Mansourah glared at him. “For Léirsinn’s sake.”
“Of course,” Acair agreed. “Let’s rendezvous at the barn. I believe I’ll make a little detour to my tailor, but that won’t take long.”
At the rate the pounding was intensifying, he suspected that door wasn’t going to last long either, so he clapped Mansourah on the shoulder, avoided a fist headed toward his own very fine nose, then hastened with Léirsinn to the window. He climbed out, helped her out onto the ledge, then spared a brief moment to reflect on the fruits of his evening’s activities. He had the feeling he was about to pay a heavy price for having tampered with Simeon of Diarmailt’s most treasured book of spells, but it wasn’t as if he’d bothered to steal the whole thing—
He paused, cursed his damnable propensity to always tell the absolute truth, then had to admit that while he should have only liberated a page or two, he had succumbed to temptation to take the whole bloody thing. He’d deposited another of the king’s books in its place, turned in a way that shouldn’t have left the man noticing the theft right off. Suspicious whoreson. If he’d been a bit more at his leisure, he would have sat down and penned a sharply worded complaint to the local monarch. Extremely bad form, that.
He stood on the ledge just to the right of the chamber’s window and made himself a mental note to compliment Mansourah of Neroche on his ability to shout in the manner of an outraged nobleman missing out on his rest whilst holding the chamber door closed long enough to give his companions time to bolt out the window. It begged the question of whether or not the lad had done that sort of thing before, but perhaps that was something that could be investigated later.
At the moment, he was busy congratulating himself on having come in that same window earlier in the evening. If he hadn’t, he wouldn’t have realized the best he would manage would be a ledge hardly wide enough to hold up a plump bird, never mind a man with escape on his mind.
He looked to his right to find Léirsinn standing there—clinging to the side of the inn, actually—with her eyes closed, looking as if she might faint. He covered her closest hand with his.
“Léirsinn,” he whispered, “there’s a roof a trio of paces to your right—”
“Are you daft?” she asked tightly. “If I move, I’ll fall!”
He decided against pointing out to her that the worst a fall might result in would be a broken bone or two. The woman didn’t care for heights, something she had let him know very clearly several times in the past.
He didn’t share her fear. He couldn’t begin to count the number of times he had gleefully thrown himself off whatever castle wall, abbey spire, or rickety bridge he’d found himself atop, waiting until the very last moment possible before changing his shape into whatever came to mind at the time. The higher the perch, the longer the drop, the more time that passed before he gave himself the power of flight, the better.
Being forced to move about as a mere mortal was extremely inconvenient.
“If you can shift your feet just a bit at a time,” he said, trying to sound as encouraging as possible, “we’ll reach that little overhang in no time at all. After that, I’ll go first, then help you down.”
“All the way to the ground?”
“It won’t be much farther than getting off the back of any number of horses you’ve mastered,” he lied. “I’m sure.”
“You’re not sure of a damned thing.”
“I am sure of several things, one of which is I can guarantee our pampered companion will be exiting the inn by way of the front door. Think on how you’ll then be able to taunt him with your exploits when he next vexes you.”
“He doesn’t vex me,” she managed.
“Then you can defend my abused honor,” he said. “Or you can instruct him in the proper way to attempt a duel. Were you not witness to that childish display in the garden earlier this afternoon? I was embarrassed to be a part of it. Now, if we could just ease to our right a bit, I imagine we’ll be able to hop right down to the ground. Perhaps we’ll take a moment or two and examine this afternoon’s battlefield, just to see how consistently our companion was forced to retreat.”
He continued to babble in something just above a whisper, mostly in an effort to distract her. He stopped speaking when she glared at him, but perhaps that had been just the thing she needed. She took a deep breath, then inched her way over to that bit of something protruding from the side of the building that might have charitably been called an awning. It wasn’t that the overhang was poorly made, it simply wasn’t terribly large.
“I am here alone I tell you!”
Acair froze, grateful that he and Léirsinn were far enough away from where Mansourah was hanging out the window that they hopefully wouldn’t be seen. He breathed lightly, listening to that hapless prince of Neroche trying to talk his way out of getting himself thrown into the king’s dungeon.
Acair rolled his eyes in despair. That one there was altogether too accustomed to waving his title about to get himself out of trouble. Obviously lessons were needed in the fine art of prevarication necessary to save one’s sorry arse when faced with guards carrying swords.
Time crawled by. He didn’t dare move, particularly after he heard the innkeeper directly beneath him arguing with the lad who was seemingly the captain of the detail sent out to search for the thief who had broken into the king’s private solar and taken one of his treasures.
Acair shook his head. Only one? Simeon was terrible at sums. He’d pinched at least three things earlier that night that he could bring to mind without effort, mostly in repayment for the way he’d caught the king looking at Léirsinn. Having perfected the art of peering over the backs of sofas whilst remaining unobserved himself had obviously been time well spent.
More time passed more slowly than he would have liked, but the voices below finally faded as the innkeeper and his late-night visitor went back inside. He eased past Léirsinn, then tested the awning for sturdiness. He had definitely seen worse, so he left Léirsinn sitting on the edge before he swung down to the ground. The threat of death always tended to leave him feeling rather spry, so after congratulating himself on not landing on an upturned rake left lying where a pile of snow had covered it, he turned his mind to coaxing Léirsinn down from the roof.
He couldn’t fault her for being cautious. He tended to rush forward into things because he enjoyed the looks of astonished dismay he generally received thanks to that sort of thing, but he’d always had magic to fall back on if things went awry.
He was starting to understand why the average bloke spent such an inordinate amount of time down at the pub.
“Just jump,” he said finally, trying not to sound as exasperated as he felt. Exasperated was better than alarmed, he supposed, and he was alarmed enough without any help.
She jumped. He caught her—barely. If he held her in his arms perhaps a moment or two longer than necessary, well, who could fault him for it? The only thing he appreciated more than a finely wrought spell was a beautifully fashioned woman.
