bitterly cold night when a man could appreciate that sort of thing whilst warming his hands against it.

Apparently with that red came a temper.

“What in the blazes are you doing?” she demanded.

“Trying to decide what to call your hair. What are you doing?”

“Looking for a rock to use—nay, let’s do this.” She looked at him purposefully. “Show me what you did to that lad in Falaire’s barn, the thing where you rendered him senseless but not dead.”

“Why?”

“So I can do it to you!”

He found himself, surprisingly enough, rather glad that she had no magic. If she had, he suspected she would have turned him into something small, then squished him under her boot.

He cast about for something useful to say. He was accustomed to foul-tempered mages, angry monarchs, and outraged wizards with spells and finely honed senses of justice. A flame-haired barn gel in a towering temper?

He hadn’t a clue.

“And look,” she said, pointing to Falaire with a shaking hand. “What is that?”

“That,” he began carefully, “is a horse.”

“He has wings!”

“He’s masquerading as a pegasus,” he offered. “They generally have those sorts of appendages.”

He suspected wings weren’t all that pony could conjure up given the right incentive, but he supposed that might not be anything to put on a list of useful things to say at present. ’Twas no wonder Droch had wanted him.

The question that had nagged at him over the past several hours was how Droch had known what he could do and where to find him. Very curious, that.

“Wings!” Léirsinn repeated. “Wings that aren’t merely for decoration!”

“So it would seem,” Acair ventured. “Would it ease you any and perhaps leave things seeming a bit more familiar if I bent over and let him take a generous bite from my arse?”

She looked at him for a moment or two, then she went very still. To his horror, she started to weep in truth. It wasn’t the loud, boisterous sort of thing most women he knew indulged in order to garner the maximum attention possible. It wasn’t the sort of weeping he was accustomed to from mages who generally found themselves on their knees in front of him, begging him for mercy.

He sighed. He was not a pleasant sort.

Nay, this was a different sort of weeping entirely. Léirsinn stood there as still as stone with tears simply rolling down her cheeks. There weren’t very many tears, but he suspected each one cost her a great deal.