I’m watching you, but you knew that . . .
He did, though he’d be damned if he had any idea who that watcher might be—and that in spite of now having had two of the same sort of messages delivered to him. It was obviously a poor jest. His brothers were too stupid to have concocted such a dull piece of sport, so perhaps when he had an opening in his diary he would take the time to speculate on which of his enemies might have had the wit to combine the same. It would be an extremely short list, to be sure.
That he might not have any name to put on that list was what was leaving him looking over his shoulder far more often than he usually did. It was that looking over his shoulder that was surely the only reason he almost walked himself and Léirsinn directly into a clutch of mages.
He pulled her off the street and into a darkened corner so quickly, he feared he had caused her to squeak. That she didn’t bloody his nose for the way he wrapped his arms around her and voiced a few endearments of the sort a man with a paid companion might offer was something of a mercy.
“To the eastern gates, then,” said a voice behind him. “We’ll lie in wait for him there.”
“Won’t he be expecting the like?”
There was a lengthy discussion about where the most advantageous spot for snaring an unsuspecting mage might lie. Acair suppressed a sigh. It was honestly a wonder he hadn’t simply perished from boredom long before the present moment. So few decent mages possessed the ability to execute a decent bit of mayhem. Obviously, based on what he was hearing, Simeon wasn’t able to pay what a more exclusive worker of magic would require.
A tap on his shoulder almost sent him pitching forward into Léirsinn, but he maintained his composure and limited himself to a grunt of annoyance.
“Seen any suspicious lads in the area,” asked the mage behind him, “or were you too occupied with your very pedestrian business there?”
“Oy, master,” Acair said in his best workaday accent, “I’ve only a bit longer ’afore me witch at home wakes, so I’ve no time for lookin’ about.”
The cluster of fools laughed, entertaining themselves with comments about the superior nature of their magely endeavors and the substandard entertainments of the local rabble before they walked off. Acair shook his head in disgust. He despaired for the future of his profession, truly he did.
He waited until the hunters had disappeared around a corner before he pulled back and looked at Léirsinn.
“My apologies,” he whispered.
She looked unsettled. He wasn’t sure if it was because of him or those feeble lads he’d just avoided, but decided abruptly that it might be best just not to know.
“The king’s mages?” she managed.
“If they could be termed thus,” he said, “aye.”
“What are we going to do now if they’re hunting you?”
“We’ll do our best to keep our unflattering comments on their skill to ourselves and settle in for a bit of a wait. It might be useful to have somewhere to hide.”
“But we’re not going to look for Mansourah,” she said, shaking her head as she said it.
Acair took that as a sign that she didn’t particularly want to go look for their companion and he was happy to agree. He suspected that not even that notorious busybody Soilléir of Cothromaiche could determine the whereabouts of that bumbling prince of Neroche, who had admittedly done a fine job of allowing them time to get out the window but was currently making up for that by not being anywhere he could be easily found. Acair could only hope they weren’t trapped thanks to the delay.
He considered the things he could do to keep himself awake for the foreseeable future and settled for the idea of having a quick peek at Simeon’s spellbook. It might be the only thing that kept him out of trouble where that red-haired horse miss was concerned.
“Let’s find a bit of light,” he said. “I’ll have a look at my prize whilst we’re waiting.”
She pursed her lips, which he supposed said everything he needed to know about her opinions of his activities, but what else could she have expected? For all they knew, he was doing the world a very great service by removing a dangerous book of spells from the grasp of a king with just enough magic to get himself tangled in the proverbial weeds.
Altruistic to the last. He would have that inscribed on a headstone and tuck the damned thing in his mother’s garden for future use. He could do nothing less.
Finding a suitable spot was as difficult as he’d expected it would be, but surely no more than a quarter hour had passed before he was loitering negligently near a lit streetlamp, turning the pages of what he soon discovered were the scribblings of a madman.
Little wonder the kingdom was in shambles.
He tried to make sense of what he was reading, but it was impossible. It was nothing but page after page of notes about everything from what the man had eaten for supper to how visiting dignitaries had been dressed. Acair would have made sport of it if he’d been sitting in a comfortable solar with people who might leap into that sort of gossipy fray with him, but as it was, he was standing in a barely lit alcove, shivering and wishing he were not being chased by the local monarch and his minions. The time for mockery was not the present one.
The one decent spell he found was something that only someone up to their necks in the copying of manuscripts might value. Who else would possibly care about the qualities of inks and how to affect the drying times of the same?
He shook his head in disgust. The lengths he had gone to—and the power he had promised the king—in return for the damned thing . . . well, it was obviously a blessing in disguise that he’d failed.
Léirsinn suddenly put her hand on his arm, then nodded up the street. He pulled himself farther into the shadows, then waited whilst a wheezing piece of royalty staggered along the cobblestones toward them. He reached out and hauled Mansourah of Neroche out of the faint lamplight only to have the man almost collapse at his feet. He dropped the book of spells perforce, but he didn’t drop the prince of Neroche, which he supposed might count as a fair trade. Léirsinn retrieved the book, then reached out toward Mansourah.
“Don’t,” he gasped.
Drunk was Acair’s immediate assessment, then he realized that there was something very odd about the way Mansourah was holding his right arm.
“Battle?” Acair asked sympathetically.
“I fell off the ledge back at the inn,” Mansourah said, through gritted teeth.
“And you couldn’t have changed your shape on the way down?” Acair asked in astonishment.
It was truly a testament to his own ability to see so well in the dark that he was able to make out with perfect clarity the murderous look their feeble companion was giving him.
“I was taken by surprise.” Mansourah took a deep, unsteady breath. “If you tell anyone the same, I will kill you.”