by Lynn Kurland
He was sitting behind a desk, the stable’s ledger open in front of him. He didn’t look angry, but Fuadain rarely looked angry. He simply wore a look of faint disapproval, as if everything around him just wasn’t quite right.
“I see there is an accounting of less grain in the buckets than I should have expected to see,” he said thoughtfully, trailing his finger along the page. He glanced at her. “Less.”
“I apologize, Uncle.”
“I’m not blaming you, of course,” he said, “but the grain is gone and I didn’t take it. You are the only other one with a key.”
That wasn’t true—Slaidear, for one, had a key to that tack room—but there was no point in arguing. She’d tried that for years but found it absolutely useless. There were times she wondered just what her uncle had been like as a child. Too coddled, perhaps, with everyone around him rushing forward to make certain he never had to suffer the consequences of his actions. The fault for anything was never his.
Slaidear remained silent, but that wasn’t unusual. She was the target, always.
“I will take the discrepancy out of your pay,” Fuadain stated slowly. “I have no choice.”
“Of course,” Léirsinn said.
“Do you have an issue with that, Léirsinn?” He closed the book with a snap that echoed off the paneled walls. “I provide you with food, a place to sleep, and a little occupation to keep you out of trouble. And now you’re arguing with me over a few coins?”
“I wasn’t arguing,” she said quickly.
“Perhaps you forget that I am housing your grandfather.”
“Your father,” she said before she thought better of it.
He lifted a single eyebrow. “And so he is, though I keep him here for you, my dear, that you might visit him from time to time. It would be a shame if something dire befell him.”
Worse than what has already? was almost out of her mouth before she could stop it. She bit the words back and forced herself to set aside all the things about the situation that didn’t make sense to her. Tosdach was Fuadain’s father and the rightful lord of Briàghde, or at least he would have been if he’d been able to move and speak. It made her wonder, also not for the first time, if her uncle might have had something to do with his father’s condition.
“I understand you were in town a pair of days ago,” Fuadain said, looking at her from under heavy eyelids. “An interesting place to go for your day of liberty.”
“I go to see if there are tidings of new horses that might be interesting to you, Uncle.”
Fuadain laughed shortly. “As if you would have any idea what a decent horse looks like. You’re dismissed. Slaidear, see her out.”
She nodded and waited for Slaidear to open the door for her. She nodded to him, because it didn’t serve her to be impolite, then hastened down the passageway. She managed to get herself around a corner before she had to stop, lean against a wall, and force herself to breathe slowly and evenly.
So her uncle had indeed been watching her, but obviously more extensively than she’d suspected. For all she knew, he’d also seen her acting daft by avoiding those damnable spots on the ground. Perhaps he was making a list of all her offenses, a list he would then use to have her taken away and locked up somewhere.
She suppressed the urge to run and continue to run until she felt safe. She had to at least pretend that nothing had changed. The last thing she could afford was to have fewer coins to hand off to Mistress Cailleach at the end of every week or find herself in a place where she couldn’t aid her grandfather.
She let out a shaking breath. She wasn’t sure what she had expected, but she had gotten nothing more than she’d known in her heart she would get. She couldn’t afford to take her grandfather from Fuadain’s house and she couldn’t doom him to whatever fate he would suffer if she went to look for work elsewhere. Leaving him in Fuadain’s care was tantamount to turning him over to a madman. She was, as always, trapped. It was a pity those spots of shadow weren’t gates to some other world . . .
She waited for another quarter hour to make certain her uncle and his lackey would have forgotten about her before she pushed away from the wall and made her way from the manor through the kitchens, as usual. She didn’t breathe easily until she had left the house through a generally unused and very darkened doorway.
She supposed, looking back on that moment after she’d realized how close she’d come to walking into something foul in the shadowed garden, that it was a very good thing indeed that she had spent so much of her life avoiding notice. Notice was hard to avoid when one was in the middle of an arena, working a staggeringly valuable horse, but surprisingly easy in other places.
She froze and pulled back into the shadow of a column. She didn’t recognize any of the voices murmuring not ten paces away from her, but she supposed that didn’t matter. All she knew was that she most definitely didn’t want them to know she was within earshot. Unfortunately, there was nowhere for her to go. She would have to stay where she was until they left first.
That was, she decided after another moment or two, going to be much harder than she’d suspected it would be. If those spots on the ground made her uneasy, that trio of men there left her terrified. Whoever they were and whatever they were doing, they were evil. There was nothing else to call them.
“He will need to die, of course.”
“As you will, master. When?”
“As soon as is convenient. Before dawn, if it can be arranged.”
Léirsinn felt a chill slide down her throat and settle in her belly. She could hardly believe her ears, but they were certainly working as they should have been. The men continued to discuss the death of that unknown man as casually if they argued companionably about where they might have supper later. But she knew, in a way she couldn’t describe, that they weren’t simply chatting for the sake of listening to themselves talk.
She wasn’t afraid of anything, as a rule, and had faced down both men and beasts who should have sent her running the other way. But this was something else entirely. The first voice was so utterly devoid of emotion, so seemingly callous to a discussion of when it might be most convenient to end a man’s life—
She froze. Her grandfather. They were talking about her grandfather.
“There is the matter of his magic, master,” a third voice said.
“I have sensed no spells about him. He is unprotected.”
Léirsinn suppressed the urge to rub her ears. Magic? How absolutely ridiculous. Perhaps the trio there was drunk, not evil. That wouldn’t have surprised her—
“But if he wakes before the deed is done . . .”
“Then slay him in his sleep,” the first voice said with a hint of irritation. “Acair of Ceangail is a mischief-maker and I don’t want him nosing about. He’s already seen more than I would have wanted him to.”
Léirsinn shook her head. When that didn’t clear it, she shook it again. Acair? They were planning to murder Acair?
Ceangail. So that was where he was from. She wondered why he’d been reluctant to tell her as much, but she was more curious still as to why the men in front of her would know not only his name but have an opinion about him. That place, Ceangail, sounded familiar, though she was the first to admit she never paid attention to anything outside the barn, only listening to talk of Sàraichtian politics when she had no choice. She’d known Acair was not a local lad, but apparently she had given him too little credit for an ability to pull up stakes and land somewhere else.
“But his magic, master,” the third voice protested hesitantly. “And with his being who he is—”
There was the sound of a slap, but not one made by a hand across a face. Léirsinn had never heard anything like it before, but she heard the resulting gasping for breath at least one of the three was engaging in.
“Rein in your companion,” the first voice said cold
ly, “lest he find himself in the same condition as Gair’s son. Do not trouble me again until the deed is done.”
The three shadows then simply vanished into thin air as if they had never been there. She realized quite abruptly that she was no longer standing. The ground was dependable, though, and she had no complaints about it under her backside.
It was the only thing that seemed solid, however. First her eyes had deceived her, then her body had deserted her. She didn’t want to think what might be coming next.
Magic? Murder? Good hell, what next?
She clutched the gravel that had already cut into her hands. It should have been comforting but it wasn’t, most likely because it couldn’t erase the memory of the previous few minutes. She had heard voices, seen human forms, then watched three men disappear into nothing. She would have suspected that she was losing her mind, but she knew herself too well to believe that. She had seen what she’d seen—or not seen, as it were—and it frightened the bloody hell out of her.
At least they weren’t coming for her grandfather.
The moment the thought crossed her mind, she thought she should have at least felt some sense of remorse for having thought it. Her grandfather was safe, but Acair was apparently not.
She sat in the same spot for perhaps half an hour before she thought she might be able to stand with any success. She pushed herself to her feet against the stone of the hall, scraping her back but unable to care. She was numb with something. Terror, perhaps. The terrible knowledge that she had grossly underestimated what the world contained, definitely.
She waited until she was absolutely certain she was alone, then she walked quickly but soundlessly back to the barn. She nodded to lads as she passed them, ducked out of the way when she saw Slaidear, then snuck into the graining room only to find Doghail occupying her preferred spot.
“Hiding?” she asked breathlessly.
“Beat you to it, I’d say.”
She rubbed her arms. “I believe autumn has arrived.”
“It arrived last week,” he said. He looked at her. “What are you running from?”
She opened her mouth to reply, then realized she couldn’t force the words out of her mouth. She wasn’t sure she trusted even Doghail, a man she had known for the whole of her life in Sàraichte. She attempted a smile. “Just work, as usual.”
He didn’t look convinced, but he was rarely convinced by anything he hadn’t thought up himself. He only shrugged and rose.
“Have my spot.”
“Oh, nay,” she said, moving back toward the door. “I have things to do.”
He looked at her and pulled the pipe he was smoking out of his mouth. “As you will, Léirsinn.”
She nodded, then left him to his business. She slipped along in the shadows, then got herself inside her own private little spot without any fuss. She lit a lantern, hung it on a hook, then leaned back against the door.
Her life had changed.
She didn’t like change.
She suspected, though, she would like cleaning up the aftermath of murder even less. She gave that a bit of thought, then considered things she hadn’t in years. Seventeen years, to be exact. She turned an idea over in her mind for several minutes before she made a decision. She hung up her cloak, then started digging.
She didn’t have very many personal possessions. Indeed, she supposed if someone were to come and try to dig through her closet, they would find only tack, cleaning rags, and, if they were exceptionally diligent, the key to her box. She, however, was past exceptionally diligent and there was something she owned that not another soul alive would have found.
It cost her a good hour, several bruised and bloodied knuckles and fingers, and finally a hoof pick wielded with great vigor to dislodge the wall boards near the floor. She pulled them aside, then sat back on her heels and looked at the space she’d uncovered. She hesitated, only because what was wrapped in that cloth hadn’t been disturbed in years. It didn’t appear to be covered with venomous spiders or shadows, so she removed what she’d hidden there. Her hands were shaking as she unwrapped what she’d hidden, but she supposed that couldn’t be helped. Once she was finished, she set everything down on the floor in front of her and looked at it all.
A crossbow lay there, along with two lethal-looking bolts.
The arrows were covered with something unusual, not unlike the shadows she’d seen, but this something was not evil. It was . . . perilous. At the moment, she wasn’t sure there was a difference, but perhaps she would have a different opinion if she managed to use those bolts to fend off murderers.
She could hardly believe she was contemplating such a thing.
She had no idea who had given her what she currently held in her hands. The bow and bolts had simply been inside her wee chamber one day, as if she had taken them out to examine them and not had the time to put them away. Perhaps there was no use in speculating on their origin. She had a weapon and obviously a great need for—
She stopped herself in mid-thought and wondered if she had gone mad.
What she’d heard in the garden had been nothing more than three men who’d obviously had too much to drink. For all she knew slay was just another way of saying I think I know a lad we can rob for the sport of it. Those men were probably the same ones Acair had played cards with several nights ago. Or perhaps he had since been to a different tavern where he had encountered a few gamblers who had been less-than-pleased with his skills. Perhaps the men she’d just heard had had retribution on their minds and were expressing it with ale-inspired enthusiasm. Slay didn’t mean actually do Acair in, it likely meant lighten his purse.
She didn’t allow herself to think too hard about the fact that she was using the same excuse more than once, rephrasing it to make it sound more reasonable.
She gave herself a good shake and forced herself to address the rest of the recent madness she’d encountered. She hadn’t seen those lads disappear, of course. She had simply been overcome by worry for her grandfather and taken by surprise by what she’d heard. Indeed, ’twas possible that she had blacked out for a moment or two. Hadn’t she found herself rather suddenly on the ground? All that talk of Acair and magic and things that couldn’t possibly find home in her safe, sensible world had been too much for her and she’d been overcome. All she needed for everything to return to normal was a good night’s sleep.
Surely.
She propped bow and bolts up in the corner, replaced the missing board, then sat down on her stool and decided that she could perhaps take a few minutes and wait for the barn to settle down before she turned in. Sitting there with a cross-bow nearby was . . . well, it was daft, but for all she knew, those men had known she was there and they’d been talking about murdering Acair to keep her from learning of their real purpose which was to steal a horse. Being prepared for that sort of thing was prudent.
She considered, then moved the bow and bolts so they were right next to her. She pulled a horse blanket over herself and her weapons and supposed that was enough secrecy for the night. If anyone came inside her closet, they would only think her chilled, not daft.
She closed her eyes and leaned her head back against the wall, but knew she wouldn’t sleep.
Eight
It was a dance, that slipping inside a place to do a bit of burgling.
Unfortunately, Acair found himself inside the great house of Briàghde not for such a lofty activity, but rather a pedestrian bit of eavesdropping. Less challenging, true, but the sort of thing that proved rather valuable from time to time.
He stood in the shadows of an alcove and studied the passageway he’d watched Léirsinn walk down earlier. He had, in the past, done more than his share of both listening to conversations not meant for him and nicking things that didn’t belong to him, so his present activity was nothing out of the ordinary. What was different, however, was why he was about his go
odly work.
He was following her because he was—and he could hardly believe he was admitting it—worried about her.
But what else could he have done? Doghail had filled his ears full of all manner of tales about Fuadain’s treatment of her, told him in even more detail of Léirsinn’s interviews with her uncle at the end of every month, and then left him to consider what he could do about it. Short of turning the lord of the manor into a mushroom—he was seriously revisiting his need for a Cothromaichian spell of essence changing to make that sort of change permanent—he feared he was unfortunately quite powerless to aid her. That didn’t set well with him at all.
Concern. He shuddered delicately. Even his mother might have approved of the sentiment, which he knew should have made him very nervous indeed.
He rolled his shoulders as carefully as possible to ease the stiffness there. Whatever else that damned spot on the ground had done to him, it had left a lasting impression on his form. He didn’t dare hope that protecting Léirsinn and doing a robust bit of snooping would provide him with any answers as to what those shadows were, but stranger things had happened. He knew, because he had been the instigator of stranger things happening to others. That the like was coming back to bite him in the arse was rather unpleasant.
A year. He could hardly believe he’d agreed to a year in his current locale, a year without the basic necessities of life his magic could provide him. ’Twas utter madness, but there was a spell slinking along behind him doing its own impression of a burglar that told him the madness was going to be his to enjoy for quite some time to come.
Oh, the retribution he would exact . . .
He forced his attentions back to the mischief at hand. No one ventured forth from any of the chambers he knew were occupied, which was something of a frustration. His disembodied companion didn’t offer any suggestions, which left him, as usual, the only one in the area with any decent ideas. He leaned back against the wall and suppressed a sigh. Reduced to putting his ear against a door. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d stooped so low.
