“Why is that again?” Mansourah asked with something of a smirk. “I believe I’ve forgotten.”
Acair imagined Mansourah hadn’t forgotten a damned thing. The obvious reason for discretion was that he was being chased by black mages who were salivating over the prospect of doing him in, though that was nothing unusual. A more pressing problem would be finding himself also being chased by the crownless ruler of Diarmailt if the man knew he had come to town.
He supposed the king would have been justified in it. The unfortunate truth was that though he had indeed made Simeon a promise to deliver power in exchange for that book of spells, his plans to discreetly acquire a sizeable amount of the world’s magic had gone completely south the year before. He’d sent along a note of regret to His Former Majesty, which, he understood via the grapevine generally used for that sort of thing, hadn’t been received terribly well. Not that his welcome in Diarmailt had ever been particularly warm, but such an embarrassing failure had certainly not helped matters any—
“We’re making for the library,” Mansourah reminded him.
Acair noted the thoughtful frown gracing the prince’s noble brow. No doubt the lad was struggling to imagine why one would ever want to spend any time in such a locale. What Mansourah of Neroche did with his days beyond inserting himself into places where the only results were social disasters was a mystery, but perhaps that was all the child could hope for. Acair thought it best to just let the matter lie.
“I’m here for a book,” he said, hoping the use of small words would aid Mansourah in understanding what they were about. He was, as even those he’d brought to their knees pleading for mercy would admit, altruistic to the last.
Mansourah’s brow puckered a bit more. “But Rùnach has your book.”
Acair was fairly certain they’d covered that ground before, but he wasn’t unwilling to cover it again. As he’d noted before, altruism was his middle name.
“Rùnach has the innards of a book,” he said. “I might even go so far as to say that those innards might have belonged to one of my books. He has those, my young princeling, because I put them there for him to find. I knew he needed something with which to keep himself busy last year and I was happy to oblige him in the same. In return, I liberated the pages of his most cherished tome and deposited them in a safe place of my choosing.”
He could have said more, of course, but there was no reason to go into details that would only keep Mansourah awake at night. Aye, he had pages from a book of Rùnach’s and he knew very well what those pages contained. He could scarce wait to flex his fingers and dive into his half-brother’s efforts to counter their father’s dastardly spells.
Even more intriguing were the notes Rùnach had dropped all over the plains of Ailean that Acair had been, again, altruistic enough to scoop up for him, but those were equally well hidden and best forgotten about for the moment.
“What’s in this book we’ve come for?” Mansourah asked. “Lists of pubs to avoid?”
Acair sighed lightly. He would have preferred to boast that the pages were full of his own lists of black mages of note, but the truth was, he was after something he’d liberated from under the blotter on his father’s desk one evening when Gair had been suffering from intense tummy troubles that might or might not have been caused by Acair having spent the afternoon loitering in the kitchens near the stewpot. Those pages were hidden in a book of lists of other things that would definitely keep that wee prince there awake at night.
“The address of my tailor, rather,” Acair said with a casual shrug. “You might find it useful.”
Mansourah looked as if he were toying with the idea of taking one of the arrows in the quiver slung over his shoulder and plunging it into Acair’s chest. Normally, Acair wouldn’t have even yawned over such a possibility, but things were as they were and his only protections were threats and the rather unsatisfactory dagger stashed down the side of his boot. He reached out and clapped Mansourah companionably on the shoulder. If his hand got in the way of the man reaching for an arrow, perhaps it could be considered saving time and trouble for those who swept the streets.
“Just having a bit of sport at your expense, old bean,” he said soothingly. “I’m here for my usual sort of thing: state secrets, terrible spells, and quite potentially the address of my father’s bootmaker. You might want to order a pair whilst we’re there. That ought to take up our afternoon quite nicely.”
Mansourah glared at him, then turned a much more pleasant look on Léirsinn. “Please, get me away from him.”
Léirsinn took his arm, then looked over her shoulder and raised her eyebrows. Acair smiled briefly at her, then settled for walking behind the pair. He was followed by his own constant shadow, a spell of death that was apparently charged with keeping him from turning vexatious princes into steaming piles of dung. He hadn’t hit upon a way to rid himself of the damned thing yet, but that was definitely high up on his list of things to do. Obviously, the sooner he was able to be back to the business of proper black magery, the better.
He watched the crowd as he followed his companions toward the library’s front doors. Those souls were students for the most part, lads and lassies fortunate enough to study at the university surrounding what was arguably the largest library in all the Nine Kingdoms. Perhaps not the most interesting collection of books, but definitely the largest. He wasn’t troubled by the press, but he could tell by the way Léirsinn was occasionally flinching that she was. He leaned forward and tapped Mansourah smartly on the shoulder.
“Put her between yourself and the wall, dolt.”
Mansourah apologized profusely, then did as he’d been bid. Acair turned back to watching for thugs and wondering just what sort of hornet’s nest he might stir up with an innocent visit to the small collection of tomes he kept hidden in plain sight among other books of catastrophically boring subjects. His trio of books was covered in his own spells, spells which were designed to render them uninteresting to anyone with a merely rudimentary command of magic.
But he wasn’t interested in lesser mages.