He put his finger to his lips. “I’ve escaped.”
“Not for long, I’ll warrant.”
He shuddered. “You’ve no idea.”
“Actually, I’ve been listening to them for two days now, and I think you’re caught.”
He opened his mouth, then shut it and shook his head. “I am not interested in marriage at the moment and if I brought home one of those gels, assuming I wasn’t slain and divided as spoils between the two of them first, my brothers would finish me.”
She smiled. “Are they so awful, then?”
He put his hand on the tree and sighed. “Acair’s cousins?Nay, in truth, they aren’t. I would just prefer to watch all my brothers march on doggedly toward wedded bliss before I make the journey myself. What of you? Any black mages roaming about who tempt you?”
“Oh, not at all,” she said, hoping she sounded confident and a bit aloof. “I have horses to train, manure to shovel, grain to prepare. No time for anything else.”
He looked at her skeptically. “So if I were to wish very sincerely for that bastard atop the house to fall off and dash his head against a rock, what would you do?”
“Rush over to catch him, of course.”
“Just as I thought.” He nodded knowingly. “Whether you want to admit it or not, you have a rather bad case of heartburn for that lad there.”
“I don’t,” she protested. “I’m just here to keep him safe.”
“And that, my gel, is probably exactly what he needs.”
Léirsinn couldn’t imagine why, but she wasn’t going to argue the point. She watched Acair on his mother’s roof and it struck her just how ordinary he looked. There was honestly nothing about him except things she had seen in his eye a time or two—and what she might or might not have seen in the king of Neroche’s garden—that would have convinced her that he was anything more than he appeared: an exceptionally handsome, terribly elegant man.
She looked at Mansourah. “Am I losing my mind?”
He smiled sympathetically. “What makes you say that—or do I need to ask?”
She watched Acair for a bit longer, then turned to him. “Have you ever seen him, well, you know.” She waved an invisible witch’s wand. “That.”
“Ah,” Mansourah said slowly. “That. As a matter of fact, I have.”
“I’m not sure I believe it.” She said that, but she supposed she might have to continue to repeat those words before she believed them. She might never have seen Acair work so much as a single spell, but she’d had a peep at his soul and she was absolutely clear on what she’d seen there.
Mansourah leaned his shoulder against his tree and watched Acair for a bit before he looked back at her and smiled. “He’s a very bad mage, you know.”
“Bad at maging,” she managed, “or just bad in general?”
“The latter, assuredly. He’s very good at the former.”
“Doyoutruly think he’s as terrible as everyone seems to claim?”
“Not that my opinion matters,” he said carefully, “but I’ll give it to you since you’ve asked. I’ve crossed paths with him several times in the past and been quite happy to have a full dining table separating us. He has very pretty manners, but he is not a man I would want to meet on the field.”
“Yet you faced him over swords in that inn’s courtyard, in Eòlas.”
Mansourah smiled. “I didn’t say I was excessively clever, did I? That was also a battle with ordinary weapons, which leaves us on equal footing. I could choose a freckle on his nose and put an arrow into it from three hundred paces without any effort, which he knows very well. But I would do everything including tucking my tail between my legs and bolting not to face him over spells. Again,” he added half under his breath.
She smiled. “Details.”
He snorted. “You’re unkind to force me to embarrass myself,but I’ll indulge you this once. Acair and I once had a rather warm disagreement that I don’t remember with pleasure. I was younger then and very overcome by my growing affection for a woman he had escorted to supper. We sat down at the gaming table after supper where I subsequently accused him of cheating at cards.”
“Was he?” she asked in surprise.
“I don’t think he needs to,” Mansourah said ruefully. “And to answer your question, nay, I don’t think he was. It was several years ago, I was far stupider than I am today, and he is who he is. I thought it might do him good to learn a lesson about what true power looked like.”
