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 upthe 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.
Drunkwas 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.”
“Well, I doubt you’ll manage that, but let’s set that aside for examination later. What did you do to yourself, land on your arm?”
Mansourah only growled, which Acair supposed was answer enough. He drew the prince out into a bit more light and was forced to acknowledge that the man looked thoroughly wrung out.
“I don’t suppose you would be so good as to fix this,” Mansourah said, sounding as faint as he looked.
Acair would have—a gentleman never bypassed another in need, even if the aid rendered was limited to nothing more thana boost toward that peaceful rest in the East—but his minder spell cleared its throat in a way it absolutely shouldn’t have been able to. Acair ignored the fact that he’d become so accustomed to the damn thing that he hardly noticed it unless it poked its shadowy nose into his affairs, then looked at Mansourah and shrugged.
“Sorry, old bean. Can’t help you.”
Mansourah looked at Léirsinn in desperation. “No magic?”
Acair watched something cross her face, regret perhaps. Leftover tummy upset from whatever Simeon of Diarmailt had served for tea, more than likely.
“I’m sorry,” she said helplessly. “I could set it, if that would help.”
“I need to sit first,” Mansourah said, looking as if he might fall down before he managed it. “Anywhere, even the ground. But perhaps not here, aye?”
Acair couldn’t have agreed more about the somewhat exposed nature of their current locale. He encouraged the prince with soothing words and friendly taunts to take a stroll up the street. He hauled the lad into the first likely alleyway he came to and helped him sit atop the first wooden crate they found. It creaked dreadfully, but there was nothing to be done about that.
He considered the conundrum before him and wondered if it might just be easier to clunk the fool over the head and leave him behind. It was somewhat reassuring to find that that solution left him without a single twinge of conscience. Perhaps he hadn’t lost himself entirely in the endless months of do-gooding he’d endured.
Léirsinn moved to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with him, which left him waving a fond farewell to the idea of a rap on the child’s head and a hasty scamper in a useful direction.
“I can’t believe I’m asking this,” she said, looking as if shewished she could scamper away herself, “but why can’t he just use magic on himself?”
“That is a question for someone far wiser than I,” Acair said, “though I could speculate, if you like.”
“Oh,” Mansourah said through somewhat gritted teeth, “please do.”
Acair shot him a look he was certain could have been better appreciated by daylight, but with the right circumstances he was certain he would be able to reproduce it. He looked at Léirsinn and settled for a hasty bit of theological conjecture.
“Men are selfish bastards,” he said, “and I don’t hesitate to include myself in that lot. I suspect that whatever humorless being created the rules of magic-making all those many eons ago simply decided that it would be amusing to watch a mage stagger from one locale to the next with a sore tum, looking for someone to help him.”
