Taking air that was simply air and not full of the seeds of fire waiting to be magically harvested, so to speak, then forcing it into fiery shapes where it lingered in a more permanent state than he was accustomed to finding it…now, that was something. He half expected Soilléir to come charging into the garden to protest someone using anything that came close to his own mighty magic.
“Did you call that fire or make it?”
“Neither.”
She lifted her head and looked at him in astonishment. “Did youmeddle?”
“I did,” he said, feeling a bit awed by the same.
“Would your grandmother be proud or furious?”
“Well, she did give me the spell,” he said. “I’m half afraid to look around lest using it has cracked the world in two in places I can’t see.”
“How long will it last?”
“That is the question, isn’t it? I’m not certain I have the patience to wait it out, and I’m certainly not going to leave you out here to do the work for me.”
“I’m not sure I want to stay out here without you,” she said seriously. She watched the flames for a bit longer, then frowned. “There’s something about it that seems familiar.”
“Lingering indigestion from substances imbibed at my granny’s tea-table, no doubt.”
“No doubt,” she agreed.
He sat with her in what turned out to be a lovely, companionable silence for perhaps longer than he should have, but the work that lay ahead of him was going to be heavy. He wasn’t afraid of it, naturally, though he had to admit the thought of leaving Léirsinn on her own whilst he was senseless from the efforts gave him pause.
The fire burned out eventually, though it took a good hour before it even began to fade. He watched, his arm around a lovely, courageous woman who didn’t seem to mind just sitting with him there and waiting until the flames disappeared as if they had never been there to start with.
He sighed. “Well, there’s that. How about breakfast, then I’ll be about my labors? I’ll need to make a list of vile things that might be useful, which fortunately won’t take all that long.”
She caught his arm before he rose. “Look.”
He stopped in mid crouch, then straightened as she stood up next to him. He realized what she was looking at, but imagined no one else needed to make any note of it. He nodded slightly, then walked with her back into the house, shut the door, then dropped a spell over it to lock it. He looked at her.
“I didn’t imagine them?”
“Those dragon shapes burned into the wood?” she asked. “Not unless I’m dreaming with you.”
“We’re close enough to Bruadair where that might be possible,” he admitted, “but in this case, I imagine not. I wonder what that means?”
“Are you going to investigate?”
He smiled. “You know I will. Later, though.”
“I’ll leave you to it—”
“Nay, stay,” he said. He paused. “If you will. I wouldn’t mind the company.”
“If you like.”
What he would have liked was an entire afternoon with nothing more to do but walk on the shore with her, but things were what they were and he had serious business to see to.
The sooner it was finished, the happier he would be.
An hour later, he sat at the kitchen table and considered what lay there in front of him. He’d decided on coins from Sàraichte only because Léirsinn was familiar with them. Not that she couldn’t have learned another country’s coinage, of course. He just knew that if she wound up needing to use one of them, she would be under a decent amount of duress. The less she had to think through things instead of simply reaching for a weapon and using it, the better.
He glanced at her, sitting next to him at that comfortable round table in front of the fire, and realized she was watching him, not what he’d laid out there. He blinked in surprise.
“What is it?”
