The White Spell (Nine Kingdoms #10)(9)

“You did me,” he said with a shrug. “Turn about, and all that. Get on with ye, gel. I’ll see to your chores.”

She considered refusing but couldn’t deny that a bit of freedom might be a good thing. She patted the gelding, thanked Doghail again, and left the barn with less regret than usual.

Her uncle was growing increasingly unreasonable, even she had to admit that. He had never managed to strike her save once or twice, a handful of years earlier, when he had caught her on the shoulder. She half suspected those times had been accidents, but he had seemingly taken a liking to how they had made him feel. Her respect for him, which had never been very great, had completely disappeared after that.

She had, out of necessity, grown very adept at staying out of his reach. She supposed she wouldn’t manage that forever, which was perhaps why she needed to find more coins than she was going to be able to earn on her own. She had to leave Sàraichte soon, and she couldn’t go without her grandfather.

She was sorely tempted to take one of those coins she’d hidden under filthy blankets, chuck it into the fountain in the midst of the village green, and wish with all her might for a Hero to come striding out of the gloom and rescue her from the unrelenting reality of her life—

And that would be exactly as far as any of it went because Heroes didn’t exist, her reality was what it was, and if she used one of her coins in such a stupid fashion, she would be unrescued, red in the face, and holding on to one less coin.

Truly, she had to get hold of herself.

She concentrated on where she was going only because she was desperate for some sort of distraction. She walked on the outside of the wall that surrounded the manor and its gardens—on the outside because only servants employed up at the house and family were permitted to walk on the inside and she was definitely not considered either of those. She had walked that path so many times she hardly thought about it any longer and she only looked at the house out of idle curiosity, not desperate longing.

The manor wasn’t an ugly place, but there wasn’t anything truly lovely to recommend it. Everything about it was designed to attract attention and lead anyone looking at it to believe that the lord who lived there was very important indeed. She thought it overdone and garish, but what did she know? In truth, she preferred a clean stable and a fast horse. She hardly cared where she laid her head and she had no desire to impress anyone who might be examining her flowerbeds for weeds.

She considered that for as long as it took her to leave the manor behind. She turned the corner toward town, then paused in mid-step. It wasn’t a lad with less-than-chivalrous thoughts on his mind, or a dog eyeing her leg purposefully, or even a clutch of nettles that left her frozen in place.

There was something there on the ground.

She took a step backward, made a fruitless grasp for her good sense, then surrendered and simply stared at what lay there before it. It was a hint of shadow where there should have been none.

That might not have seemed so strange save that it was barely past noon, there were no clouds in the sky, and there was nothing around her to cast any hint of darkness on the ground.

She frowned thoughtfully. She realized with a start that it wasn’t the first time she had seen something odd in the vicinity of her uncle’s house. When had it been—oh, aye. A pair of fortnights past. She’d seen something similar on the ground but dismissed it as her having had not enough sleep, because shadows cast on the ground by nothing at all, in broad daylight no less, were impossible.

She was tempted to step on it and see what happened but something stopped her. Good sense, perhaps. A finely honed sense of self-preservation, assuredly. She took a deep breath and walked around the patch of nothing, giving it a very wide berth.

She decided that perhaps the best use of that rather long walk into town would be to spend the time chiding herself for being a fool. Her imagination was getting the best of her. She might as well revisit her thought of wishing for a decently executed rescue as to give any credence to what she thought she had seen.

She would go to town, procure what Doghail wanted, then spend the rest of her day mucking out stalls.

It was obviously her only hope of having any of her good sense return.





Two





If penance was best done in Hell, Acair thought he might have arrived at the right locale for it.

Sàraichte was without a doubt the ugliest place he had ever seen. He stood on a small bluff on the edge of town and examined what was to be his prison for the next year. It was a typical port town, only it didn’t seem to have the usual niceties most port towns boasted such as a decent pub, a bustling market, and a stiff breeze to wash away the lingering odor of fish.

He wasn’t sure how any of the ships in the harbor managed to escape its clutches once they were in them, but perhaps magic was needed to save the day. Why he couldn’t have been saddled with that sort of work for the duration of his sentence, he surely didn’t know. He could have stood on a hill and directed the ships in and out, offering a helping hand occasionally, collecting exorbitant fees always. It would have been altruistic from stem to stern, as it were, aiding those who couldn’t aid themselves and pocketing a bit of coin in the bargain. Yet with all his magic simply begging to be used, where was he going?

A barn.

Somewhere, Rùnach of Tòrr Dòrainn and Soilléir of Cothromaiche were having themselves a right proper chuckle over the thought.