Then she realized he had become very still. There was something about his stillness, though, that left her feeling something it took a moment or two to identify.
Fear.
That was it. Fear.
She shifted to look at him. “What is it?”
He looked at her slowly. “Are all stablemasters that inept?”
“I have no idea,” she said, helplessly. “Slaidear doesn’t ride willingly, but that might be because he doesn’t ride well.”
“He is a bit thick through the middle.”
She nodded.
“So was the orchardist.”
She scrambled to her feet, but he was there with her, holding her by the arm before she could bolt. She wasn’t certain where she would have gone, butawayseemed like a good destination.
“When did Slaidear come to the barn, Léirsinn?”
“I don’t know,” she whispered. “I can’t remember.”
He put on a pleasant expression. She knew, because she’d watched him do it with others. It was the same expression he wore when he was trying to put someone at ease, though she supposed he wasn’t doing it with her because he was on the verge of attempting to intimidate her.
“Think back,” he suggested gently. “Was he there when you arrived?”
“I think I might be ill.”
“I think I might join you,” he said frankly, “but later, when we’ve a nicely patterned settee before us and the king nowhere in sight. We’ll puke together down the back of the cushions. I know these are difficult memories, if you can bring them to mind at all. I wouldn’t blame you if you couldn’t. Do you remember his being there when you arrived? Perhaps the day after your grandfather fell ill and your uncle sent you to the barn? Was he there then?”
She turned and walked away a pace or two, then looked out into the rich darkness of the king’s library. She forced herself to revisit a time she hadn’t thought of in years. Unfortunately, there was a decent reason they were uncomfortably clear.
She turned and returned back over the same two paces she’d used to escape what she could scarce face.
“There was a different stablemaster,” she said slowly. “I went inside the barn to find him beating one of the lads, almost to death. Doghail pulled me behind him and hid me.”
“Of course he did,” Acair said quietly.
“He was gone a few days later. That first stablemaster, that is. Slaidear was there next. It could have been a fortnight, perhaps not that long.” She considered, then shook her head. “I don’t remember him doing anything useful, if you want the truth of it. He stopped pretending to train the horses and left them to me years ago. I even decided which ones to buy. I thought it was because he realized he had no eye for them.”
“I imagine that’s true as well.”
She looked at him, feeling horror descend. “He isn’t…”
“Try the spell again, Léirsinn, and use his name instead.”
“I have to go to the window,” she lied. “I can’t remember the words.”
He only nodded and picked up the books. He shoved five into a random shelf, kept the ledger and her blue-hued book of faery tales, then took her hand and walked with her to the window. He pulled the slip of parchment from his pocket and handed it to her, then smiled briefly.
“You’ll be fine.”
She would have protested that she most certainly wasn’t going to be fine, but the dream she’d had in King Uachdaran’s hall came back to her—rushed at her, actually—in a way that left her realizing that whatever was behind her was on fire and the only way out was to walk off a cliff into darkness.
“I would hold you,” Acair said very quietly, “but I fear you might pull some of my power to you.”
She shook her head. “I’ll do this.”
