“Which he cannot use, for reasons you understand very well.”
She cursed him as she pulled on gloves, then cursed a bit more as one of her fingers went through the wool. She looked at him sharply.
“Don’t fix that.”
“I hadn’t intended to, actually—” He closed his mouth for the simple reason that he thought she might pull the dagger from her boot and stab him if he didn’t.
“You have no bloody idea how tempting it is to seek out any of the women you’re favoring with your attentions and warn them about you.”
He smiled briefly. “My own reputation already does that, I fear.”
“Then you have sympathy for that black mage wandering off toward Eòlas without anything but his wits to keep his company safe.”
“More than I’ll admit to.”
She pulled her hood up over her head. “I’ve been away too long. I don’t want to be missed.” She took a step or two away, then paused and turned toward him a final time. “Anything to add?”
“I have said too much.”
“You haven’t said anything.”
That wasn’t true and she knew it, but, as he’d reminded himself earlier, he’d had no choice but to speak more than he’d wanted to and interfere more than he’d been comfortable with. In the previous month alone, he’d sent a black mage off on a noble quest, handed that mage a rune to use to summon him if aid was required, and put the finishing touches on a scheme he’d been reluctantly considering for two decades. The only way he comforted himself over any of it was reminding himself—he’d lost count of how often—that occasionally there were circumstances that required a bit of judicious meddling.
His companion had vanished into the night in a thoroughly unmagical fashion, following after that trio who had also decamped in the same manner, leaving him to either stand there and freeze or build himself a fire by thoroughly magical means. That was possible, of course, but unwise, and he was not unwise.
That he had to stand there for a moment or two and remind himself of that was more unsettling than it should have been, but it had been that sort of autumn so far. Winter was sweeping over the Nine Kingdoms with a fury, which he supposed wasn’t going to help matters any, but there were things even he couldn’t bring himself to change.
He cast a final glance in the direction of those who held the fate of the world in their unknowing hands, then turned and vanished into the bitter pre-dawn air.
One
Horses. Grain. Manure. Those were useful, reliable things a woman with any amount of good sense chose to fill her life with. Anything of a more untoward or unnerving nature was obviously something that same sort of woman should avoid like a pile of mouldy oats.
Léirsinn of Sàraichte stood in the shadows of a rather disreputable-looking pub, shivered, and made a valiant effort to focus on those things that had made up so much of her life so far. Horses were majestic creatures, grain kept them happy, and cleaning up after them was the price she’d paid for the joy of riding on their backs. It was a simple, predictable circle that had given purpose and meaning to her days. How she had strayed so far from such a pedestrian life, she couldn’t say—
She sighed and stopped herself from even finishing that thought. She knew exactly how she’d come to be where she was and how barn work had led her to such a terrible place. It wasn’t something she particularly wanted to think about, but she was trapped where she was for the moment and she needed something to help her pass the time. It seemed like the least dangerous of the things she could be doing, so she made herself more comfortable against the outside of the pub and allowed her thoughts to wander.
They wandered without much effort to the moment when her life had become something so thoroughly not what she’d been accustomed to. There she’d been, innocently going about her chores as usual, when a man had arrived at her uncle’s barn looking for work. What she should have done was take away the pitchfork he quite obviously had never used and shown him the quickest way out of the barn.
Instead, she’d stared just a bit too long at his truly spectacular visage and apparently lost all her wits. Not only had she allowed him to remain in her uncle’s stables attempting work he was singularly unqualified to do, she had listened to him long enough to be convinced that her uncle wanted her dead and her only hope was to flee. She had somehow lost her grip on good sense and traded the three things she knew best for other, less comfortable things such as mages, magic, and mythical beasts.
A breathless race across the whole of the Nine Kingdoms in the company of a madman and a shapechanging horse—two horses actually, but who was counting?—had left her standing where she was at present, trying not to gape at her surroundings like the country mouse she most definitely was and wishing she were safely tucked away in an obscure barn.
Where she was at present was Eòlas, the capital city of the country of Diarmailt. She hadn’t dared ask anyone to verify her location, though she likely could have given that most of the inhabitants of the Nine Kingdoms were on the same cobblestone byway with her. Never in her life had she seen so many people gathered together in one place.
To make matters worse, most of those souls seemed determined to either elbow her out of their way or grope various parts of her person as they passed by her, no doubt in search of valuables.
She frowned at a particularly irritating lad who seemed determined to pester her, but she wasn’t sure what the rules were for ridding oneself of that sort of vexation. She thought a hearty shove or perhaps even a fist to the lad’s nose might be the easiest way to make her wishes known, but she was unfortunately under an injunction to do whatever was necessary not to draw attention to herself.
“A bit of ale,” the young man said, looking at her meaningfully, “then perhaps a quiet moment or two in a—”
“Ditch?” suggested a deep voice from directly behind him. “Or perhaps you would care to select a less comfortable final resting place.”
The lad turned, squeaked, then fled.
Léirsinn understood. She looked at the tall, cloaked figure now standing where her would-be companion had recently stood and supposed that if she’d had any sense, she would have bolted as well. The man facing her, while terribly elegant, gave the impression that a good brawl was something he indulged in each morning just after sunrise and just before helping himself to a hearty breakfast.
Fortunately for her, he was her traveling companion and deliverer of the occasional bit of maudlin sentiment. If he also happened to be the youngest bastard son of the worst black mage in recent memory, well, she wasn’t going to complain. He was sitting on her side of the table instead of sitting across from her and spewing spells at her. She didn’t think she could ask for anything more than that, though she did snort silently at how freely thoughts of magic galloped across what was left of her mind.