“Aye.”
“Give them a little whisper in my ear, then.”
She looked at him uneasily. “Will I bring the hall down around us?”
“I sincerely hope not,” he said, with feeling.
She whispered them behind her hand into his ear. He smiled pleasantly and patted his mouth with his hand as if he might have been hiding a yawn. If that hand trembled, well, perhaps she was the only one who noticed. If he leaned over and pressed his lips against her hair, perhaps the company only thought him terribly besotted.
“I think,” he murmured, “that you’ve discovered why he wants you.”
She felt cold suddenly. Perhaps it had to do with wearing a gown that didn’t cover her shoulders, or perhaps she’d had too much of the wine she’d hardly touched. All she knew was that she was very, very afraid.
“What now?” she murmured.
“We wait, and then we win.”
She could only hope he was right about that.
She didn’t want to imagine what would be left of the world if he wasn’t.
Twenty-one
If there were one thing to be grateful for, it was that he wasn’t going to meet his end in a barn.
Acair pulled off his evening coat and handed it to Léirsinn to wear, partly because he hadn’t had the foresight to bring her a wrap and partly because the cloth was black and she might blend into the darkness better that way. His own chemise was a brilliant white which might have the opposite effect, though he suspected that damned Sladaiche or Slaidear or whatever he was calling himself at present likely couldn’t tell white from ivory with any success so perhaps the color of his shirt wouldn’t make any difference.
Lesser mages, lesser spells. It was apparently going to be his lot for the evening.
Slaidear was waiting for them in the garden, on the far side of a crumbling fountain that was half full of putrid water. Unsurprising, but Acair honestly hadn’t expected anything better. There were no ladders in the vicinity, however, which he thought might be a mercy for that fool there.
He stopped in front of that disgusting fountain with Léirsinn on one side and his wretched spell of death keeping watch on the other and wondered absently if it had been Slaidear to have created the beast that dogged his steps. Perhaps in the end, it didn’t matter. Léirsinn would do what she could to contain it, he would slay the mage across from them, and the world would see sunrise free of one more villain.
He took a moment to appreciate the improbable nature of his current situation. Normally when someone wanted to slay him, that lad—and the occasional lass—took the time to engage in a proper exchange of written insults delivered via messenger. He was not usually the recipient of a terseoutsidescrawled on a grubby slip of paper that had been passed from hand to hand down a supper table until it reached him and the word disappeared after it had been read.
Vulgar, but he supposed that was the best that mage over there could do.
It was also very unusual to be in an altercation where he didn’t have his full complement of spells available, nor had he ever fought a duel where he’d been far more concerned about a woman standing next to him than he was himself. Indeed, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d fought a duel with a woman anywhere near him, especially one with magic she couldn’t exactly control.
He glanced briefly at Léirsinn to find she had her hands in the pockets of his evening jacket. Assuming that meant she had transferred her coins from her bodice to where they would be more easily reached, he turned to considering the lay of the land. He was terrible at small talk, true, but he wasn’t opposed to a bit of pre-duel chit-chat just to see which way the wind was blowing.
He turned a bored look on the mage standing some thirty paces away.
“What is it I should call you?” he asked politely. “Don’t want to get the name wrong and call youstupidwhenwhoresonwill do.”
Shards spilled out of Slaidear’s mouth along with his curse. Acair had never seen anything like it and had to admit it was profoundly unsettling.
“Surely you’re not too stupid to choose for yourself,” he hissed.
Acair fought the urge to roll his eyes. “Very well. Given that Slaidear is but a recent incarnation, we’ll go with Sladaiche. Now, what exactly is it you want,Sladaiche? Besides my thanking you for pulling us away from a merely marginally edible repast, that is.”
Sladaiche held up a loaded crossbow. Acair found himself surprisingly grateful for decades of yawning in the face of impossible odds because that was the only thing that saved him from gasping aloud at the moment.
“You shouldn’t have left these behind,” Sladaiche said with a sneer. “It might prove to be your undoing.”
Damn it, he’dknownthat was going to come back to bite him in the arse. Bolts were one thing and easily countered, but those arrows there were enspelled with something that had slain mages in Fuadain’s barn with terrible efficiency. He regretted not having taken the time to have a closer look to see what they were made from. He hoped he didn’t pay the ultimate price for not having brought them along to keep them out of the hands of that man there.
He also wished he’d taken the time to discuss with Léirsinn the particulars of how she would need to contain that damned spell of death on his right, never mind exactly what she should do about fleeing if he fell. He didn’t dare take his eyes off his foe to look at her, so he supposed he would have to rely on her superior ability to remain calm in the face of great, stomping steeds. She would do what she thought best and hopefully they would both still be standing in the end.
