“And I’m not the one with horse slobber on my arse, so swallow your pride and learn. Just as he has his domain, I have mine. I don’t enter his; he doesn’t enter mine.”
“Then how do you get a bloody rope around his neck?” Acair asked in exasperation.
“Halter,” she said. “It’s a halter and you put it over his head. He tolerates it from me because I’ve told him that is what he will do.”
“Bossy, aren’t you?”
“I am First Horse,” she said simply. “I will admit I am forced to remind him of that every time we have tea. I would say his memory is poor, but the truth is, he’s a stallion. He would run over me as soon as look at me if I allowed it.”
Acair frowned. “I daresay he doesn’t have that same respect for me.”
“He can tell you don’t know the first thing about his noble kind, pitchforks, or the amount of manure the prince of beasts produces. I doubt he’ll let you anywhere near him until you remedy all three.”
He snorted. “Not a prince, surely. Something far more lofty.”
“Nay, kings generally sit upon their sorry arses and issue edicts. Princes do all the real labor.”
Acair turned and looked at her. “A useful thought issues forth.”
“I have many more of those,” she said smoothly, “and at the moment most concern where you might take yourself off to and what you might do there once you’ve arrived.”
He looked briefly startled, then he smiled. “Do tell.”
“I imagine you would enjoy it overmuch,” she said. “Besides, the horses might hear. Wouldn’t want to ruin their innocence.”
He pointed at Falaire. “That one there is not an innocent.”
“And how would you know that?”
“He has that look about him.” He stared suspiciously at the stallion. “He knows things I think I don’t care for him knowing.”
Odd, but Falaire was studying Acair with a fair bit of interest himself. He generally took no notice of who came to tend him save her and, on occasion, Doghail. He didn’t care for Slaidear or her uncle, but she supposed that shouldn’t have surprised her. That he was willing to even favor Acair with a look instead of a hoof in the gut was something indeed.
“I do believe he knows what I’m thinking,” Acair said finally.
“I wouldn’t be surprised.”
Acair frowned. “I hadn’t considered such a thing possible, but . . . well, it has been that sort of year so far.”
She suppressed the urge to ask him what a man of his obvious breeding found himself doing in a barn, mostly because she was tired and cross and there was a substantial number of stalls still to be tended. She took a halter off the stall door, then walked back to Falaire and looked at him briefly before she slipped the halter over his head.
“Ah,” Acair said, “you’re intimidating him.”
“As I said, he and I have an understanding.”
“I don’t think he’ll care for that sort of thing with me.”
“Do a decent job of his stall and I’m sure he’ll reconsider.” She led Falaire out into the passageway, then stood with him while Acair did the worst job of mucking she’d ever seen.
It took him at least half an hour and she suspected by the time she’d corrected him for the sixth time that he was close to losing his temper. But he did the work just the same, then moved the wagon away from the stall door.
“Satisfactory?”
“Your work? Barely. Your attitude? Definitely not.”
“Would you prefer it if I were to whistle a cheerful tune or dance a jig as I’m about these fine labors?”
Falaire snorted. Léirsinn reminded herself of all the reasons why she couldn’t sack the man standing in front of her, then held out the lead rope she was holding.
“See if you can come to an understanding with him. He’ll talk to the rest of the ponies about you, you know. I’d be worried about what he’d say.”
Acair looked at Falaire warily, then approached him hesitantly.
“He’ll bite you again if you do it that way.”
“Damn it, woman, then what am I to do? Tell him I will do a half-arsed job on his stall if he refrains from biting me?”
Léirsinn would have suggested that he might want to be mostly concerned that Falaire would kick the life from him, but she decided that was likely something she didn’t need to say. Besides, she was suddenly distracted by the sight of Acair facing off with her favorite horse. He drew himself up and sent Falaire a look that . . .
Well, it almost had her backing up a pace. She wouldn’t have said she was frightened, but she realized immediately that whatever else Acair from nowhere understood, he understood how to intimidate. Falaire, however, merely snorted at him, leaving him a small gift of drool on the shoulder of his tunic, then he stretched his neck and snuffled Acair’s hair.
Acair cursed, but didn’t move.
“First Horse,” Léirsinn said pointedly, “which you are most definitely not.”
“He’s trying to win me over.”
“Believe that if you like,” she said. She leaned against the wall as Acair led Falaire back into his quarters. Falaire had a look at his surroundings, then expressed his opinion on the work done in the form of a deposit upon fresh straw.
Acair looked at her in surprise. “Damn him to hell. Why’d he do that?”
“Why don’t you ask him?”
“I think I won’t,” he said. He looked at the lead rope in his hand, then handed it to her. “He’s all yours.”
She would have happily made that so, but even if she could have afforded him, her uncle would have kept her from buying him out of spite. She’d watched him do it to souls he was far fonder of than he was of her. She took off Falaire’s bridle, promised him his supper in an hour, then shut him into the stall. She looked at Acair.
“Only twenty more to see to. Perhaps more. I lose count easily.”
“I imagine you don’t lose count of anything,” he said. He walked off, muttering something she didn’t understand.
Well, as long as he did what he was being paid to do with any success at all, she didn’t care what language he cursed her in.
She leaned against the wall and watched him work on the next stall. Falaire was hanging his head out his window, watching as well. Even horses needed their amusements, she supposed.
’Twas blindingly obvious that the man hadn’t a clue how to properly do barn work, which left her wondering why he’d sought work in a stable. She had to admit Doghail had judged his appearance aright at least. He was terribly beautiful in a rakish sort of way that she was certain had left more than one woman in a state of incapacitation. Fortunately, she was not swayed by a pretty face and there were still two dozen stalls left to see to before the day was over.
“Mistress Léirsinn?”
She turned to find one of the housemaids standing there. The girl looked so out of place in her starched uniform, Léirsinn had a hard time believing she wasn’t a specter of some kind.
“Aye?” she said carefully. “Is there something wrong?”
The girl looked around as if she expected someone to leap out of the shadows and fall upon her. Léirsinn nodded toward an empty passageway. The girl trailed after her, but Léirsinn could tell it wasn’t willingly done. She looked to make sure they were alone, then turned to the servant.
“What is it?”
“Your grandfather,” the girl whispered. “He looks poorly.”
The man is completely incapacitated, was almost out of her mouth before she realized the girl wasn’t a child fresh from her mother’s hearthfire. She obviously had the wit and age to judge things for herself.
“What do you mean, poorly?”
The girl shook her head sharply. “I don’t know and I daren’t speculate. I tend him, you see, and—” She looked a
round herself again. “Something’s amiss. More than the usual something.” She shifted uneasily. “There is danger in the house.”
Léirsinn was grateful for years of not reacting to even the worst piece of gossip. It was all that saved her from panicking at present. She nodded, because that made her feel in control.
“Thank you,” she said. “I’ll see to it.”
The girl looked at her, then bolted. Léirsinn took a moment or two to compose herself, then left the passageway. She could hear Acair cursing and Doghail laughing at him, so she supposed those two would keep themselves busy enough.
She walked through the aisles between stalls as casually as she could, though in reality she was so panicked she could hardly breathe. Her grandfather wasn’t well, that was true, but for someone from the house to actually venture into the barn to find her spoke volumes about the possible worsening of his condition.
She found herself starting for her uncle’s grand house before she knew that was where she intended to go. She wasn’t supposed to show her face there until the end of the month, but this was an emergency. She forced herself to walk when she would have preferred to run, then presented herself at the back kitchen door. She knocked and waited for what seemed to be an excessive amount of time before one of the under butlers opened the door. He looked down his long nose at her.
“Yes?” he asked crisply.
“I need to see my grandfather.”
“Your appointment with His Lordship is in a se’nnight, Mistress Léirsinn, not today.”
“I need to see my grandfather—”
“Not today.”
“But—”
The door shut in her face. She would have knocked again, but she had done that before and been escorted back to the barn by a pair of rather hefty guardsmen with no sense of fair play. She turned, leaned back against the door, and forced herself to remain calm. For all she knew, the maidservant had been imagining things, or someone had sent the wench off to stir up trouble as a lark, or she herself hadn’t listened closely enough when the girl had been speaking. The possibilities were many, truly, and varied. Her grandfather was likely just fine and she would see that for herself when she was allowed inside the manor.
She pushed away from the door and walked down the stairs into the garden. She was distracted enough that she almost stepped into a patch of . . .
She stepped back casually, then let out her breath slowly. She was losing what few wits were left her. That was the only reason she continued to see those patches of shadow where they shouldn’t have been.
She looked about her to make certain no one would see her at the piece of madness she contemplated and was satisfied that she wasn’t interesting enough for anyone to watch. She glanced at the spot in front of her as casually as possible. It was perhaps a foot across and surely no longer than that. Roundish, yet not quite a circle.
She found herself again terribly tempted to touch it, but decided rather abruptly that that would be a very bad idea indeed for the simple reason that she sensed she was being watched.
She rolled her eyes. Of course she was being watched. The entire bloody manor staff was probably watching her, laughing their arses off at her stupidity. She looked over her shoulder, fully prepared to give as good as she was no doubt getting, only to realize that there was only one person staring at her.
Her uncle.
He was standing at an upstairs window, looking down at her. He was perfectly motionless for a moment, then he dropped the curtain.
Léirsinn wished she hadn’t seen that.
She made a production of looking at something on the other side of the path, some rubbish bit of fauna she was sure she couldn’t have identified even if death had loomed, then took herself back to where she belonged as quickly as possible. She spoke to no one, ignored a pair of new lads Doghail had unearthed from heaven only knew where, then fetched a pitchfork and set to work on stalls that Acair had already done.
She fully intended that the work should drive that feeling of something she refused to call terror out of her, but it only seemed to magnify it. Something foul was afoot and she absolutely didn’t want to be in the midst of it. The sooner she got herself and her grandfather out of Sàraichte, the better, no matter what she had to do. She could only hope she would manage it before it was too late.
A se’nnight. Surely nothing terrible would happen in that time.
She had no idea what she would do if it did.
Four
Acair prayed for death.
He didn’t pray, as a general rule, though he’d surely listened to his share of prayers being blurted out by those he had plied his usual trade on.
Then again, those lads had been fearing for their lives from things they should have been afraid of. He was simply suffering from an abundance of sore muscles. He wondered why anyone would choose laboring in a barn for his life’s work. If the flies weren’t biting, the horses were, and that didn’t begin to address all the things on his boots—boots that weren’t his lovely, handmade, buttery-soft, black leather boots—he wasn’t accustomed to.
He was now fully convinced the only reason Soilléir and Rùnach had sent him to his current locale was to torture him. Keep him safe? What an enormous pile of horse manure.
He had to admit it was possible that he deserved a bit of it. He didn’t have very many redeeming qualities, but he was at least honest about his failings. He was a bastard and he knew it. That complete lack of kindness and mercy served him well, but it tended to earn him powerful enemies. It had never occurred to him that he might someday count a stableful of annoying horses in that number of souls who didn’t care for him, but it had just been that sort of year so far.
He shifted on a rickety stool that was absolutely not equal to the task of providing him with any secure place to rest and wondered what insult would come his way next.
He watched in less astonishment than resignation as a very plump pigeon flapped into the barn and came to perch on his knee. Unoriginal, but he was generally the only one in any given locale with any imagination. He was accustomed to lesser offerings.
The bird proffered its leg as if it knew what its business was, which it no doubt did. He untied the message attached there, then unrolled it.
Do one good deed a day. I’m counting.
It wasn’t signed, but it didn’t need to be. Rùnach wouldn’t have cared what the bloody hell Acair did with his days; Soilléir, on the other hand, was enjoying the entire fiasco far too much. This was exactly the sort of thing he would have done to pour salt in the wound.
The bird plucked the message out of his hands, tossed it up in the air, then managed to swallow the damned thing whole. Well, at least it hadn’t left a mess—
He looked down at his boots, then back at the bird. Damn him if the beast didn’t laugh at him and flap away. Acair stared at his boots and supposed pigeon leavings were no worse than horse droppings. Since at least one of the two seemed to be his lot in life for the foreseeable future, no sense in getting himself in a snit over it.
He listened to the thoughts running through what was left of his mind and could only shake his head over them. He who had never once appeared in a salon with a hair out of place, reduced to a stable lad with droppings on his boots. A sorry state of affairs, truly.
He attempted to work out an unfortunately large collection of knots in his neck only to realize that the collection extended down the middle of his back where he couldn’t reach. No wonder those horses rolled about in the dirt, scratching things they couldn’t reach either. He understood.
He shifted so he could lean back against a wall—something that took absolutely no effort given the straitness of the space he occupied—and decided to take a moment or two to re-examine how he had come to be wallowing in the misery that had become his life. He knew he would soon be called upon to once again take up his sword, as it wer
e, and see to the evening’s dirty business so ’twas best to seize the peace for thinking when he found it.
There he had been a few years earlier, going about his daily affairs as usual, spending his energies plotting and scheming in his accustomed fashion, when things had begun to go slightly awry. Just little things: a missed opportunity to do someone an ill turn; a scheme foiled by the slightest hesitation before dropping a well-deserved spell of death; a heartbeat too many spent looking at a potential victim and wondering how it might feel to be stalked by someone as evil as he himself was. Little things, true, but unsettling nonetheless.
It had been almost enough to leave him wondering if perhaps he hadn’t been at the business of black magery just a bit too long.
Knowing that that couldn’t possibly be the case, he had pulled himself up by his bootstraps and set to his most brilliant piece of business to date with renewed purpose and enthusiasm. A theft of the world’s magic had seemed like a fitting way to spend the previous fall, though he’d certainly been laying the spells necessary for such a feat for far longer than that. Indeed, if he were to be entirely honest, the thought had occurred to him several years earlier when he’d decided that draining his sire of all his magic just wasn’t going to be enough to repay the stingy old bastard for an endless list of abuses. What he’d wanted was to hold the world’s magic in his hand and mock his father for not having had the imagination to do the same.
The notion had been rendered substantially more appealing by his half-brother Ruithneadh’s having done him the favor of leaving Gair trapped in the most uninspired and magickless country in all the Nine Kingdoms. No magic, no traveling about from glittering salon to gilded audience chamber, no cellar of fine wines to accompany sumptuous suppers. That had been a fair punishment, true, but to have done what his sire had never thought to do?
The idea had been irresistible.
He would have managed it if it hadn’t been for that damned Rùnach and his dreamspinning bride, which was a tale better told after a substantial amount of ale. All he knew was that he’d been left with merely dreams of the world’s magic, a spot in his chest that ached from time to time with a truly alarming sort of tingling, and the prospect of a year without a single spell at his fingertips stretching in front of him as if it had been a long, dusty, straight road through country that, unsurprisingly, resembled exactly where he found himself currently loitering.