“Did you know?” Acair demanded.
“Know what?”
“Who I was meant to be looking for,” Acair snapped.
Soilléir lifted a shoulder in a half shrug. “I know many things.”
Acair patted himself figuratively for something sharp to plunge into that damned essence-changer’s chest but, as was his lot in life at present, managed nothing but a noise that came far too close tomewling babefor his taste.
“Youuselesswhoreson,” he said.
Soilléir only shrugged, something he seemed to do with frightening regularity. “I am a pragmatist.”
“Iam a pragmatist,” Acair shouted, then remembered where he was and with what secrecy he was supposed to be there.
“Then perhaps we are more alike—”
“Do not even start with that,” Acair growled. “If you tell me that you’ve sent me scampering over the whole of the damned world simply to bring me here where you could tell me what you could have told me anywhere else, I vow I will cast aside my better instincts and slay you where you sit.”
“There were conclusions you needed to come to on your own,” Soilléir said simply.
Acair shook his head in disbelief. He realized with annoyance that he had shaken his head so often over the past year that he had acquired a permanent crackle in his neck. He blamed Soilléir and Rùnach. He would also be damned if he would ask them to see to repairing the damage. Who knew what sort of sparkling rot they would leave rampaging about his fine form in the process?
“You could have told me and saved me all this trouble—”
He stopped speaking. It was becoming an alarming habit, that realizing that he was on the verge of saying things he shouldn’t. Admittedly, he had a far better guard over his tongue than most of his family, but he had never shied away from flinging a well-conceived barb or a hastily slung-together insult and the consequences be damned.
Trouble, however, at his current juncture included a red-haired stable gel who had sacrificed not only her momentary peace of mind but likely her future peace as well simply to keep him alive. He didn’t dare look at her lest he see her reaction to his heart sitting so prominently, as the saying went, upon his sleeve. He knew as he had seldom known anything in the past that Soilléir had known what he would find in that barn. He shook his head slowly.
“Impossible.”
“Is it?”
“You didn’t.”
Soilléir smiled very faintly. “There is a rich history of that sort of activity in my family. I’m not sure you need worry, though. She might not be interested in you given that I don’t see any sort of betrothal ring on her fingers.”
Acair glanced at the woman in question’s fingers and almost suggested a rude gesture she might make with at least one of them, but perhaps that was an insult better saved for later.
“I’m working on it,” Acair said. “Why are you here?”
“Unforeseen circumstances,” Soilléir said succinctly.
Acair realized he’d finally reached a point with the mage across from him where he was simply past surprise.
“I didn’t intend to be,” Soilléir added, looking the faintest bit unsettled. “Events—or uncontrollable players in those events, if you will—took a turn I didn’t anticipate.”
Acair felt one of his eyebrows go up and he heartily agreed. “A wench,” he said in awe. “A wench has thrown you for the proverbial loop.”
“What is it your mother says about your untoward deeds?”
“If you can’t name them, I won’t claim them,” he said. “Pithy, but a bit too much on the rhyming side. My mother, as you might imagine, doesn’t care.”
“She doesn’t,” Soilléir agreed, “and she’s right about many things. Also, you two should go now.” He paused. “Please.”
Acair would have looked around himself in an exaggerated fashion, then made some cutting remark about the state of the world as a whole, but the truth was, he was just too damned unsettled to.
“You’ll need to help us out the back gate.”
