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 theinhabitants 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 wassitting 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.
Spells. What absolute rot.
She turned away from indulging in those thoroughly useless thoughts and focused on the man standing in front of her. Acair of Ceangail shoved aside another gangly youth, then joined her in leaning against the pub wall, as far out of the press of humanity as possible.
“Any trouble?” he asked.
“Nothing noteworthy,” she said, “though I’m probably not the right one to judge that.” She glanced at him. “I’ve never seen so many people in one place in my life and ’tis only dawn.”
He pushed his hood back from his face. “It is an easy place in which to lose oneself, true. In your case, though, I can see why nothing would aid you in escaping the attentions of every lad in the area.”
She ignored the flattery, mostly because the memory of their thoroughly unpleasant journey to their current locale was still very fresh in her mind and he was responsible for it. “Did hiding your face help you in the past quarter hour?”
“Barely,” he said, straightening his cloak. “I vow I was accosted by no fewer than half a dozen maids with mischief on their minds.”
“Good thing you’re accustomed to it,” she observed.
“Isn’t it, though?”
She suppressed the urge to roll her eyes. She imagined he was very accustomed to the same and she further supposed he had rarely passed up an opportunity to indulge as many lassies in their desires as possible. Given that she had experienced hispowers of persuasion firsthand, she knew those poor women weren’t to blame for whatever straits they found themselves in.
She could scarce believe she had been just as overcome, but the man was hard to resist. He was also, as she had reminded herself just a moment or two ago, completely to blame for the terror-filled journey she’d made on the back of her favorite horse to places she’d never intended to go, where she had encountered people of various sorts she had never imagined existed—
“You’re thinking pleasant thoughts about me,” Acair murmured, leaning closer to her. “Planning on joining that list of my admirers?”
“I was actually wishing I had stabbed you with a pitchfork the first time I saw you,” she managed.
He smiled, and she winced. She realized at that moment that it had been his smile to render her not only witless but unable to do him any serious bodily harm. The first time she’d clapped eyes on him, she should have clapped her hand over her own traitorous eyes and stumbled away to somewhere he wasn’t.
“You aren’t in earnest,” he said with a small smile. “Do damage to this extremely fine form? I don’t think you could.”
“I’m not sure you want to test it after what you put me through last night,” she said, trying to ignore the memories of that extremely bumpy ride on the back of a dragon who had seemed determined by his antics to wring shouts of laughter from the madman standing next to her. She dredged up the sternest look she could muster and attempted an abrupt return to the business at hand. “What now?” she asked. “Well, besides watching you step over the pile of lassies who have fallen at your feet, did you find anything unexpected?”
He propped his foot up underneath him and sighed. “Nothing out of the ordinary, which bodes well for success here.Unfortunately, that leaves us with nothing to do but continue to keep ourselves out of trouble whilst we wait for a certain finicky prince of Neroche to locate the sort of accommodations he might find to his liking, then we run away from them as quickly as possible and find something suitable.”
“And then?” she asked. “I know you told me yesterday, but I spent so much time screaming last night that I believe the noise drove it from my mind.”
He bumped her companionably with his shoulder. “You didn’t scream the entire time.”
“Nay, I fainted midway through the torment, which likely saved your ears.”
He smiled. “I thought you were swooning for my benefit, so I’m not sure I’ll accept anything else.” He watched the shadowy press of humanity for a bit longer, then looked at her. “We’ll find somewhere safe to leave our gear, then I need to nip in and out of the library and fetch that book I need.”
