by Lynn Kurland
He followed his companion out of the inn and prepared to spend at least a pair of hours mingling with the workaday types.
It would be interesting to see what the afternoon might bring his way.
Three
Léirsinn woke to the sound of metal ringing.
She sat up and looked around herself quickly. She was alone, which was a bit alarming, but at least her chamber wasn’t full of ruffians, which was less alarming. She rubbed her hands over her face and tried to make sense of what she was hearing. If she’d been in her uncle’s barn, she would have assumed that noise was just tack jingling. In her present locale, though, she thought it sounded quite a bit like swords.
She pushed off the blanket someone had obviously draped over her, pausing briefly to appreciate the fact that it wasn’t covered in horse hair, then rose and made her way unsteadily over to a window. The curtain was made of fabric finer than she had ever put her hand to, but perhaps that was nothing more than she should have expected given the luxurious nature of their accommodations.
She pulled back the curtain, surprised to find that it was well into the afternoon but somewhat less surprised to see that a pre-supper duel was in the offing. The mystery of the noises she’d been hearing was solved, as was the location of her companions. The only question that remained was whether or not the two fools going at each other with rapiers down there in the garden would manage to kill each other before she could stop them.
She looked quickly for her cloak, and then left the chamber at a dead run for the ground floor. The innkeeper, a sturdy, sober man of a decent age, only watched her as she skidded to a halt in front of him. She made a manful attempt to gather her dignity back around herself, then looked at him with as much hauteur as she could manage.
“The garden, good sir,” she said. “If you please.”
“Of course, lady,” he said. He nodded to one of his lads, then instructed him to show her the way to the garden.
Léirsinn followed the boy outside, then frowned when he stopped and looked at her pointedly. She would have asked him what he wanted, but he had already glared at her and gone back the way they’d come before she could. It occurred to her then that she likely should have given him a coin for his trouble, but it was too late. It was also too late to ask him if she could escape back inside with him, so she turned to face the madness she had come to stop.
She stood on the edge of a finely laid stone path and wondered how best to make her presence known. It only took a moment or two to decide that even if those swordsmen there might notice her, they wouldn’t dare take the time to acknowledge her. She considered shouting at them, then decided that there was no point. She knew better than to step between two feisty stallions, so she looked for somewhere to sit until they’d gotten out of their system whatever was bothering them.
The nearest bench was already heavily in shadow, but it looked far enough away from the field of battle that perhaps she wouldn’t be caught by a stray sword. She walked over to it and perched on the edge, shivering in spite of herself. She wrapped her cloak more closely around her, looked at the two men in front of her, then wished rather abruptly that she’d just remained upstairs.
Who would have thought that watching two extremely handsome, thoroughly angry men fight with elegant swords would be so overwhelming?
She rolled her eyes and grasped for her last vestiges of good sense. She was a woman of action, not a wide-eyed lord’s daughter who’d never been out of the nursery. If she occasionally found herself a bit weak-kneed over the thought of taking a peerless horse for a sprint across a large pasture with decent footing, who could blame her? That was the absolute limit of any propensity she might or might not have had to swoon.
Hadn’t she easily ignored the lads she had ordered about in her uncle’s barn? Even more quickly dismissed had been the men who had come to buy horses they couldn’t possibly appreciate from her uncle, one of the worst specimens of manhood she had ever encountered. Unpleasant, unchivalrous louts, all of them.
Nothing at all like the lads out there, trampling the last bits of fall’s brittle vegetation.
She considered, chalked most of her breathlessness up to the stress of her journey to Eòlas, then decided it couldn’t hurt to have a look at prince and prince’s bastard son about their noble business. For the sake of scholarly study, of course, which seemed particularly appropriate given her location.
She shifted to look at the man to her left. Mansourah of Neroche could have easily stridden across the pages of a Hero’s tale and captured the heart of any maid with a book in her hands. He was handsome, chivalrous, and he had a very nice nose. If he’d been a horse, she would have immediately paid a premium price for him and considered it an excellent investment. He was obviously skilled in the sort of dangerous swordplay he was currently engaged in and his ability to hurl slurs and curses with equal ease likely came from years of consorting with his brothers as they saw to their royal doings.
All in all, it was understandable that a gel of lesser self-control might feel the need to give him a second look.
She wasn’t at all sure what to say about the man facing him. Whatever Acair of Ceangail’s abilities with a foul spell might have been, if she’d been watching him come at her with that sword in his hand, she would have tossed hers at him, turned, and hoped she could outrun him. She half wondered why he bothered with steel when his terrible reputation alone was likely enough to send his enemies bolting off in the opposite direction.
Then again, perhaps most saw what she saw: a terribly handsome, thoroughly elegant, perfectly fashioned man any woman with any sense at all would want sitting next to her at supper, twirling her about in the patterns of an intricate dance, or hoisting a sword in her defense. He was absolutely worthy of the fluttering of a feminine heart or a very casual fanning of the face.
She shifted on the slab, not because she was uncomfortable with her thoughts, but because it was damned cold. Her thoughts were just the usual ones a body had while looking at a black mage and a prince who could spew out spells as easily as curses.
She looked about for something else to dwell on and found herself mentally trotting around in a circle and winding back up in about the same spot, only she realized her current unease didn’t come from the fact that she was consorting with those types of men out there, it came from the experiences she’d had in their company.
As she continued to feel compelled to remind herself, magic and all its accompanying ridiculousness was nothing more than what made up her parents’ most cherished nighttime tales.
It was a damned shame she couldn’t bring herself to believe that any longer.
Unfortunately, that had everything to do with what had befallen her while watching Acair fight off a different prince of Neroche but a pair of days earlier. She had seen things, and not just the sorts of things one might normally find loitering in a garden. She had been faced with a perfect view of what she had spent a lifetime believing couldn’t possibly exist.
She had seen magic.
Even the thought of that sort of thing possibly happening again was enough to leave her wanting to hop up and bolt back to her uncle’s barn where, though she might face her own demise, she absolutely wouldn’t encounter anything of a more otherworldly nature. She had to force herself to take several deep, steadying breaths to calm her racing heart, but it didn’t help all that much. It might have been easier, perhaps, to recapture her hold on a very normal, unmagical life if she hadn’t been watching the younger brother of a mage king and the bastard son of a different sort of mage prince go at each other with swords because they either didn’t care to or couldn’t use spells.
She was no coward, though, so she closed her eyes and thought back to that particular moment in Tor Neroche’s garden when she’d first encountered that otherworldly ability to see. There should have been nothing untoward in that garden save an untended ve
getable patch or two, yet there seemingly had been. Stepping on a particular sort of spot on the ground had somehow sharpened her vision—or rendered her daft. At the moment, she wasn’t sure which it was. The simple truth was, she had stepped backward, apparently put her foot in a magic pool of shadow, and seen things—
She opened her eyes and squeaked.
Acair’s minder spell, the spell that was apparently tasked with slaying him should he use any magic, was sitting next to her on the bench. She shouldn’t have been able to see it, but there it was just the same. The damned thing had somehow taken the shadowy shape of a youth, slouching negligently on the stone next to her and watching its charge with a sullen tilt to its head. If spells could fashion themselves into something resembling a man, of course, which Léirsinn wanted to doubt.
Well, either it was a new shape for the beast or she was viewing it with clearer eyes than usual. She just knew she wasn’t about to ask it to lie on the ground in front of her so she could step on its belly as she’d stepped on that shadow in Tor Neroche and hopefully see things she shouldn’t have been able to—
Or perhaps she didn’t need a spell any longer.
She looked at Acair and Mansourah, fighting with the enthusiasm of men who wanted to do each other a goodly amount of damage, then closed her eyes. She willed herself not to see, but to see, then opened her eyes again.
Mansourah and Acair were still in front of her, but she could see both of them. See them, rather, as if she’d been privy to an endless collection of pieces from their souls and what they were made from—
A squeaking distracted her. It occurred to her that she was the one making that sound, but she wasn’t sure how to stop it. She blinked and the vision vanished, but Acair’s minder spell was sitting as far away from her as possible, curled up into itself. She looked out into the garden to find Acair and Mansourah gaping at her.
She would have pointed out that she’d done nothing except use a formidable imagination she hadn’t known she’d possessed, but apparently no explanation was necessary. They looked at each other in consternation, then seemed to remember what they’d been about but a moment before. The renewed ringing of their swords was a happy distraction from what she couldn’t possibly have seen.
She looked about herself for anything else to concentrate on and jumped at the sight of the innkeeper standing a few feet from her. Damnation, would the urge to run never end? She had no idea how long he’d been there, but perhaps not long enough to watch her acting like a fool. She stood up and looked at him coolly, trying to imitate Acair at his most snobbish.
“Aye?” she asked, hoping her tone would take his mind off what he might or might not have just seen.
“A messenger arrived from the king.” He held out a gilt-edged missive. “For His Highness, the prince of Neroche.”
She took the folded sheaf of paper and tried not to look as much like a stable hand as she currently felt. “The prince seems to be quite occupied with his work over there, so I’ll let him know when he finishes.”
The innkeeper didn’t move. “I host many powerful men here, my lady.” He looked terribly torn. “I must say, Prince Mansourah’s servant bears an amazing resemblance to someone else I know.”
“He has that sort of face,” she said without hesitation, though she held out absolutely no hope of putting the man off the scent. While Acair didn’t have a clue what to do with a pitchfork, he didn’t suffer the same problem with a sword. It was obvious he was no servant.
“He looks very much like Prince Gair, cousin to King Ehrne of Ainneamh,” the innkeeper continued relentlessly. He shot her a look. “Gair of Ceangail, as others might call him. A very elegant, powerful man, that one.”
“I’ve heard tales,” she said, though that perhaps wasn’t as true as she would have liked. She’d heard rumors about Gair’s evil, but she hadn’t wanted to delve more deeply into his tale lest she find something there she didn’t want to know. “I’m sure ’tis nothing more than a coincidence.”
The man looked at her carefully. “Lord Acair has been my guest here before, you know.”
She opened her mouth to attempt some other sort of diversion but found herself without a single thing to say to counteract that. She just looked at the innkeeper helplessly.
He smiled faintly. “Not to worry, my lady. I have a very exclusive list of lodgers and an ability to keep my mouth shut.”
“I’m sure those two out there appreciate both,” she managed.
The man glanced at the men hurling insults at each other, then smiled briefly at her. “They have both paid me handsomely for that discretion in the past. Not, I imagine, that either of them needs my aid.”
“You never know,” she said faintly.
The man lifted his eyebrows briefly, then inclined his head before he retreated slowly back inside.
Léirsinn waited until the doors had closed before she looked at the missive in her hand. She had never in her life seen anything so fine, but what did she know? She waved at the two exclusive lodgers still trying to kill each other, but they ignored her.
“I have a message from the king!” she finally shouted.
Acair caught the guard of Mansourah’s rapier with the tip of his blade and flung it up into the air. Léirsinn watched as it flipped hilt over blade several times, glinting in the last of the afternoon sunlight, before it clattered to the ground at her feet. She jumped to avoid having her toes sliced off through her boots, then watched Mansourah shove Acair out of his way before he crossed the garden to her.
Léirsinn jumped as the rapier in front of her simply disappeared. Acair seemingly lost his sword at the same time—and in the same manner—but he was obviously accustomed to that sort of thing. He only cursed at Mansourah and followed him across the garden to her. She held out the invitation to Mansourah.
“From the king,” she repeated. “Or so the innkeeper claimed.”
“Lovely,” Mansourah said, accepting it and popping the wax seal on one side.
“I’m not sure we have the time for supper at the palace,” Acair protested.
“Given that I doubt you were invited,” Mansourah said, “I’m not sure this is anything you need to worry about.” He glanced at the missive, then smiled. “Ah, a late, light tea in His Majesty’s private solar.” He looked at Acair. “No servants necessary.”
Acair snorted. “He is no longer the king, which you well know, so I’m not at all certain why you would want to humor him.”
“He believes he is still the king, which is enough for any courtesy I, as a member of the royal house of Neroche, might feel disposed to show him.” Mansourah shrugged. “For all we know, he might take a stab at another game of cards and have his crown back, so what’s the harm in it?”
Acair levelled a look at him. “The harm is what might happen to Léirsinn whilst you are burrowing into a plate of sweet cakes.”
“I’ll eat beforehand,” Mansourah assured him. “As for anything else, she will be perfectly safe whilst being escorted there by a man with magic.”
Léirsinn stepped between the two of them before she realized she’d moved and she supposed she was fortunate that she was facing Mansourah and not Acair. She didn’t imagine, based on the way Mansourah took a step backward, that she would have wanted to see the look on Acair’s face.
“Here I am with an invitation and not a thing to wear,” she said, blurting out the first thing that came to mind. She was fairly sure she’d heard more than one high-born lady exclaim that in similar tones of despair while shopping in Sàraichte, though she’d never understood it herself. She’d spent a lifetime wearing things worn by others before her. The only things she ever splashed out on were riding boots, but given that she’d only ever owned one pair at a time, there hadn’t been much call for worrying about making fashion choices.
As she’d said before, life was so much simpler in a b
arn.
“I’m sure a gown will be waiting for you in our chambers,” Mansourah said. “Master Acair, I’m assuming you can amuse yourself back here at the inn for a few hours?”
Acair let out a gusty sigh. “I’ll attempt the same.”
“I have boots that need polishing,” Mansourah said, examining his fingernails. “Seems a fitting task for someone of your birth.”
Léirsinn eased herself from between them carefully, not sure if she were more grateful for lack of spells or lack of steel. She looked at Acair who was obviously nurturing a very warm anger and marveled at his self-control. Then again, the spell that endlessly trailed after him was standing there at his elbow like a gentleman’s second, hissing insults at Mansourah that seemed more like echoes of something she might have heard in a dream.
She wondered if perhaps another nap was in order before she lost her wits completely.
Unfortunately, she suspected not even a peaceful sleep would alter what she was seeing. It was odd, that spell there. It was still nothing more than a shadow of something that resembled a tall, gangly youth, but even she could see that it shared Acair’s fury. If she had been Mansourah of Neroche, she might have been nervous.
“I do believe I feel a bit of heat in my right hock,” she said, wondering if she might distract the men with a clever lie. “Or pains in my head. I’m not sure which it is.”
Acair took a deep breath, let it out very slowly, then took a step backward. He looked at her and smiled, every inch the grandson of a prince.
“Prince Mansourah will keep you safe,” he said politely. “You should see the palace, I daresay, before our illustrious monarch loses that as well. Not to be missed.” He made her a bow, then inclined his head to Mansourah. “After you, Your Highness.”
Mansourah didn’t move. “Are you going to plunge a knife into my back?”
