“But hard to look away from, I know. You needed something?”
“Does she know we’re coming, do you think?” She paused. “Is she watching us?”
He shot her a look she had no trouble interpreting. She had the feeling he was just as aware of whatever was watching them as she was and that it most likely wasn’t his grandmother.
For all she knew, it would be safer inside a witch’s hall than outside in a forest where a mage prowled about.
She didn’t want to think about why that might be so.
Fourteen
There was nothing like a bit of burgling to raise a man’s spirits.
Acair supposed the whole exercise was made quite a bit easier by two unexpected boons. First was the fact that Léirsinn was proving to be very adept at pointing out spells he was too blind to see himself. Second, and perhaps even more critical to their survival at present, most of his grandmother’s fouler minions were sound asleep at their posts. If he hadn’t known better, he would have suspected there was something foul afoot.
But since that was usually him about his workaday activities, he brushed aside the unease and concentrated on the work before him.
The inability to use his magic wasn’t even a bother at present. He never used it whilst about his current sort of business anyway. Where was the sport in that? With magic, he could havewafted in as an evening breeze, pinched what he wanted, then continued back out the same way, treasure in hand. But to enter a place guarded by spells and retrieve what he needed with naught but his wits and a decent bit of bluster? His life was full of delights, true, but a bit of plunder in the old-fashioned way was an especially delicious pleasure.
It was also safer that way, he had to admit. So many kings and landholders set spells of ward designed to shout out an alarm should anyone with magic creep over their walls uninvited. Suspicious bastards, but, alas, the world was not the paradise of his youth.
He considered the lay of the land, as it were, and the terrible little trolls he knew were guarding, even with just their snores alone, his grandmother’s back door. He could bring to mind several rather unpleasant encounters with them, but perhaps he deserved nothing less. He had accepted invitations to his grandmother’s house countless times, but he imagined she had kept a tally of the number of times he’d wandered uninvited into her private chambers to salivate over things behind glass and sturdy spells. If he’d found those to be the most interesting items in a grand house full of truly appalling things, who could blame him? His curiosity, as his mother would have said, was likely going to be the last thing he indulged.
But as he had no intention of skipping off into the eternal sunset anytime soon, he would simply take care, be quickly about his business, and get himself and the woman he lo—er,likedquite well back over the walls and away from the enormous manor house before his gran was the wiser. When he was at his leisure in a few months, he would take the trouble to make a proper investigation into things about that same grandmother that had puzzled him. There was ample history there for the studying.
For the moment, though, what he wanted was that book his mother had advised him to filch. With any luck, it might contain a list of crotchety old bastards who might have sent a tenacious, cranky spell of death after him to vex him. The sooner he solvedthatproblem, the better off they would all be. Happening upon any stray bits of himself along the way would only be a boon. Indeed, he had the feeling he was going to need all the aid he could muster to finish the quest he’d so reluctantly started.
If he could also liberate that particular item he’d told Léirsinn about—something he’d never thought to need, actually—from under his grandmother’s chair, he would consider the venture a complete success.
Léirsinn’s hand was suddenly on his arm and he froze. He looked where she was pointing to find a fat, snoring lad half sprawled over the back stoop. He nodded, then very carefully walked with her to the back door. He picked the lock silently, then opened the back kitchen door. He stepped over the slumbering guardsman, made sure Léirsinn had followed him, then closed the door behind them. He silently turned the lock, then looked at her.
She only returned his look and shrugged.
He took a careful breath, then carried on.
He made note of the innards of his grandmother’s home and realized that he tended to judge houses more on their ability to provide him with places to hide and less on their beauty. His granny fared well on both, though he couldn’t say that her house extended any sort of friendly welcome. If she could have forced the very air he breathed into some sort of regimented order, he suspected she would have.
The hallways, as it happened, were replete with useful alcoves whilst everything else was placed at regular intervals,including furniture, plants, mirrors, and doorways. Even the carpets seemed terrified to buckle or lose track of any of their threads. He understood. He’d never made a visit during which he hadn’t been excruciatingly aware of his appearance and manners.
It had made poaching a doily or two almost irresistible, he had to admit.
He spared a wish for even the faintest hint of werelight, but set the thought aside almost immediately. He could see well enough in the dark and that had the added benefit of not disturbing the slumber of any sleeping butlers, of which he found several on the journey down the main passageway.
He made the appropriate turns through the house, avoiding grand staircases where possible and keeping to the darkest of shadows everywhere else. He tiptoed with Léirsinn through a great room full of statuary that he wasn’t entirely sure weren’t his grandmother’s enemies preserved for all time in marble—she shared some unsettling proclivities with his mother—and arrived finally at a particularly unassuming doorway.
He looked at Léirsinn but she was only watching him with wide eyes. He understood. The damned house was definitely built to intimidate.
He tried the knob and wasn’t surprised to find it unlocked. For all he knew—and he thought he might have good reason for being cautious—his granny had had un-noticed minions following him from the moment he crossed the boundaries of her land. He hadn’t sensed anything, but the uncomfortable truth was, his grandmother was a witch of the first water. He would have given much to have been allowed free rein in her private solar for even a single hour. He had attempted the same on more than one occasion, calling upon both his vast stores of charm and theability to make a nuisance of himself, but he remained unenlightened.
Hence the need for a bit of sticky-fingeredness.
He kept his hand on the doorknob for another moment or two, then decided there was nothing to do but press forward. Without magic, they wouldn’t set off any alarms save ones normally triggered by the average housemaid. He supposed he could don the persona of distracted manservant well enough in the dark. Escape would be difficult, but within reach. He had already discussed the possibility with Léirsinn earlier, though he imagined she’d tried to put the warning out of her head as quickly as possible.
He let them in, looked about the chamber to make certain they were alone, then closed the door soundlessly behind them. He let go of a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been clinging to so thoroughly, then looked at his companion.
“Well,” he said, “we’re here.”
“Thrilling,” she said, sounding as if it were anything but. “What now?”
